Kirjoitin Kumppani-lehteen artikkelin israelilaisen Ari Folmanin elokuvasta Waltz With Bashir. Juttu löytyy täältä.

I saw the movie Repo! The Genetic Opera yesterday, and I gotta say, if you like goth dystopia, organ failure and musicals this is the film for you. It features a bizarre cast, from Sarah Brightman to Paris Hilton, from Anthony Stewart Head of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Nivek Ogre of Skinny Puppy.

Documentary: With Byrd at the South Pole (U.S.A. 1930)
This is a documentary shot during Richard Byrd’s First Antarctic Expedition, 1928-1930. Of the early Antarctic documentaries, this has the best images in the sense that the cameramen were able to shoot more than before, although they were not as artistically accomplished as Frank Hurley or Herbert [...]

Tein Kumppani-lehteen haastattelujutun kurdiohjaaja Bahman Ghobadista. Ylläoleva kuva on jutusta, ja ihan itse ottamani! Itse juttu on myös verkossa.

Film: Christopher Kulikowski: Retrograde (Luxembourg, Italy, U.K. U.S.A. 2004)
Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space is not the worst movie in the world. The worst movies are like this Dolph Lundgren late career vehicle, cheap, pointless and soulless things with no personality whatsoever.
Retrograde’s Antarctic elements are surprisingly accurate, but that’s a small consolation. The story [...]

Movie: Edward Sloman: The Lost Zeppelin (U.S.A. 1929)
An early talkie, this is a simple story about an American Navy explorer who leads a zeppelin expedition to the South Pole. On the night before he departs, he discovers his wife kissing with his second in command. They leave for South Pole anyway, but there’s some tension [...]

(Kuva: Matti Näränen)
Uneton 48 -kilpailun osana tekemämme lyhäri Pyhää maata on tänään telkkarissa! Kaikki kymmenen finalistia näytetään Ylen ykkösellä noin 23:30 alkaen.
Äänestäkää!
Kilpailun voittajasta päättää yleisöäänestys yhdessä tuomariäänten kanssa. Äänestää voi tekstarilla 19.10. asti. Lähetä viesti uneton 7 numeroon 16130. Viestin hinta on 0,95 euroa, ja se menee kilpailun voittopottiin.
Katso elokuva!
Mikäli lyhäreitä ei halua katsoa telkkarista, [...]

Documentary: Herbert G. Ponting: 90 South (U.K. 1933)
This is the sound version of Herbert Ponting’s earlier documentary of the final Scott expedition, The Great White South. Apparently, the images are quite the same, but there’s a voiceover narration by Ponting himself.
The pictures are interesting, but I suspect only completionists like me have any real interest [...]

TV series: Ferdinand Fairfax: The Last Place on Earth (U.K. 1985)
Based on Roland Huntford’s seminal book, this is a British TV series of seven episodes about the race for the South Pole. It’s definitely the best movie or tv series of any kind I’ve seen about the Heroic Period of Antarctic exploration, and possibly the [...]

Our short film Pyhää maata made the final top 10 in the Uneton 48 competition. Now were waiting to see who wins…

I saw some good movies during the second half of the Love & Anarchy film festival as well. Here’s three.

Possibly the best film I saw during the whole festival was Nicolas Klotz’s Heartbeat detector. The original, and much more evocative title is La question humaine. The movie is about the rhetoric and language of a [...]

There’ll be a screening of some of the short films made for the Uneton 48 competition, our movie Pyhää maata among them.
The screening is in Helsinki, at the movie theatre Andorra, on Thursday 2nd of October, 17:00-19:00. Tickets for the screening of eleven shorts are 7 €.

I’ve been sitting through the Love & Anarchy film festival, which started last Thursday and will go on until next Sunday.
So far, the best movies have been these three:

Ken Loach’s It’s a Free World… is a story about a woman who is fired from her job at an employment agency and sets up her own, [...]

Documentary: Werner Herzog: Encounters at the End of the World (U.S.A. 2007)
A kind of a sequel to Herzog’s scifi speculation documentary The Wild Blue Yonder, this is a movie about the people who go to work in Antarctica. Its a very good movie, poetic and beautiful even when it doesn’t make anything prettier than it [...]

Here’s a couple more photos from our short film Pyhää maata (Soil of Our Fathers):

(Photo: Matti Näränen. Osma Rautila, with Matti Onnismaa in the background. In the movie, they were father and son.)

(Photo: Matti Näränen. Discussing a shot. From left to right, Pekka Aikio, Aino Lappalainen, Joona Pettersson and Juhana Pettersson.)

(Photo: Elina Lindroos. Hospital basement, [...]