sexta-feira, 30 de janeiro de 2009

Competition Selections Released - Tampere 2009

Finnish Competition
This year, about 350 films were offered for the Finnish Competition. The amount of fiction increased, but documentaries remained strong.

The Finnish Competition is divided into two categories; Films over 30 minutes and films under 30 minutes. Over-30-minutes category in 2009 consists of nine documentaries and two fiction films. Documentary directors include Peter von Bagh, John Webster, Jukka Kärkkäinen, and Satu Väätäinen. The two fictional films are Monte Rosso (2008) by Tuomas Milonoff and Jon Sundell and Where Is Where? (2009), the newest film by Eija-Liisa Ahtila.

There are 25 films competing in the under-30-minutes category. There are nine animations, seven fictional films and eight documentaries. Only Kari Yli-Annala's film A Life of One's Own (a long tomorrow) (2008) has been reported experimental. These shorter films take four screenings and the longer films seven screenings, making the total number of screenings in the Finnish Competition altogether eleven.

Jury for the Finnish Competition 2009 are actress Anni-Kristiina Juuso, artist Teemu Mäki, and producer Shane Smith from Canada.

The Finnish Competition is also viewed by the "Risto Jarva jury" set by the Finnish Film Foundation. Members are: director Kiti Luostarinen, Matti Paunio of channel MTV3, and Otto Suuronen, Assistant / International Promotion - Short and Documentary Films at the Finnish Film Foundation.

International Competition
A fair 3000 films from 73 countries were offered to the International Competition. A clear majority were fiction (about 1800) and animations came in second (about 600). Approximately 340 documentaries were offered, and almost 330 experimental films.

Sixty-nine films were selected. Most, 31 of them, are fiction. There are 15 animations and 19 documentaries, and four experimental films. The already familiar names this year are Nick Park (UK) with his new Wallace & Gromit animation, Hazim Bitar (Jordan), director collective BIF (France), and Mikhail Zheleznikov (Russia). Zimbabwe enters the Festival as a new country with Christina Anderson's Inflation (2008).

Finnish films are represented in the International Competition by three documentaries: Between Dreams (2008) by Iiris Olsson, Ghosts (2008) by Jan Ijäs, and Hanasaari A (2009) by Hannes Vartiainen and Pekka Veikkolainen.

Jury for the International Competition are Ngo Phuong Lan (Vietnam), Mia Maike Höhne (Germany), Kristiina Pervilä (Finland), William Sloan (USA), and Montserrat Guiu Valls (Spain).

LAB1O Competition
LAB1O Competition, characterized by films that stretch the limits of cinematic expression, launched in 2008. This year 19 films were selected, and they will be divided into three screenings. Two films by Johannes Nyholm from Sweden are particularly titillating: animation Sagan om den lille dockpojken (2008) and a documentary Dockpojken (2008) on the animation. Kimi Takasue from the USA, familiar from previous years' films in the International Competition, now takes part in the LAB1O with Suspended (2008). This year Finland is represented by Hit the Road - A Regular Love Story (2009) by Tero Jartti.

Jury for the LAB1O Competition are director of the Mumiá Underground Worldwide Animation Festival Sávio Leite (Brazil), executive manager at Espoo Ciné Jenni Ukkonen (Finland), and program manager at Finnkino Toni Lähteinen (Finland).

Prizes
International Competition:Grand Prix €5000, Best Animation €1500, Best Fiction €1500, Best Documentary €1500, as well as nomination for European Short Film Awards.

The winners of the International Competition Grand Prix and the main prize for under-30-minutes in the Finnish Competition get to compete for the nomination for Best Live Action / Animated Short Film Oscar®.

Finnish Competition:Under-30-minutes category main prize €5000 (Finnkino Oy) and special prize €1500.Over-30-minutes category main prize €5000 (Oy Yleisradio Ab) and special prize €1500.
The films in both categories also compete for the Risto Jarva Award (€10.000, the Finnish Film Foundation), and for a resourse award (€3400, Digital Film Finland & Finnlab).
LAB1O Competition:Main prize €2000.
In addition, all competitions have honorary awards and audience awards. The Finnish Competition also has a youth jury award and a student award.
ENQUIRIES
Jukka-Pekka Laakso, Festival Directortel. +358 3 214 1143 or +358 40 703 8599festdirector@tamperefilmfestival.fi
Riina Mikkonen, Press Coordinatortel. +358 3 213 0034 or +358 40 532 2912riina.mikkonen@tamperefilmfestival.fi

Feminism, Vietnam, the Swinging Sixties in Tampere International Film Festival

Female filmmakers are strongly represented in the Tampere Film Festival program.
The Terra Femina display shows 21st century films that are feministic, humoristic, light, and hurtful statements about life as a woman. In addition to retrospects of Eija-Liisa Ahtila and dancer/choreographer/film director Miranda Pennell, we are offered the new film by Agnès Varda. One of the few female new wave directors in France, Varda has made a long documentary of her life and films, called Les plages d'Agnès (2008). This is the film´s Finland premier.

