Aalto students win awards

A life from death (ELO, 2017), a film by Tuuli Teelahti, has won the first prize in Baltic Herring competition at Rauma Blue Sea Film Festival last weekend. The film is director's BA-graduation film to Aalto University’s Department of Film, Television, and Scenography ELO.

Altogether 67 films from Baltic countries (Finland, Russia, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany and the Faroe Islands) were selected to the competition.

The 99 Steps Left from the Square (2017), a film by Sevgi Eker, won the best Nordic student film prize in the Next Generation competition at the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund, Norway last weekend. The film is produced by Aalto University, ELO Film School Finland.

The jury was impressed with the artistic level of the film and compared Eker's way of dealing with war and memories with Andrei Tarkovski. The competition had films from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Also films Bellboy (2017) by Terhi Kokkonen and Nukkemestari (2018) by Hanna Bergholm attended the contest, both Aalto University students.

Awards in fashion and design 

Aalto University’s BA graduate in fashion Juha Vehmaanperä won the main prize at the Mittelmoda fashion competition in Italy in July.  

“The prize means, first of all, appreciation on my work. It was also especially important to see that my non-commercial approach and the hand-craft methods that I used in men's wear raised  interest," rejoices Vehmaanperä. In his opinion, Mittelmoda was a good experience to see how international fashion competitions work.

"My collection ponders my own adaptation to the role of man in a heteronormative society. I want to challenge gender roles and to question traditional perceptions of dressing and fashion”, says Vehmaanperä. His visual inspiration has been collage artist Pascal Marlin, whose color he combined with atypical clothing materials.

"The best advice I got was that many people would hate everything I do, but I still have to do it. Fashion has space for irony and humor, but not all people will understand it!" 

Mittelmoda Fashion Award is a well-known fashion competition at international level, reserved to fashion designers and fashion design students of Art & Design colleges from all over the world. The winners get a capsule fashion show on Mittelmoda’s catwalk and they are awarded with one of the many prizes available.

Designer student Sini-Pilvi Kiilunen was awarded The Swatch Award at the International Talent Support ITS contest in June. The prize is 10 000 euro plus a six month internship by Swatch LAB in Zurich, Switzerland.

"This prize gives me new opportunities to make art. And who knows, maybe my time at Swatch will also bring something new and unexpected along", says Kiilunen.

Kiilunen participated in the ITS competition with a clothing collection, accompanied by an installation that portrayed life of her collection’s man more widely. The installation included for example five books depicting things the man loves, and a television showing clips from the collection as well as dreamy moments of the man's memoirs.

International Talent Support was launched in 2002 and during its sixteen-year history it has developed into the most recognised platform to showcase and support the strongest young talents all around the globe.