Midnight Sun Film Festival reveals first programme highlights

Philip Kaufman: The Right Stuff (1983)

THE BEST OF HOLLYWOOD MEETS EUROPE'S FINEST

The 28th edition of Midnight Sun Film Festival (12–16 June 2013) is once again proud to present a fabulous selection of the best films in the world on silver screens far north. Filmmaker guests confirmed to this year's festival include Philip Kaufman, the director of The Right Stuff and The Unbearable Lightness of Being; Marco Bellocchio, one of the greatest Italian masters of post-1960s cinema and the director of Fists in the Pocket; Claire Denis, one of the foremost filmmakers of New European cinema who started her career with Dušan Makavejev, Andrei Tarkovsky, Costa-Gavras, Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch; and the director of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and 2007 Golden Palm winner, the Romanian filmmaker of international renown Cristian Mungiu.

The already luxurious constellation of guests is completed by Jem Cohen, the American director of Chain and Museum Hours who is also famous for the music videos he has made for R.E.M. and Patti Smith, and Ahmet Boyacioglu, the general secretary of Festival On Wheels Film Festival, chairman of Ankara Cinema Association and the director of the utterly lovable bar flick Black and White.

This year's selection of silent films, geared to maximum authenticity with live music and radiant with the cinematic glow of decades long gone, includes Alfred Hitchcock's early masterpiece, the top-rate thriller Blackmail (1929), and the Buster Keaton tour-de-force The Cameraman (1928). Music to both films is performed by Oulu Symphony conducted by Timothy Brock.

But that is definitely not all from the silent film front! A programme called Silents with Sound, envisioned by our de facto house band Cleaning Women, is set to screen a selection of early comedies by Charles Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy and others. Laurel and Hardy are also the stars of a special programme with new music composed by Neil Brand.

This year's Master Class lectures are given by the Portuguese master José Manuel Costa and the German expert on most things cinematic Olaf Möller, already familiar to many from our past editions.

Finnish filmmakers coming to present their latest films at the festival include Simo Halinen, the director of Open Up to Me, Mika Ronkainen, the director of Finnish Blood Swedish Heart, Krista Kosonen, the female lead of Things We Do For Love and Mika Taanila, our foremost maker of experimental short films.

More films and guests will be announced later. Midnight Sun Film Festival is programmed by festival director Peter von Bagh in collaboration with an artistic committee formed by Aki Kaurismäki, Mika Kaurismäki and Timo Malmi.

You can read full press release here.