Quick Peeks

Lisa Devaney

  Normal 0 East London filmmaker Laura Hypponen has captured a slice of the after party in her short Shoreditch Sonata, lending an insider’s eye view to what happens when the night clubs shut and the fashionable clubbers tumble out onto the streets.

She made the 11-minute film drawing from her own experience of life in London, and the interactions she’s had with people, passing through the scene that is East London’s trendy world. Originally from Finland, Shoreditch Sonata is her first independently produced narrative short film as director, which she plans to submit to film festivals and distribute with an online grassroots approach.

“I've been living in and around Shoreditch for the past five years, and I guess the area has been an inspiration in itself: run-down neighbourhoods with a lot of creatives and crazy characters, dressing up and endless parties,” she said. “More generally, the story of a girl meeting a guy and things going into an interesting direction until, well, you find out that the guy has a girlfriend already – it's happened to so many people I know, including yours truly, it's so frustrating yet so common, and I thought many people might be able to sympathise with the story.”

Hypponen studied filmmaking in Denmark, as well as getting a business degree in Birmingham, UK, and later completing her Masters in Film Business at London's Film Business Academy. In addition to developing narrative film projects, she has worked extensively as a VJ under the pseudonym Belle de Nuit, shooting, editing and performing live visuals with cult artists such as The Irrepressibles and Bishi at events in Dubai, London, Paris and Helsinki. Hypponen is also a published author of Creative Clusters and Governance: the dominance of the Hollywood film cluster, with L de Propris, in Creative Cities, and Cultural Clusters and Local Economic Development, by Philip Cooke & Luciana Lazzeretti, eds, 2008, Edward Elgar Publishing.

Shoreditch Sonata was produced with Hypponen’s own budget, as a first step into the film world to showcase her talents. She’s got more in the works, such as Kir Royal, a 20-minute thriller about a Russian escort in London who ends up killing most of her clients to break free from the scene. Kir Royal features Jeff Fahey (Lost, Grindhouse, Lawnmower Man) and Olga Fedori (of Mum & Dad horror feature fame). She’s writing a feature film with the working title of Live East, a music and drug-fuelled multi-character story about ambition, friendship and betrayal among the East London party scene, and is developing more experimental, multidisciplinary work within a collective called "Le Fourneau Cosmique.” Also in works is Hello Helsinki, a half-hour, boozy "road-movie by foot" set in Helsinki that is a elegiac and dreamy story of two twenty-something girls who have grown apart and are reunited during a winter night.

“Film is my favourite form of art, the most hypnotising, magical, and providing such a great escape – both for me, when I make films, and hopefully, for the audience when they see my work. And I love how films can work both at intellectual and emotional and subliminal levels, be about serious questions yet also work as entertainment, It's a great challenge,” she said.

She takes inspiration from the directors Bunuel, Bergman, Fellini and Almodovar and is a big fan of Jean-Pierre Melville, finding his films to have a coolness combined with deep sadness. Among favourites is Woody Allen's films and she suggests Aki Kaurismaki's "La Vie Boheme" to check out a Finnish film.

Good luck Laura,

-Lisa

Shoreditch Sonata: