Categories
Misc News

Finnish film producers in protest: no new films

Finnish public funding for domestic film productions is less than half of the state subsidies in other Nordic countries. In the programme of the new government, film is mentioned as an area of focus. In June Minister of Culture Stefan Wallin hinted at an increase of 1.2 million euros for film productions.

According to the film producers, Wallin is now breaking a promise. In the current budget draft for next year, the amount of state funding allocated to film production is the same as this year: 13.5 million euros. The money comes from the profits of state-owned gambling company Veikkaus.

The statement issued on Monday was signed by 28 Finnish film producers, including Jörn Donner, (former FREE! Magazine columnist) Aleksi Bardy, Timo Koivusalo, Claes Olsson, Marko Röhr, Aki Kaurismäki and Markus Selin. They have agreed not to take up any new film projects until an extra 1.2 million euros for film production is included in next year’s state budget. They have, however, promised to finish ongoing projects that have already received state funding.

Minister Wallin has admitted that he brought up the increase in public funding in talks with the directors of the Finnish Film Foundation in June, but added that he was unaware of the limits on the state budget back then. He has promised to re-consider the matter when the budget draft is finalized, however.


Related:

FREE! Magazine columns by film maker Aleksi Bardy:

Finnish cinema reaches abroad

Art makes the world go around

Dark people make dark films

Monkey business

Categories
Misc News

Finland wins Eurovision Dance Contest

Dance couples from 16 European countries took part in the finals of the dance competition held on Saturday night in London.

Koukkula and Väänänen, who danced a rumba routine to Carmen McRae's All In Love Is Fair and a freestyle paso doble to The Unforgiven by Apocalyptica, managed to score 132 points.

Ukraine’s Ilyia Sydorenko and Julia Okropiridze finished second, 11 points behind the Finnish couple. Mick Donegan and Nicola Byrne from Ireland ended in third place with 95 points.

The voting process was identical to the one used during the European Song Contest.

Other than with the singing competition, the next edition of the Eurovision Dance Competition will not be held in the winning country, Finland. British public broadcaster BBC has vowed to organize the first two editions in London.

Watch Katja and Jussi's winning dance performances:
(courtesy of RTR Planeta TV, Russia)

1. Rumba / All In Love Is Fair – Carmen McRae

2. Freestyle Paso doble / The Unforgiven – Apocalyptica


More info:

Eurovision Dance Contest 2007 – official site

The winning couple (YLE)

 

Categories
Misc News

Hanoi Rocks meets the fans!

During the happening in Helsinki the band will play some of their songs in acoustic version. Later on, Hanoi Rocks will play three album release gigs at Tavastia club in Helsinki on September 14th and 15th. The first show on Saturday 15th has no age limit and starts early at 7 pm

 

Related:

Another shot on the rocks – FREE! Magazine's interview with Hanoi Rocks

Categories
Misc News

Exit: Thunderstone lead singer and keyboard player

‘Everything was done in good spirits and we thank the guys for an
unbelievably great and fun seven years and wish them all the best in
their private endeavors‘, according to a statement by the band. 

The
split came at a very inconvenient time, however.
Thunderstone was just preparing for their European tour with Swedish power metal band Nocturnal Rites. As they didn’t want to let down the fans, the tour will go ahead as planned.

The band found top class musicians willing to fill in for Rantanen and Tornack at short notice: Stratovarius’ Swedish keyboard player Jens Johansson and on vocals Tommi ‘Tuple’ Salmela, who, together with Marco Hietala is responsible for the vocals in Finnish metal band Tarot.

The Nordic Metal Mayhem Tour 2007 will start on the 27th of October in Lenzburg, Switzerland and end at Hamburg’s Markthalle in Germany on the 11th of November.

 

Thunderstone

Jens Johansson – Stratovarius
Tommi 'Tuple' Salmela – Tarot

Nocturnal Rites
 

Categories
Features Music

Last Bluesman Standing

{mosimage}The story starts close to a river,
at a crossroad. This time it's not the Mississippi (next to which "Honeyboy"
Edwards came to this world 92 years ago) but the river Emajõgi in Tartu,
the second most important city of Estonia, and I am not waiting for a young Ralph
Macchio to go challenge the skills of Steve Vai, but for Bullfrog Brown, an Estonian
band that is going to open the show for Honeyboy Edwards in Tallinn.

The rest of the ingredients could well be taken from a classical
road movie: a ramshackle car, many miles of road ahead, and the excitement of
young guys who love blues music over all things, looking forward to the chance
of meeting and playing with one of the last blues legends, not even worrying if
they get their gasoline expenses covered or not.

David "Honeyboy" Edwards
is a true living legend. Born in Shaw in the heart of the Mississippi Delta in
1915, he is the last survivor of a generation who basically invented the blues
as we know it. An itinerant musician and gambler, surrounded by women and cheap
bottles of whisky, sleeping many a night under starry skies, Honeyboy spent his
youth wandering the American South, learning and improving his guitar skills
here and there on the dusty street corners of New Orleans, Tennessee,
Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas, playing with Charlie Patton, Tommy
Johnson, Tommy McClennan, Sonny Boy Williamson II,  Howlin' Wolf and Robert
Johnson, the legendary bluesman who – according to legend – achieved an
agreement with the Devil himself, exchanging his soul for the skills of playing
the blues like nobody else. The continuation of the story is well known to
many: Robert Johnson was poisoned with a bottle of whiskey by the owner of a bar
in Honeyboy's hometown of Greenwood,
Mississippi for having an affair
with his wife, and died at only 27 years of age in 1938. But it is heart
touching to hear the story from the lips of Honeyboy during the press
conference minutes before the show; he claims to have been really there when
everything happened: "Robert said that he was not feeling well. We knew
that he was able to drink a lot of whiskey, so we told him to drink a bit more
and that would make him feel better. But no, he did not feel any better…"

Honeyboy Edwards has arrived a few
hours earlier to the Tallinn
international airport, and after taking a nap, looks in excellent shape for a
man of his age. Never without his cap, his Southern accent is difficult to
decipher but at the same time captivating; a presence that sounds and looks
like a reminiscence of other times.

{sidebar id=13}But the most impressive feature is
how accurate and fresh Honeyboy's memory is. He is like a little encyclopedia
of blues music, and can remember places and musicians he played with six decades
ago much better than he remembers his contemporary gigs. "Yes, I played
with that guitarist of The Rolling Stones… what's his name?" he
says while chatting with some inquisitive fans. "That" guitarist is Keith
Richards, who was invited at the end of a gig to play with Honeyboy and Rocky
Lawrence three years ago at the Boxcar Café, Connecticut. I ask Honeyboy who is the most
impressive musician he has got to know in all these years of a blues life. For
a man who has played or shared stage with basically every legend of the blues
and is widely admired by more contemporary "younger" stars as Eric
Clapton or B.B. King, I'm amazed by his humble and emotive answer:
"Well, my daddy is the first musician I saw playing. He is the one who
taught me to play guitar".

One cannot be less than amazed about
Honeyboy's vitality. Sitting on a comfortable sofa at the back of the club, his
manager, Michael Frank, who will accompany Honeboy during the show
playing the harmonica, tells me that they have had almost 8 shows in a row.
"We were playing in Norway last week, then yesterday in Denmark, two days
here in Tallinn, and then to Tampere in Finland". Although having
visited and played in more than 20 countries, this is the first time that they
visit the Baltic region, and they feel really glad to have been given the
chance to play there.

One must wonder, what is the secret
for keeping going on? "Well, playing is my thing, it is what I do.
Before I played for some pennies or a bit of whiskey, now I am lucky I get paid
for this", Honeyboy jokes. And it's not like he keeps himself fit by
leading an austere life. When the waiter comes to offer a drink, Honeyboy
quickly asks for "a couple of beers". But during the
compulsory break in the middle his show, when he can rest and relax, he admits
to me "Yeah sometimes I feel tired, very tired of travelling. But well,
as you see now, I try to take it easy".

As for the show itself, the presence
of Honeyboy in Tallinn
does not go unnoticed among my colleagues in the media. A broad TV and radio
coverage is made while Honeyboy appears in an old Cadillac crossing the old
town towards the club. Raising the temperature inside, Bullfrog Brown finally
has the chance to hit the stage. Their young singer, Alar Kriisa, looks
fragile and skinny, but when he takes the mic, he sings strongly and deeply,
with a confidence that seems like he had been born in the Mississippi delta instead of a small town in
the Estonian South.

{sidebar id=14}
The first part of Honeyboy´s concert
is welcomed effusively by the audience, but it is during the second part after
the break when most of the media members are gone and the atmosphere is more
intimate, when "Honeyboy" gives his best. Classic delta tunes like Catfish Blues, Sweet Home Chicago,
Cross Road
Blues or Rollin' and Tumblin' are displayed in
front of the enthusiastic public. At the end, other musicians are invited to jump on stage
and share some minutes playing with the legend. "Honeyboy" goes on
accompanied by the harmonica of Harry "Dirty Dog" Finèr, who
came straight from Finland, and the guys of Bullfrog Brown, Andres and Üllar,
also get their dream moments of glory.

It is late at night and during the
car trip back to Tartu,
the usually introverted Estonians cannot stop talking about the excitement of
the last hours, having gone through probably the most important gig of their
lives, sharing stage with a blues legend and satisfied, too – they had sold
enough albums to pay for the trip. Some booze, a crying guitar, the memory of
lost loves and always future places in mind to play. The spirit of the blues
goes on.

Photos by Andres Roots and Antonio Díaz

Categories
Misc News

History made during Sturm und Drang performance

The Judas Priest guitarist happened to be in Finland and went to Salo to meet the young band from Vaasa. He then decided to join André, Calle, Jeppe, Alexander and Henkka on stage to play the legendary British metal band’s classic hit Breaking the Law.

