The Midnight Sun Film Festival’s Special Screenings Programme takes the audience on an expedition into the familiar and unfamiliar nooks and crannies of film history, with themes like architecture, donkeys, and Scotland.
In this year’s Midnight Sun Film Festival, we take a look at the connection between film and architecture with a selection of three films. The screenings will be opened by a group of experts of the field, who guide the audience into the commonalities of architecture and cinema, as well as the filmmakers’ relationships with architecture. Architect legend and emeritus professor Juhani Pallasmaa presents Alfred Hitchcock’s limited space experiment Rope (1948). Il Cinema Ritrovato director and filmmaker Ehsan Khoshbakht opens István Szabó’s 25 Fireman’s Street (1973), which centers on a Budapest building that is about to be demolished. Architect, film researcher, and rap artist Helmi Kajaste presents Jacques Tati’s classic Mon oncle (1958), which finds comedy in an alienatingly modern robot house.
In the Festival’s architectural programming, film history gems are combined with Sodankylä’s local history and the current. A significant part of the special programme is a matinee focusing on the subject, centering on Sodankylä’s architectural gem, the 1951-built Kitisenranta School. In the matinee, experts will discuss the school’s architect Yrjö Lindegren, as well as the school’s architecture, values, and restauration. Participating are architect Juhani Pallasmaa, the head of research and information services of the Architecture Museum Petteri Kummala, architect Riikka Koivula, the amanuensis of the provincial museum Jani Hiltunen, and the mayor of Sodankylä Jari Rantapelkonen. The matinee is planned and mentored by architect Helena Hirviniemi.
As part of the architecture programme, an exhibition will be held around the Kitisenranta School. The exhibition will focus on the works of Yrjö Lindegren in Sodankylä, the Kitisenranta School in particular. Photographs and drawings will be presented from the Architecture Museum’s collection, among others.
As ever, the Festival’s Master Classes take the audience along on a deep dives into the unknown corners of film history, guided by leading experts. German film connoisseur Olaf Möller, who enjoys a cult status in Sodankylä, leads the audience on a five-film course of Croatian cinema in the 1960s. The multifaceted film scholar Jennifer Barker leads the audience into the secrets of Czechoslovakian animation with a short film screening and also brings one of the most visually inventive films of all time, the legendary Czech animation director Karel Zeman’s scifi adventure Invention for Destruction (1958) to the festival. In his Master Class, Ehsan Khoshbakht presents Iranian Sohrab Shahid Saless’ film Far from Home (1975), which poetically depicts the life of a Turkish immigrant in Germany. For the experimentally-minded in the audience, one of our nation’s most internationally renowned contemporary artists, Mika Taanila has curated a selection of eight explosively avantgarde shorts in a screening titled Night School of Experimental Cinema. The screening includes Pauliina Mäkelä and Topias Tiheäsalo’s amazing expanded cinema performance The Night of the Living, which brings to life the precinematic magic circle.
The Special Programme brings on animal action with the “Donkey Duo” featuring the Festival’s 1997 guest Jerzy Skolimowski’s new EO (2022) and Robert Bresson’s classic Balthazar (1966), once again especially relevant with the release of the Midnight Sun Film Festival’s long-time Catalogue Editor, Filmihullu Editor-in-Chief Lauri Timonen’s new book on Bresson around the corner. Another double bill in the programme is the Scottish Special, which features two of Scotland’s greatest classics, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going (1945) and Alexander Mackendrick’s Whisky Galore! (1949). Both films will be presented by Jen Skinner, the director of the Scottish film organisation Screen Argyll.
The Midnight Sun Film Festival honours the memory of our 2017 guest Carlos Saura with a screening of his swan song, the documentary Walls Can Talk (2022), in which ancient cave paintings are juxtaposed with modern graffiti art. The Finnish Classics selection of the programme includes Risto Jarva’s A Time of Roses (1969), which Olaf Möller presents to the festival audience, and Veli-Matti Saikkonen’s family drama, the Terhi Panula-starring Burrball (1970). In addition, the festival will screen a real rarity, the Finnish-West German co-production Bis später, ich muß mich erschießen (1984), directed by Czech Vojtěch Jasný and also starring Panula alongside Polish Daniel Olbrychski and French Marina Vlady.
The Film History selection of the programme includes the most fascinating new documentaries about and by the masters of the silver screen alongside their own classic films. The selection offers something for true fans and beginners alike. British legend James Ivory’s new documentary A Cooler Climate (2022) is shown alongside the director’s classic Maurice (1987). The documentary on Spanish master Luis Buñuel, Buñuel: A Surrealist Filmmaker (2021) is paired with the director’s final work This Obscure Object of Desire (1977). The documentary detailing the wild turns of Hollywood director Michael Cimino’s career, Michael Cimino, un mirage américain (2021), will be accompanied in the programme by Cimino’s Michael Rourke-starring Year of the Dragon (1985). The Jacques Tati documentary The Rise and Fall of Jacques Tati (2022) complements the director’s film at the festival. Film history will also be approached in the section from other angles, with the collage film Flickering Ghosts of Loves Gone By (dir. André Bonzel) and the documentary A Bunch of Amateurs (dir. Kim Hopkins) celebrating the disappearing filmmaking club culture.
The Midnight Sun Film Festival will be held for the 38th time in June 14-18, 2023. The festival’s entire programme and filmmaker guests will be announced in May. The schedule will be published on Monday, June 29, and ticket sales will start on Wednesday, May 31.
We would like to thank our partners:
Trade Union Pro, EU/Creative Media, Finland Festivals, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, Laitilan Wirvoitusjuomatehdas, the National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI), the Ministry of Education and Culture (OKM), the Finnish Film Foundation (SES), the Sodankylä Municipality, YLE Teema.
Main image: Sanna Larmola