WORKERS OFF-SCRIPT – Kino Caisa: I Don’t Dream of Labour

Workplaces are riddled by social norms and expected scripts, often ones which go unspoken.

These short films consider what happens when we don’t obey, go off-script and/or reveal more of ourselves than we are meant to at work.

Come join us for the final evening of the I Don’t Dream of Labour-series examining our relationship to work and capitalism through short- to medium-length films. Through film, we laugh in the face of narratives of productivity and rip apart the idea of the “worker” one assumption at a time.

DUTY FREE Hilke Rönnfeldt, 2004 Denmark, Germany, Sweden. 17 mins.
The shop manager of a floating bordershop-container, casts off the chains to shore to save the universe of love she and her employees have created inside.

PEOPLE ON SUNDAY Tulapop Saenjaroen, 2020 Thailand. 20 mins.
In this updated homage to the 1930 German silent film of the same title, Thai artist Tulapop Saenjaroen examines the paradox of people relaxing while being filmed. As a film shoot appears to be in perpetual delay, crew members kill time fiddling on their smartphones, all the while under the persistent gaze of the camera.

THE TRAINEE Pilvi Takala, 2008 Finland. 14 mins.
In this month-long intervention at the accounting firm Deloitte, an initially normal-seeming marketing trainee starts behaving in peculiar ways. We see her seated at her workstation in the consultants’ open-plan office space or at the tax department library, but doing absolutely nothing – all day long. People may turn a blind eye when someone pretends to be busy in the workplace, but blatant inactivity is considered unacceptable. Idleness challenges the social order.

MUSEUM GUARD Alexander Gratzer, 2016 Austria. 3 mins.
What do guards in a museum do when they assume no one watches? A snapshot.

All films include English subtitles.

The programme is curated and introduced by Adalmiina Erkkola, a cultural producer interested in the political potential of film and sound. Their curatorial practice is built on interrogating memories and archives, and building capacities to imagine the future anew. They currently host the No Man’s Land radio show at IDA Helsinki, where they platform music by women and nonbinary artists.