John 9:25 / 52:9 nhoJ

Interweaving newsreel footage and film extracts with the voices of ‘Ajan laulu’ – a workers’ choir based in Kemi, the most leftist city in Finland – the essay film takes us on a historical journey examining the collective memory, dreams and traumas of the working class. Is there a future for the Finnish labour movement?

Seasons change and decades pass as bears roam in the forest and nature photographers wait at their hides.

In 1980, 15-year-old Mika Taanila—soon to be a renowned filmmaker—recorded, under his then moniker Musiikkivyöry, a track titled We’re Becoming Blind. Here, played in reverse, it accompanies abstract 16mm film hand-painted by contemporary teenagers and fragments from Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris (1963) and Ici et ailleurs (1976). Images and sounds echo across generations: a fragile dialogue of sight and blindness, of refusal and revelation.