Vallu Mäntylä

I am working on an essayistic documentary film at the Saari Residence about family relationships, gender, the gaze and power. During my residency, I’ll be reviewing the footage, editing scene drafts and writing the film’s voiceover. I use both my own personal material and archival material I have found. In this material, the true context is almost always outside the frame – in social relationships, in buried emotions, in silent knowledge. I hope that the residency will allow me to pause and give me the space and peace to explore what arises within me as I sit down with the material I have gathered so far. I am aiming to write this in a narrative voice that is both brutally honest and fully aware of its subjectivity.

I’m also looking forward to the opportunity to share my work with the other participants and learn about their work, thinking and approaches. I hope that through this, I will gain new perspectives on my own work, as well as unexpected, small, everyday moments of sharing and collaborative reflection on art, society and life in the world. I’m also eagerly looking forward to seeing how having this many evenings – during which I have almost no household chores or pre-scheduled commitments to attend to – will affect my mood and presence and, by extension, my work.

In his work, documentarist Vallu Mäntylä explores power dynamics through subjective experience, fleeting moments, desire and physicality, and also how societal developments affect the aspects of ourselves that we consider intimate – and vice versa. He holds a degree in political history from the Department of Social History and is a member of the Documentary Film Collective Antares. He has directed, written the script and edited autofictional and documentary short films since 2014. “Daddy Issues” which is being produced at the Saari Residence, is his first feature-length documentary.