Kira Jääskeläinen (born 1979 in
Warsaw,
Poland) is a
Finnish-
Polish documentary film director.
Background
Jääskeläinen was born in
Poland into a family of artists, but moved to
Finland at the age of five.
In the early years of the 2000s Jääskeläinen studied
humanities at the
University of Copenhagen, concentrating in
East European Studies
Slavic (American English) or Slavonic (British English) studies, also known as Slavistics is the academic field of area studies concerned with Slavic areas, languages, literature, history, and culture. Originally, a Slavist or Slavicist was prim ...
and the
Russian language
Russian (russian: русский язык, russkij jazyk, link=no, ) is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language mainly spoken in Russia. It is the First language, native language of the Russians, and belongs to the Indo-European langua ...
, and wrote her MA
thesis on the material she collected in
Chukotka.
Later she studied in
Moscow, in the
Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography
The Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (russian: Всероссийский государственный институт кинематографии имени С. А. Герасимова, meaning
''All-Russian State Institute of Cinemat ...
, majoring in documentary film making.
Jääskeläinen has also studied
classical music
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...
and plays the
cello.
Family
The Finnish
documentarist
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in term ...
Jarmo Jääskeläinen (1937–2022) was her father.
Films
Jääskeläinen's first documentary ''
Takigaks – Once Were Hunters'' was released in 2012. It tells about two brothers, Kolya and Sasha, who are
Siberian Yupik
Siberian Yupiks, or Yuits (russian: Юиты), are a Yupik peoples, Yupik people who reside along the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula in the far Russian Far East, northeast of the Russia, Russian Federation and on St. Lawrence Island in Alask ...
s and live in the village of
Novoye Chaplino in the eastern extremity of the
Chukotka Peninsula. Their community has traditionally practised whale hunting, but some of the youth find themselves in the midst of an identity crisis, if, for some reason, they do not find this profession appealing.
The filming of this documentary took place over five years.
[
The film has been shown on several film festivals and on the Finnish public
YLE TV1 channel in 2014.]
Filmography
* '' Takigaks – Once Were Hunters'', 2012. Katharsis Films Oy.
* '' Northern Travelogues'', 2019. Illume Oy.
References
External links
Kira Jääskeläinen in IMDb
Finnish documentary filmmakers
Finnish film directors
Finnish people of Polish descent
Finnish women film directors
1979 births
Living people
Film people from Helsinki
{{Finland-film-director-stub