Correct Distance, 2020, 39min 47sec

The effort it took them all to repress these feelings was significant enough to pass for commitment.

Correct Distance gets uncomfortably close to poor boundaries, ambiguous intimacies and intergenerational antagonism. Sexual tensions escalate and anxieties about ageing are pitted against unmet expectations in three intertwined settings – students acting out scenes, their teacher discussing them with a friend and the friend interacting with a younger man. The film configures then re-configures the power relations between its protagonists as they reach some darkly humorous insights and strive to assert their narratives; against each other or perhaps against the demands placed on them by our current moment of economic and emotional precarity.

The film, which uses of wiggle stereoscopy to materialise themes of proximity and distance, arose out of a series of improvisations based on an abandoned script for a feature-length film. It was shot over three years as further dialogue was written in response to these improvisations, and in a sense the shifting hierarchies between the film’s characters arise structurally, out of this layered method of generating material and made concrete by it.

Actors: Hannah Gross, Ariel Kavoussi, Zara Plessard, Daniel Ward, Maija Timonen

Camera: Miona Bogovic and Matthew Noel-Tod

Music by Class (David Panos & Rachel Baker)

Produced with the support of AVEK, Alfred Kordelin Foundation and Arts Promotion Centre Finland

CorrectDistance_Trailer from Maija Timonen on Vimeo.