What Time Is

Niina Suominen

IndieLisboa 2021 •

Finland, Animation, Experimental, 2020, 7′

A film-exploration of the concept of time and a meditation on its passage, to the sound of electrical composition by Jukka Ruohomäki, with sound material created in 1970 by a DIMI synthesizer designed by Erkki Kurenniemi.


A kaleidoscopic film of great intensity. A perfect marriage of sound and image that questions the concept of time. Suominen precisely and masterfully manipulates a set of images, mostly shot in 16mm, which combine solidly and in the right rhythm with the music that Finnish composer Ruohomäki created using a historic polyphonic synthesizer. An instrument invented by another Finn, Kurenniemi, before the most famous moogs and buchlas. A hallucinating seven-minute journey. (Carlos Ramos)