Kira Jääskeläinen

Kira Jääskeläinen
Born (1979-07-13) 13 July 1979 (age 45)
Warsaw, Poland
Occupationdocumentary film director
Notable workTakigaks – Once Were Hunters

Kira Jääskeläinen (born 1979 in Warsaw, Poland) is a Finnish-Polish documentary film director.[1][2]

Background

Jääskeläinen was born in Poland into a family of artists, but moved to Finland at the age of five.[3] In the early years of the 2000s Jääskeläinen studied humanities at the University of Copenhagen, concentrating in East European Studies and the Russian language, and wrote her MA thesis on the material she collected in Chukotka.[1][3] Later she studied in Moscow, in the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, majoring in documentary film making.[4] Jääskeläinen has also studied classical music and plays the cello.[2]

Family

The Finnish documentarist Jarmo Jääskeläinen (1937–2022) was her father.[5]

Films

Main article: Takigaks – Once Were Hunters

Jääskeläinen's first documentary Takigaks – Once Were Hunters was released in 2012. It tells about two brothers, Kolya and Sasha, who are Siberian Yupiks and live in the village of Novoye Chaplino in the eastern extremity of the Chukotka Peninsula. Their community has traditionally practised whale hunting, but some of the youth find themselves in the midst of an identity crisis, if, for some reason, they do not find this profession appealing.[1][6] The filming of this documentary took place over five years.[6]

The film has been shown on several film festivals and on the Finnish public YLE TV1 channel in 2014.[7]

Jääskeläinen is working on a film on a one-hundred-year-old cello, which was found on a dumpster in Copenhagen, and another documentary film on Chukotka.[1][3][4]

Filmography

References

  1. ^ a b c d Römpötti, Harri (28 Feb 2014). "Unelmia Kiinasta ja Kaukoidästä ('Dreams of China and the Far East')". Helsingin Sanomat, NYT: 26.
  2. ^ a b "Barents Ecology Film Festival: Tagikaks". Barents Ecology Film Festival. Retrieved 2014-03-04.
  3. ^ a b c Laurikainen, Ilona (13 March 2013). "Tekijä: Kira Jääskeläinen". YLE Radio 1 / YLE Areena.
  4. ^ a b "Siperiassa 100 vuotta Sakari Pälsin jälkeen: Elokuvaesitys ('In Siberia 100 years after Sakari Pälsi: Screening of a documentary film')". Retrieved 2014-03-04.
  5. ^ Iikka Vehkalahti, Jarmo Mäkelä (5 Jan 2022). "Dokumenttielokuvat olivat tuottajan ja ohjaajan elämäntyö" [‘Documentaries were the life work of the producer and director’]. Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish). Helsinki: Sanoma. p. B15. Retrieved 6 Jan 2022.
  6. ^ a b "Harvinainen kuvaus valaanpyynnistä ('A rare film on whale hunting')". Iltasanomat. 28 Feb 2014.
  7. ^ "Dokumenttiprojekti: Olimme valaanpyytäjiä". YLE Areena. Retrieved 2014-03-04.


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