To Melt

To Melt exists as both a short film and a four-channel installation. In both versions, the same action returns in loops: a person carries a package, drops it with a crash, and another person arrives to examine what has broken. Across eight repetitions, performers of different genders replace one another, so the two figures read as “anyone” rather than fixed characters. The work frames this circular, unresolved event as an image of intergenerational trauma—memories passed on, replayed, and felt in fragments.

What first appears as endless repetition also contains change. With each return, the impact of the violent event -its shock, its debris- slowly reduces: the amount of shattered glass diminishes, until, by the end, it has melted away like ice. The work’s attention to gradual transformation is inspired by Japanese Butoh, and by the lineage behind it, including German expressionism, both visible in the piece’s physicality and pared-down gesture.

In the installation, the four screens form a cross in the room and together create the sense of one continuous wall that the figures move along. Each screen functions like a corner: when a character disappears at the edge of an image, they immediately enter the next screen, as if turning around the next bend. Over the course of the eight-part structure, the figures complete two full circuits “around” the screens. Viewers tend to follow this movement intuitively, guided not only by the shifting image but by the sound of footsteps traveling through the space, which makes the choreography of looking and walking part of the work.

Technical description of the installation version:

Eight one minute videos are shown in succession on four back projection screens. Eight audio showers are placed above and between the screens to emphasize the location and direction of the movement and action in the videos. The audio landscape is distinctly concrete, even if occasionally non-realistic, there is no music.

Technical description of the short film: 

Duration: 7 min
Shooting format: 4K UHD
Screening format: DCP/5 channel surround sound, or stereo

Screenings and exhibitions

The seven minute experimental short film was selected for the Blow Up Chicago Arthouse Film Festival 2015, Experiments in Cinema Festival, Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 5-10, 2016, Firestone International Experimental Film Festival 2015, Moscow, Directors Circle Festival Of Shorts, USA, December 2015, Los Angeles Independent Films Awards, Nomination for Best Foreign Short, May 2015, the Backup festival in Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany 13th – 21st May, Mirror Mountain Film Festival, Ottawa, Canada, December 3rd, 2016, Busan International Art Film Festival, BIAFF, December 22-23, 2016, the European Filmfestival in Moscow, October 22nd, 2016, the Artova Film Festival, Helsinki, Finland, Sept 9-10th, 2016. TO Melt and the Seattle Transmedia & Independent Film Festival , July 28th-31st.

The installation was shown at Sinne Gallery, Helsinki, 2014. In November 2021 it will be exhibited as part of the together _ noting -exhibition at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, MMOMA. Curator: Margarita Osepyan. 

Credits

Written, directed and edited by Minna Långström
Cinematographer : Mikko Levoska
Sound Design: Jani Lehto
Sound recording: Elina Hyvärinen
Lighting designer: Erik Kenttä
Actors: Andrea Björkholm, Elias Keränen, Greta Mandelin, Pietu Wikström
Extras: Marjatta Korpelainen, Jouko Hokkanen, Risto Erjanko
Make up and costume: Jonna Karlström
Production assistants: Mirja Oksanen, Niko Tiranis
Exhibition media technology by PROAV Saarikko Oy