 The sure-fire joyride that is the Midnight Sun Film Festival of Sodankylä, Finland, is proud to present yet another edition of the festival and a line-up of films that cannot leave any film lover with a heart still beating cold. Our friend D.A. Pennebaker, one of the headline guests at the festival a couple of decades ago, nailed it very well:
"Woodstock is fuckin’ nothing if you've been at the Midnight Sun Film Festival."
The 24th festival takes place on 10-14 June 2009. This year's guests include filmmakers John Boorman from United Kingdom, Robert Guédiguian from France, Samira Makhmalbaf from Iran, Fatih Akin from Germany, Andreas Dresen from Germany and Sergey Dvortsevoy from Kazakhstan. From Switzerland comes cinematographer Rainer Klausmann.
The films screened at the festival are handpicked by the festival's artistic director Peter von Bagh and the programming committee formed by Aki Kaurismäki, Mika Kaurismäki and Timo Malmi.
Guests
JOHN BOORMAN (born 1933) is not only a fivefold Oscar nominee and the winner of two Best Director awards in Cannes, but also a magnificent filmmaker, whose oeuvre extends from horror and science fiction to stories of crime and romantic adventures. Boorman's films often become metaphysical odysseys, studies of the grace of nature. His most famous films include the crime classic and a trail-blazing feat of film editing Point Blank (1967), the definitive backpacker film Deliverance (1971), the sci-fi cult classic Zardoz (1974), the mythical swordplay spectacle Excalibur (1981), the ecological adventure Emerald Forest (1985), shot in the jungles of Brazil, and Hope and Glory (1987), an autobiographical depiction of childhood. The festival programme will also include the existential war film Hell in the Pacific (1968) and the Irish gangster portrait The General (1998).
ROBERT GUÉDIGUIAN (born 1953) is the upright humanist of contemporary French cinema and a distinguished proponent of the tradition established by Jean Renoir. His intimate portrayals of the working class shot in the director's hometown Marseilles show how great emotions intersect with the rhythms of everyday life. Guédiguian's roots are in Armenia. His films flow delicately in a zone between sociology and poetry, and repeatedly employ the same, completely unique actors and actresses such as the Ariane Ascaride (Guédiguian’s wife), Gérard Meylan and Jean-Pierre Darroussin. Guédiguian's best-known films in Finland are Marius and Jeannette (1997), a charming story of penniless working-class lovers, and Marie-Jo and Her Two Lovers (2002), an extraordinarily intelligent and emotionally powerful depiction of the eternal triangle and disappointment. Our selection of films from the director, who between making films has studied sociology and written a dissertation about workers' idea of the state, also includes Where The Heart Is (1998), The Town Is Quiet (2000) and The Last Mitterand (2005).
SAMIRA MAKHMALBAF (born 1980) is one of the most celebrated names of world cinema today – and is not even thirty yet. Praised even by the always-critical Jean-Luc Godard, Makhmalbaf was featured in the official selection in Cannes with The Apple (1998), a film she directed at the age of 17. She was the youngest director in the official selection to date. Her second film Blackboards (2000) won an award in the competition programme in Cannes. These are extraordinary achievements for a young woman from an Islamic country such as Iran, especially as the themes are somewhat sensitive (the tragedy of twin sisters imprisoned by their father; a battle for survival on the mountains of Kurdistan). The highest-profile member of the unique Makhmalbaf family of filmmakers later continued her courageous work in the even more contradictory Afghanistan, resulting in two portrayals of the gender conflict and the class struggle that are just as impressive as their predecessors: At Five in the Afternoon (2003) and Two-legged Horse (2008), which will also be screened at the festival. The latter will be the film's Finnish premiere.
FATIH AKIN (born 1973) is, together with Samira Makhmalbaf, a major facelift to the age profile of the headline guests visiting Midnight Sun Film Festival this year - but the fact should in no way be considered detrimental to the programme since both filmmakers represent the most visionary and luminous directors of today's world cinema. Head-on, the 2004 film directed by the German-born Akin, whose family hails from Turkey, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and was selected as the Best European film of the year, while Edge of Heaven (2007) won Akin the Best Screenplay award in Cannes. Akin, an insightful virtuoso of depicting cross-cultural conflicts and questions of identity, has a rare ability to open both tragic and humorous vistas to today's Europe, but is also a documentary filmmaker. His non-fiction output is represented in the festival programme by Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (2005). The festival programme also features Akin's multi-award-winning milestones Short Sharp Shock (1998), In July (2000) and Solino (2002).
