midnight sun film festival

yesterday i returned from 4 days in Sodankylä ("Village of War") and the 22nd Annual Midnight Sun Film Festival. how to describe the amazing-ness which was this weekend? i suppose i shall try to describe some highlights, organized by each day, of my adventures and the interesting things i saw and did.

by the way, the whole point of this festival is that they screen films pretty much 24 hours a day. i probably slept about 15 hours total in four days.

thursday.
i took a bus from Rovaniemi to the Arctic Circle marker/Santa Claus Village. i hitchiked a ride within 10 minutes from a sweet lady heading to Sodankylä for the film festival herself.

i arrived and threw my stuff down at the dormitory next to the Hotel Sodankylä, located in some youth center whose focus of activities seemed to be skateboarding. they had a fairly good selection of skate obstacles in the back, complete with a crazy pine tree with dozens of pairs of shoes thrown over the branches and broken skateboards nailed to the trunk.





the films were screening in three locations: the tiny theatre of Sodankylä on the main road, the highschool and a giant circus tent next to the school.





i bought myself a 12-film pass, then dove in to my first flick, MIEHEN TYÖ (A Man's Work) by Aleksi Salmenperä in the tent. i thought it would be appropriate to start with a Finnish film, and, like 90% of Finnish films, it was depressing as hell. it was the story of a guy who has lost his job at a concrete factory and eventually turns to prostitution to support his family. it was a great story but really intense of course. i shed a few tears now and then




the lead actor was there and answered some questions from the audience.



afterwards, i met up with Suvi, who was there working for Lapland Radio doing interviews and such regarding the film festival and other local happenings. we got a cup of coffee at that 60s cafe, Sita Baari, that was to be the bane of collective existence over the weekend with it's amazing and cheap home-made food made by sweet old ladies. this place was open 24 hours as well for the festival and most of the time in between films was spent here by everyone


next, i saw The Edge of Heaven (Auf der anderen Seite) by Faith Akin, a film in German and Turkish. this was about a complicated series of relationships between a old Turkish man, a prostitute, her daughter, her daughter's German girlfriend, her mother, and the old man's son. two deaths in the film are what bring these characters together, but when they try to heal certain wrongs done to each other, their timings and efforts don't match up, giving the film this sense of urgency and longing. it was a beautiful way to discuss many current political/cultural issues such immigration and the Muslim religion in the Western world (the Turkish are the largest immigrant group in Germany). it was shot beautifully as well, especially the scenes of the Turkish landscape.


the last film i saw that evening/morning (at 3am) was Scott Walker: 30 Century Man by Stephen Kijak and produced by David Bowie. the subject matter alone puts this film in the top 3 films of the festival for me. as the title says, it's about the musician Scott Walker, from the 60s group the Walker Brothers and later known for his existential and surreal solo work. he released his first album in 20 years, The Drift (on 4AD), in 2006. this is the first time he had allowed anyone to really interview him on camera and film some of his recording sessions....wow. just hearing him talk and the way he spoke made such an impression on me: a guy who is trying very much to articulate something that he has been working to understand his whole life, and getting closer all the time. i was very tired during this screening, but somehow my near-hallucinatory state was just right for watching it. oh yeah, there was interviews with lots of other musicians, like Jarvis Cocker, Brian Eno, Johnny Marr, and Alison Goldfrapp talking about Scott and how awesome he is. 5 stars!!!

friday.


i went to sleep at 5am and was up by 9:45 to catch a screening of the latest Ken Loach film, The Wind That Shakes The Barley. this one won the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. this film was in English with no subtitles, and takes place in Ireland, regarding the formation of the IRA and struggle against British rule. unfortunately, the sound in the tent wasn't so great, and the characters spoke such heavily accented Irish-English that i had a really difficult time understanding most of the dialouge - i can't imagine how the Finnish audience understood a thing!

i went back to try to sleep for a few hours but it didn't really work. instead, i had lunch with Suvi at Sita Baari, and then went to a few secondhand shops where i scored some nice presents for the folks back home (surprises) and got an amazing skirt and scarf for almost nothing.


i split some schnapps and tea with Sari-Anne, a sweet friend of Suvi's from Inari at the hotel, then headed off to see Fresh Air (Friss Levegö) by Ágnes Kocsis/Andrea Roberti from Hungary. this one is also in my top three of the festival. wow. this exquisetly shot film was about a mother who works as a bathroom attendant in a railway station in Budapest and her teenage daughter, a fashion student, who is mortally ashamed of her. the use of color in this film was strong and done very well - for example, Viola (the mother) liked to wear and decorate using the color red, while her daughter Angela preferred greens. as their relationship changed throughout the film, they began to wear bits of each other's "color" or use it in certain ways. Nina Simone's version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" also reoccurs in the film several times. a melancholy but hopeful film...made me miss my mom too. highly recommended!!


after this flick, i met up with my crew for the weekend, which consisted of Matti of Orkestar Business Class and his identical twin brother, Ville.


here they are teaching me how to use these slot machines that they have everywhere here


i've been wanting to try one at least once for awhile, but since the instructions are in Finnish, and i don't really care about gambling, i never did until now

we retired to the Hotel Sodankylä where Tuomari Nurmio and Laika and The Cosmonauts were playing. the day before the guy at the door said that in all the years of the fest, these little concerts they have had never sold out. but on friday night he was proven wrong. it was packed!


tuomari nurmio aka judge bean


the fans

saturday.
after a little bit of a late start on the day, we went down to river, next to the old church, and made some music before it was time to watch the next film.


