winnaars TAA 2014

Jasper Bruijns and Joel Autio are the big winners of the annual competition for the best graduation videos, films, shorts, and animations. On Saturday 12 July, Jasper Bruijns won the TAA 2014 for the best video from a graduate of Dutch art academies. Joel Autio won the Award for Best Foreign Film, the prize given to the best video from a graduating audiovisual student from this year’s host country, Finland. Lyubov Matyunina won this year’s Audience Prize. Before a sold-out theatre in Cinerama, the Awards were adjudicated by an international jury headed by Juha van ‘t Zelfde.

TAA 2014
Welterusten by Jasper Bruijns has won the TAA 2014. The film focuses on the pressing social problem of loneliness. ’It is striking and poignant, especially in contemporary times where everyone is connected through social media,’ said the jury during the award show. ’While the artist begins with the all too familiar image of contemporary, urban alienation, Bruijns manages to actually hit us with a confrontational tale. We felt confused by our empathy and its lack thereof’. Jasper Bruijns graduated from the St. Joost Academy in Breda with his film Welterusten. He has won a residency at HIAP in Helsinki, Finland, and a work budget of €1500.

TAA For Best Foreign Film
Älä itke minua, äitini/Weep not for Me, O Mother by the Finnish artist Joel Autio won the Best Foreign Film Award. In a short sequence of only a few suggestive scenes, Joel Autio succeeded in showing profound emotions with minimal gestures. In a unanimous vote, the jury applauded the artist’s excellent imagery, the sense of rhythm, and the evocative way in which he tells his mother’s story. ‘By revealing a very personal experience, Autio succeeds in conveying a universal subject: namely, the fact that letting go and accepting loss are an inevitable part of our human existence’, said the jury. Joel Autio graduated from the University of Turku in Finland and has won a residency at Het Wilde Weten in Rotterdam and a work budget of €1500.

TENT Academy Public Choice Award 2014
Leevi Haapala, curator from the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki, handed the Public Choice Award to Lyubov Matyunina, from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, for her film Who can be Happy and Free?

The Award Ceremony
On Saturday 12 July, the seventeen nominated films were screened at Cinerama cinema, and an international jury announced the winners. This year’s jury was led by Juha van ‘t Zelfde, artistic director of Lighthouse, a platform for digital culture in Brighton. The other jury members were Sam Steverlynck, the Finnish artist Tellervo Kalleinen, and the art critic, art historian, and curator Nina Folkersma.