Akin is accompanied in Sodankylä by his trusted Swiss cinematographer RAINER KLAUSMANN (born 1949), a maestro who, like Akin, works seamlessly with both feature films as well as documentaries. Klausmann's recent films include some of the most successful German titles of the recent years, Baader Meinhof Komplex (2008) and The Downfall (2004). Klausmann started his career as a camera operator in cult films such as Das Boot ist voll (Markus Imhoof, 1981) and Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982), and has worked as the director of photography in many later Herzog films.
ANDREAS DRESEN (born 1963), who, in addition to working as a filmmaker, has directed stage plays and operas, grew up in the former DDR but has directed all of his feature films after the wall came down. The festival will screen his 2002 Berlin award winner Grill Point, a story of the relationships of two couples, and Cloud 9, last year's award winner in Cannes, an acute but sensual story of love between senior citizens.
Tulpan, a portrayal of the dreams of Kazakh shepherds, is the first feature film directed by SERGEY DVORTSEVOY (born 1962), hailing from the distant steppes of Southern Kazakhstan, and has been celebrated with a number of awards at festivals in Cannes, Tokyo and London. Before turning to feature film, Dvortsevoy has directed a number of documentaries that are equally admired. The documentary output of this magnificent filmmaker is illuminated by his short film Paradise and the feature-length documentary Highway, a co-production with a Finnish production company.
Karaoke screenings and orchestral silent film screenings
This year's silent films are both undisputable milestones of film history, and the musicians interpreting them are – if humanly possible – even finer than before. The silent film event of the year will the screening of Charles Chaplin's epic comedy, The Gold Rush (1925). The screening will be one of the biggest efforts in the history of the festival: The Gold Rush will be screened in the cinema tent accompanied by the OULU SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA, conducted by the American conductor TIMOTHY BROCK, a virtuoso who specialises in film scores and is also in charge of arranging the music for the festival screening.
The silent film programme also includes Robert J. Flaherty's impressive Nanook of the North (1922), an endearing depiction of the life of an Eskimo family in the wild and rugged North and an influential, pioneering documentary film. The musical accompaniment to Nanook is provided by the duo of violinist PEKKA KUUSISTO, one of the internationally best-known Finnish musicians today and a unparalleled breaker of musical boundaries, and JOHANNA JUHOLA, a highly talented accordionist.
Karaoke screenings, which have rapidly become one of the most riotous traditions of the festival, are taken to an entirely new level when nobody else but SAKARI KUOSMANEN takes the audience on a karaoke road trip to Jack Witikka's Suuri sävelparaati (1959), a memorable medley of evergreen Finnish songs. Olavi Virta, Tapio Rautavaara, Laila Kinnunen, Annikki Tähti and many others sing more then 30 top hits of the 1950s on the silver screen of our circus tent in this sing-along classic.
Matti Ijäs' Katsastus ("Inspection"), the king of Finnish cult films, is shown in a completely unique reading karaoke screening where the audience is not only permitted but encouraged to speak out the legendary lines, known by heart by so many of us, together with the assistant director and screenwriter of the film, TIMO TORIKKA.
Master classes
The joys of cinephilia are propagated at the festival also in the form of fantastic Master Class lectures and screenings, which provide brand new perspectives for the greatest classic and top contemporary films alike. This year's Master Class lectures are given by the Swiss film critic HERVÉ DUMONT, known especially as an expert of Frank Borzage's films and the author of books on Robert Siodmak and William Dieterle, and PAOLO MEREGHETTI, whose two-part, almost 4000-page Il Mereghetti dizionario dei film is a masterpiece of film encyclopaedias.
New Finnish Films
At least one Finnish film will premiere at the festival: MARKKU LEHMUSKALLIO and ANASTASIA LAPSUI, the internationally distinguished recorders of the reality of our northernmost regions, will arrive at the festival with their latest documentary film, Earth Evocation. The film follows the traces that human civilisation has left on the Finnish soil from the ice age to the modern day.
Other Finnish filmmaker guests confirmed at this point include HEIKKI KUJANPÄÄ, the director of the exceptionally successful portrayal of the lives of artists, Falling Angels, and TIMO TORIKKA, the frontman of the dynamic trio of Mika Kaurismäki's Three Wise Men. More films and filmmakers will be announced in the second press conference in May.
