da "Contemporanee", Costa e Nolan, 2000
È l'artista stessa che chiama i suoi film “drammi umani”, storie che, prevalentemente, parlano delle relazioni personali, della difficoltà di comunicare, della formazione e della possibile disintegrazione dell'identità. In Anne, Aki and God, 1998, (Manifesta 2, 1998) Ahtila mette in scena l'insorgere di una psicosi nella mente di un uomo, utilizzando diversi monitor ognuno dei quali abitato da una figura differente che racconta la sua storia. In Consolation Service (Padiglione dei Paesi Nordici, Biennale di Venezia, 1999) racconta il doloroso percorso che accompagna una giovane coppia alla separazione e alla successiva nascita di due nuove relazioni. La storia è ambientata in primavera, quando il mare è ancora ghiacciato, ma la superficie non è affatto sicura. Il tono è da documentario, ma la presenza di accorgimenti linguistici precisi (stilemi di sapore brechtiano come la voce fuori campo, l'introduzione di elementi surreali all'interno dello stesso film...) consentono allo spettatore di non perdere di vista che ci ritroviamo, comunque, all'interno di una narrazione e non di fronte a un documentario verità.
 

Lars Movin from FRAME
Eija-Liisa Ahtila creates her works using video, film, photography, text, installations and performance. Ahtila has studied in Helsinki, London and Los Angeles. Recurrent themes in her work include identity, the media representation of the female body, and narrative structures in commercial film and TV genres.
This last theme is the central focus of the ultrashort fiction film trilogy Me/We, Okay and Gray (each 90 seconds long), which Ahtila produced in 1993 for an exhibition project in Helsinki, Stockholm and Moscow. The ultrashort films, which were shown on national TV networks in the three countries, adopt the compact, fragmentary form of the TV commercial, and thus examine the formal and linguistic characteristics of modern, commercial visual fiction. In Me/We, Ahtila focuses on isolation as opposed to the sense of belonging. By exploring in a highly concentrated manner absurd episodes in the life of a nuclear family, she demonstrates how individual identity and society are balanced against each other. The film consists of a monologue by the father. He speaks about himself, comparing himself to the other family members, and puts words in their mouths. In Okay, the investigation focuses - by means of the visual portrayal of one person and the voice- only portrayal of a variety of other people - on one individual's actions, thoughts and feelings about a sexual relationship. The statement made in Gray is about changes to an individual's experience of reality, and how the boundary between 'self' and 'other' is obliterated under pressure of an impending disaster. Three women discuss an atomic accident that has taken place across the border. In their conversation, the facts of the accident are intertwined with private thoughts.

Magnus Jensner from   1998
Television, advertisements, and music videos have engendered narrative forms that lack causality. This naturally affects all types of film making, so that, today, the question of how to tell a story through film can give new and surprising answers. Eija-Liisa Ahtila examines new narrative forms in her films and installations; well-known forms merge and generate a whole new genre. The short film Me/We is constructed like an ad for washing detergent but the persons act as if they were in a family drama or documentary. The result is perplexing for the viewer, who is forced to reflect over the structure. Family is a frequent theme in her films, but the emphasis is on the individual and his or her relationship to family, sexuality, and other related issues. The film Grey may be seen as a dramatization of a news report, where apocalyptic undercurrents are combined with beautiful poetic images. In her latest work, Anne, Aki and God, five different candidates are auditioning for the role of Aki. God appears on a screen over Aki's bed, which is placed in the exhibition room, and gives him information about the drama's female character. Roles often shift in Ahtila's films, and the images run counter to common experience with narrative films: to a large extent, the viewer is responsible for creating the structure. The interplay between speech, sound, movement, and color combine in a collage-type form to give shape to her fascinating tales. "In the end, narratives are a matter of perspective," says Eija-Liisa Ahtila.