• Images (4)
• Links (0)
• Agenda

I AM A RIVER BY HEIDI PIIROINEN

I am a River is an experimental short that draws inspiration from Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions, weaving poetic inquiry with visual abstraction through the mordançage technique. The film reflects on the reciprocity between human perception and the natural world. Using the transformative and decaying aesthetics of mordançage, the film evokes the fluid, fragile, and ever-changing essence of rivers. As layers peel and images distort, it suggests that rivers are not silent – they are living entities with memory, culture, and voice. Their bodies, like ours, hold complexity: catchments, deltas, and wetlands as organs, and flowing currents as veins. Both vulnerable and vital, rivers mirror our own existence. The river flows through us, and we through it.

We are rivers.

Sound by Salla Hämäläinen / Aino Sound. Produced by Heidi Piiroinen and PALO Art Productions / Stéphane Querrec. With the support of AVEK Audiovisual Centre, Alfred Kordelin Foundation, The Arts Promotion Centre Finland, Filmverkstaden / Britt Al-Busultan, HelScan / Artturi Mutanen.

Heidi Piiroinen has worked for more than 20 years in photojournalism in Finland and abroad. From 2006 to 2022, she worked as a photojournalist for Helsingin Sanomat. Since 2022, she has been working as a freelance photographer and visual artist.

MORE INFORMATION