Ilppo Pohjola

A recurring theme running through all of Pohjola’s work is transformation – how a person can change from one gender to another (P(l)ain Truth), how flesh and steel can fuse in an apotheosis called the crash (Routemaster), what time and chemicals do to film images (1 Plus 1 Plus 1 – Sympathy for the Decay). What all these films have in common is their intoxicating imagery. Little that cinema has brought forth in the past quarter century leaves the viewer as ecstatic, agitated and euphoric as the films of Pohjola.

His latest work to date, 1 plus 1 plus 1 – Sympathy for the Decay (2012) has been described as a "death triptych", combining themes and techniques used in his previous works to achieve a gesamtkunstwerk.

The following film, Routemaster (1999) continues the exploration of the limits of classical film narrative by focusing on filmic movement in tandem with the speed of racing cars. Drawing from the tradition of structural film and the principles of minimalist art, Routemaster uses repetition and rapid, complex editing to disrupt the flow of linear time and strict spatial continuity. Routemaster was also presented as a multichannel installation in three different versions with live sound by Merzbow and sound designer Jim McKee.

Pohjola's second film, P(l)ain Truth (1993), also a documentary but of a more poetic and metaphorical kind, is about a transgender person undergoing a sex reassignment operation. Asphalto (1998), starring Irina Björklund and Peter Franzén, bridges the artist's interest in gender stereotypes and the erotics of the auto by shuffling footage of demolition derby, clips of pinup models in latex shorts bearing oil company logos, and moments with a young couple in relationship distress.

Ilppo Pohjola is an independent filmmaker, producer and artist based in Helsinki, Finland. His international breakthrough was Daddy and the Muscle Academy (1991), a documentary about Tom of Finland. Pohjola has produced the cinematic installations and films by Eija-Liisa Ahtila since 1993.

Ilppo Pohjola works with the vocabulary of film, examining its structural and social elements in order to create a body of work that pushes the limits of the medium's physical possibilities. He works between the narrative tropes of Hollywood and the deconstructive methodologies of independent film. The cumulative bodies of knowledge in Pohjola's works are noticeable for their crispness of conception and excess of information. Given his interest in the formal elements of filmmaking, the content of Pohjola's works are surprisingly physical and sensual, even if assaultive. His film Daddy and the Muscle Academy won the Jussi Award for the best documentary film in 1991.

Ilppo Pohjola studied at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, USA and at Sheridan College in Toronto, Canada. He graduated from Harrow College of Higher Education in London, UK in 1988. He achieved international breakthrough with his first cinema feature, the 1991 documentary Daddy and the Muscle Academy, featuring artist and gay culture icon Tom of Finland. The film received several awards including the Jussi Award (the "Finnish Oscar") for the best documentary film. In subsequent works Pohjola 'proved himself to be one of the most extraordinary avant-garde filmmakers of his day'.