Vietnam. Now. focuses on the awakening tiger of Asia as a film-producing country. We will see a wide spectrum of rarely seen Vietnamese animations, short films, and documentaries from the 1960s to date. Vietnam War is also strongly present in the newer productions. Naturally it is not the only subject; for example, there is an entire screening of animations by Ngo Manh Lan, the oldest of which is from 1965.

The MoMA screenings are a continuation to the sixties theme. They include Andy Warhol films and rare American short films from 1905 to 1986. The displays have been assembled by William Sloan of The Museum of Modern Art. All three screenings are accompanied by musician Jimi Tenor. The Canon of Short Film screening keeps up the swinging sixties and Vietnam War themes, as does the Rake Special display with Emile de Antonio's In The Year of the Pig (1968).
Whatta Helvetia? screening hails from Switzerland with three screenings of short films and a long documentary La forteresse (2007). The short films show the dark side of Swiss life but there is cheeriness afoot to boot. The winners in their country have been assembled in the screening number 1; among them is also an Oscar nominee Auf der strecke (2007) by Reto Caff. La forteresse familiarizes us with the reception centre of refugees, and with its tenants and employees.

A Piece of India screening bores into the everyday life of Indian children in two documentary screenings by Rajesh S. Jala. The first screening shows films located in Kashmir; Floating Lamp in the Shadow Valley (2006), and short films Chinar (1996) and Aazadi (1996). The second screening shows Children of the Pyre (2008), located in Manikarika cremation cemetery in Varanas. The film won the prize for best documentary in both Montreal and São Paulo, and has toured numerous festivals including Pusan, Leipzig, and Amsterdam.

This year offers a wide and ranging spectrum of animations. Bill Plympton´s newest long animation Idiots and Angels (2008) premiers in Finland at this festival. Short film Hot Dog (2008) begins the screening. There are two screenings of Brazilian independent animation, curated by Sávio Leite, director of the Múmia Festival. European animation has its stand through two retrospectives; Swedish and Czech. The first one is an extremely rare collection of animation pioneer Victor Bergdahl´s Kapten Grogg adventures from 1915 till 1922. The same screening offers his first animation The Demon Drink (1915), as well as Kapten Grogg och Kalle på negerbal which was prohibited in Finland in 1917. Traditional Czech animation is represented by the Pavel Koutský retrospective, showing for example the 1987 winner of Best Animation in the International Competition in Tampere Curriculum vitae (1986). The animation also won the Golden Bear in Berlin.

This year the traditional Finnish Film Archive screening is located in the Hällä theatre with four screenings. Two of them include short films by Veikko Itkonen and a feature film order-made for newspaper Helsingin Sanomat called Thus Was the Present Day Born (1951). The two other screenings show short films by Valentin Vaala and Eino Mäkinen.

In addition to the traditional student screenings, this year offers two screenings of absolute gems; old films by those who have in their time studied in the fifty-year-old University of Art and Design, in the school of Motion Picture and Production Design. We see early student films by Pirjo Honkasalo, Anu Kuivalainen, and Lauri Törhönen. The idea of the Runaways screening is, on the other hand, to show what Finnish students have worked on in foreign academies.
This year Tullikamari is even more of a playground of both music and film than before. On Wednesday there is the Art of Fusion screening, with a 16-mm projector performance MetalkinG from France by Gaëlle Rouard and Etienne Claire. The same screening sees Magyar Posse accompanying a Petri Hagner film Aldebaran Rising. On Friday, there is a documentary on the birth of dubstep, Bassweight, as well as music videos from London. On Saturday, there is a second project by Rouard and Claire, and afterwards Tullikamari is taken over by Tags´n´Beats, a night party of street art and hip hop culture.

Traditionalists on the other hand may enjoy the documentary Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison (2008) which addresses the musician´s career through rare archive material and interviews. The new Finnish music videos of the year are naturally shown as usual.

MORE INFORMATION
Jukka-Pekka Laakso, Festival Directortel. +358 3 214 1143 or +358 40 703 8599festdirector@tamperefilmfestival.fi

Riina Mikkonen, Press Coordinatortel. +358 3 213 0034 or +358 40 532 2912riina.mikkonen@tamperefilmfestival.fi