Matti and Ville played some Finnish funeral music


then we all had a sing along to Nick Cave's murder ballad, "Henry Lee"

we watched Letters from Sahara by Vittorio De Seta. it was about an immigrant from Senegal who goes to Italy and is confronted not only by intolerance, but the shock of seeing his Muslim family members who have been in Italy longer living more a Western lifestyle - i.e. living together unmarried with a partner, drug use, etc. i feel like the film could have used some further editing in the sense that it was too long and often it seemed like it took forever to get to the point, which is annoying when you can see what the point is going to be within the first 30 seconds of the scene. anyway, the best part was this really long monolouge scene where the main character is asked to come by his old university teaher to his small village and tell the villagers the real truth about his experiences in Italy. he tells them of his hardships, and his teacher then gives his scathing opinion on Europeans and their attitudes towards non-white people. this lasted for a good 10 minutes and i have to admit it was really intense to be sitting in a room for of Europeans while this was being said on screen. several people walked out during this part.



after appropriately killing time with pals, beers, and more Laika and The Cosmonauts at the Hotel, we caught a 3:45am screening of Aki Kaurismäki's I Hired A Contract Killer from 1990. the festival this year was dedicated in memory of Joe Strummer, and he has a small part in this film where he is playing an acoustic set in a bar. anyway, Aki Kaurismäki is a genius and this noir-style film is probably one of his best known, since all the dialouge is in English. the plot concerns a French guy who gets fired from his job after 15 years and hires a hit man to kill him since he doens't have the courage to do it himself. he changes his mind when he meets a special lady, but then when he goes back to tell the guy the deal is off he finds that it's not so easy to do. as with all Kaurismäki films, the dialouge is really over the top accurately spoken and deadpan, a.k.a. hilarious / touching / dramatic all in one. oh yeah, and the leading man (center in the photo) is the French actor Jean-Pierre Leaud, a.k.a. "Antoine Doniel" from The 400 Blows. see this movie.

sunday.
the last day of the festival. phew. ate cheap and delicious breakfast at Seita Baari, then watched....



probably my favorite film of the whole festival, This Is England by Shane Meadows. holy shit. from IMDB:

"Roland Rat, Margaret Thatcher; Rubik's Cubes, the Royal Wedding; aerobics, skinheads... It's 1983, and the schools are breaking up for summer. Shaun is 12 and a bit of a loner, growing up with his mum in a grim coastal town, his dad killed fighting in the Falklands War. On his way home from school where he's been tormented all day for wearing flares, he runs into a group of skinheads, who against expectations turn out to be friendly and take him under their wing. Soon Shaun discovers parties, girls and snappy dressing, and finds some role models in Woody, Milky and the rest of the gang. But when an older, overtly racist skinhead returns home from prison, the easy camaraderie of the group is broken, and Shaun is drawn into much more uncomfortable territory. Based largely on his own experience as a youngster, this is Shane Meadows' most mature and fully realised film. Handling the complexities of masculinity, violence and race with sensitivity and a lightness of touch, it's hard to imagine a film that would better capture the mood of the time, or that could have any greater an understanding of the allure of being part of a gang."

100% awesome. these whole subject matter dealing with skinheads and the wavy line between racists and dudes who jut wanna have a fun time with their pals is dealt with expertly and succinctly, and at parts was difficult to watch because i really found myself caring about what happened to these characters. the young boy who plays the main character Shaun really went above and beyond, in my opinon. not only was the sountrack amazing - Toots and the Maytals, The Specials, and an acoustic cover of the Smiths' "Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want" - the visuals and the styles and just everything about this movie worked to it's fullest creating a film that was a joy to see. 5 stars all the way.


the last film of the festival we saw was also a Finnish film, Frozen City (VALKOINEN KAUPUNKI) by Aku Louhimies.



based on what was originally a serial tv series, the film is about a taxi driver living in Helsinki, whose life redefines the term bad luck by what seems to be an unending series of soul-crushing circumstances. he is father of three, and marital problems, divorce, infidelity, the pressures of work and poverty eventually wear this man down till he breaks. besides being a taxi driver, there are several references through out the film to the 1976 Scorsese picture by the same title. unlike the American Taxi Driver, this Finnish film is probably the most depressing movie i have ever seen in my entire life. after we got out of the movie, we were all so quiet and bummed that the bad mood didn't dissipate for at least a couple of hours and until we were gone from Sodankylä....


i am back in Rovaniemi now, and i'm getting ready to go to Sweden tomorrow. the next two weeks are going to be crazy busy and i'll write a little more about that when i get a moment - writing this entry made really tired...