Letters To Katja (1989)
A chronicle of Finnish-born photographer and Amber founding member Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s return to her roots in Finland with her daughter Katja, after 23 years in Britain.
It is a deeply personal and evocatively universal documentary: ‘Perhaps the freedom I wanted most, was the freedom not to know which journeys I might embark on in my life, and where they might take me. And like so many others, perhaps I had to leave in order to find just what I had left behind.’ Constructed out of film shot during the year she spent in Finland, family video and photographs, it is linked to her exhibition My Finnish Routes and a series of Amber photo films – Byker, Keeping Time, The Writing in the Sand, Today I’m With You and Song for Billy.
Amber Films, 57 mins, 1994
Watch an excerpt
