Tiina Madisson
“Cinema begins where language collapses into light.”
Tiina Madisson is a filmmaker, animator, and visual artist whose work reaches toward what lies beneath the visible – memory, dream, the subconscious, and everything the moving image carries without words. She works across experimental cinema, documentary film, animation, and contemporary art.
She studied documentary filmmaking at Aalto University and animation at SHAR Studio in Moscow. Earlier in her career she worked as a screenwriter and director for the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE, on the Basaari series from 2008 to 2012.
Her documentary films have taken her far – above all to Nepal, a country whose culture and people she has come to know deeply over many years. In 2015 she directed Blood for the Goddess, a documentary told through the eyes of a small boy witnessing the world’s largest animal sacrifice at the Gadhimai festival. In 2018–2020 she wrote and directed her first feature-length documentary, The Beloved Daughter, which won several prizes internationally and was broadcast on Yle TV1.
She has taught experimental cinema and animation for over eight years at universities, museums, and art institutions, including Aalto University and University of Madras in Chennai. Her hope is that every participant leaves with a new freedom – in how they see, think, and feel through images.
Filmography
2020 The Beloved Daughter (Nepalin morsian), 70 min, documentary, Yle TV1
2015 Child Brides of Nepal, 7 min, documentary, Yle TV2
2015 The Shaman’s Grief, 8 min, documentary, Yle TV2
2015 Blood for the Goddess, 26 min, documentary, Yle TV2
2013 Love to the Cinema, 3 min, animation
2012 Non omnis Moriar — I’m not completely dead, 3 min, short film
2010 Pirtutrokarit, 28 min, documentary, Yle TV1
2010 Varjojen mies, 28 min, documentary, Yle TV1
2009 Mun mummot, 26 min, documentary, Yle TV1
2009 Shokar-Ool — The Colourful Boy, 23 min, documentary, Yle TV1
2007 Leipärasisti, 3 min, documentary, Yle TV1
2007 Pieni suuri sydän, 3 min, documentary, Yle TV
