Weekend video: Iceberg Shadow — found at a flea market
At a Helsinki flea market, Finnish filmmaker Antti Seppänen picked up a cardboard box full of 8 mm home movies. Night after night he watched them come to life: mist over Machu Picchu, the shadows of the pyramids at Giza, the neon of Manhattan, a glimpse of Antarctica, the silence of the Arctic Ocean and the bustle of ports that no longer exist. Every reel was clearly shot by the same person.
The only clue was a film lab envelope addressed to A. V. Kovanen in the port town of Kotka. The parish office told Seppänen the man had died. A newspaper ad, a curious local reporter and the photo shop where the films had been developed eventually led him to Oiva Kovanen (1911–2001), a ship’s engineer who, while most Finnish men of his generation settled down after the war, went to sea to see every continent and every ocean.
Iceberg Shadow (Jäävuoren varjoon), which took nearly seven years to make, is part detective story and part portrait of a man who seemed to have left nothing behind but his footage and his letters home. It also asks what remains of us when decades of devotion end up for sale in a box.
Just under an hour, in Finnish with subtitles.