Gems of contemporary cinema
Turkish films have entered the consciousness of the film world rapidly over the past few years. One testimony of this is the miniature cross-section of Turkish cinema that will be screened at the festival. Titles confirmed for the line-up so far include Reha Erdem's hypnotically poetic portrayal of countryside youth, Times and Winds, Seyfi Teoman's endearing family story Summer Book and the intelligent and witty analysis of global capitalism shot in Turkey by the British filmmaker Ben Hopkins, The Market.
Other British directors in the programme are Terence Davies, who has made a great comeback with his Liverpool city symphony Of Time and the City, and the renowned photographer Steve McQueen, whose film about the hunger strike of the IRA activist Bobby Sands, Hunger, has been the European award-winner of the year.
As an homage to the oldest active filmmaker in the world, the festival programme includes Manoel de Oliveira's Belle toujours, a continuation of sorts to Luis Buñuel's bordello classic Belle de Jour (1967), starring Catherine Deneuve and also to be screened at the festival.
The French element is, once again, strong in the programme. Claude Chabrol celebrates his 50-year career as a film director with Bellamy, a thriller in the spirit of Georges Simenon starring Gérard Depardieu. The documentary virtuoso Raymond Depardon finishes his impressive countryside trilogy with Modern Life, while Oliver Assayas's Summer Hours is a summery and warm portrayal of the inheritance arrangements of a house of artists.
Another portrayal of family life is the Italian comedy of manners Mid-August Lunch, the Venice-award-winning debut feature from Gianni di Gregorio, previously known for his screenplay to Gomorra. The programme also includes the latest feature film by Ermanno Olmi, the director of The Tree of Wooden Clogs. His latest film is called One Hundred Nails and is a warm-hearted crime film with philosophic and ecological undertones. The Belgian filmmaker brothers Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardanne continue their line of uncompromising social films with the immigrant portrayal Lorna's Silence.
Kelly Reichardt's US indie Wendy and Lucy, a story of a young woman in danger of losing everything, has been one of the most applauded films of the year, while Goodbye Solo, directed by the American Iranian Ramin Bahran and the winner of the film critics' award in Venice, is a humane portrayal of a taxi journey in the shadow of a suicide. Both films will be screened at the festival.
Russian cinema is represented in the programme by the winner of the Moscow Film Festival, Vera Strorozheva's comedy of women called Travelling With Pets. The ranks of films that portray different lifestyles of families in different parts of the world are complemented by the Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda's melancholy but humoristic "home drama" Still Walking.
The selection of best contemporary films at the festival is complemented with an excellent avant-garde specimen, Pere Portabella's delicately experimental The Silence Before Bach. The music film programme is expanded with Jonathan Caouette's almost-world-premiere All Tomorrow's Parties, a documentary film focusing on the legendary UK festival and featuring artists such as Nick Cave, Patti Smith and Iggy Pop.
Advance screenings of films premiering in Finland later in the year include The Young Victoria, a dramatisation of the tale of nobody else but the queen, shot in England by the Canadian filmmaker Jean-Marc Vallée and starring Emily Blunt.
Special screenings
The special screenings of the festival include a rare opportunity to see Rauni Mollberg's classic adaptation of Timo K. Mukka's Earth Is Our Sinful Song on the big screen. Background information to the screening is provided by Hannu Peltomaa's exhibition of production stills from the film. The already traditional children's screenings arranged by Finnish Film Contact feature Finnish children's film from the past few years.
Another distinguished tradition, the annual Sodankylä Award, will also be given during the festival. Hotel Sodankylä will host the festival club. The artists performing at the club will be announced in the second press conference in May. The traditional football match, Finland vs. global powers, will also be arranged.
Thanks and acknowledgements
AVEK, VR, VIASAT, EU/MEDIA, TAO, Sodankylä municipality, Metsähallitus, Finnish Film Foundation, National Audiovisual Archive, Radio Helsinki, Embassy of the United States of America, Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Finlandia, Centre culturel français, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, Goethe Institut.
For further information, please contact:
Eero Tammi
Press secretary, Midnight Sun Film Festival
Malminkatu 36, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
eero.tammi@msfilmfestival.fi / +358 40 326 8813
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