During the joint performance history was made: it was the first time ever that K.K. Downing played in public with any other band than Judas Priest.


Sturm und Drang's own remarkable story
Sturm und Drang’s own history is nothing but remarkable. The band was formed in the autumn of 2004 when the members were just 12 and 13 years old. They got a record deal with HMC – Helsinki Music Company in late 2005 and played with The Hellacopters from Sweden and opened for Glenn Hughes (Black Sabbath, Deep Purple) even before they released their debut single Rising Son last February (2007).

After extensive touring through Finland and Sweden, playing major rock festivals, they signed a European record deal with GUN-Records in Germany, the same record label that catapulted HIM to international fame. Only then their first album “Learning to Rock” was released in Finland (30.5.2007).

In August (2007), Sturm und Drang recorded a new version of Forever with Udo Dirkschneider (U.D.O., Accept) after he had heard the young band play at Sweden Rock festival and had proposed to work together with them. In addition they recorded a cover version of Judas Priest’s Breaking the Law. Both tracks were only released in Germany.

It is widely known that the Sturm und Drang members are big fans of Judas Priest.

U P D A T E Sturm und Drang's German website is reporting that the band will be supporting Apocalyptica on their European tour this October and November.

Sturm und Drang with K.K. Downing at VRock, Salo [WMV]

Sturm und Drang: official site – MySpace
K.K. Downing: official site
Judas Priest: official site – MySpace
U.D.O.: official site – MySpace

VRock (in Finnish) 
 


Related:

Metal God's predictions – FREE! Magazine's interview with K.K. Downing

Releasing a violent storm of music – Interview with Mick Cervino about his Violent Storm project with K.K. Downing

Headliner Amy Winehouse cancels Provinssirock 

Categories
Cinema Features

Open source European animation

{mosimage}

Elephants and
animation films seem to be extremely linked in the past recent times. Just last
year, Norwegian director Christopher Nielsen surprised us with the irreverent
and not much political correct film Free Jimmy, and now, Dumbo’s
colleagues are again represented in the title of this European new short film: Elephants
Dream, just released a few months ago, developed by the minds of the
Blender Foundation and the Orange Open Movie Project settled in Amsterdam,
Holland.


As director, you can find the Syrian Bassam Kurdali, but the crew
that made the film possible is just a melting pot of nationalities from such
different places as Germany,
Austria,
Holland or Finland itself.
Globalization serving the noble purpose of creating animation!

But this time, do not expect to find another lovely huge animal wandering
around the screen. The short film take us into a surrealistic universe, dark
and oppressive, with machines that look like animals (or animals that look like
machines), monsters and platforms that move up and down this post-apocalyptic
landscape, just like extracted from a Salvador Dali's bad dream. In the
middle of all this, we find the two human main characters: Emo and Proog. While
the younger one fights against a world that is strange and unknown for him, the
other tries to make him understand how wonderful it is. You can find quite many
references to other films all over the action, maybe being one of the clearest
ones while they are crossing the invisible precipice
{sidebar id=12}(Does the third part of Indiana
Jones ring a bell to anyone…?), but farther than just a moral or
philosophical analysis of what is happening there between the characters, the
main virtue of the film is the originality in its conception and accessibility.
Elephants Dream is the world’s first open movie made entirely with open
source graphics software and with all production files freely available to use
however you please, under a Creative Commons license. As well, a German company
launched a DVD about the film that happens to be the first European film
released with the format HD DVD.

Some months ago, we had an exclusive interview in FREE! Magazine
with the young creators of Star Wreck, Samuli Torssonen and Timo
Vuorensola. They made possible, after seven years of huge effort and
limited resources, the creation of an open source movie, freely available in
Internet, that would quickly become the most ever watched Finnish movie of the history.
The success was so big that Universal launched an extended version in DVD with
many extra features. Finland is represented as well in Elephants Dream with Bastian
Salmela as one of the lead actors and Toni Alatalo as technical
director, so once more we find a clear example of the good health that the
European animation market (and particularly the Finnish one) is enjoying when
exploring the new possibilities of open source movies. Will this become an
extended trend and the big companies will pay extra attention to those products
that show success in the free Internet market? Time will tell, but there is no
question that breaking projects like this Elephants Dream put on the
table new alternatives of accessing and distributing free films made with high
quality. 

http://www.elephantsdream.org

http://www.blender.org

 

Categories
Misc News

Love & Anarchy programme out

Other highlights this year include Musta Jää by Finnish director Petri Kotwica, 2 Days in Paris a romantic comedy directed by and starring Julie Delpy, and Canadian director David Cronenberg’s latest film Eastern Promises.

The closing film this year will be the eagerly awaited Du levande (You, the Living) by Swedish director Roy Andersson (A Swedish Love Story, Songs from the Second Floor).

This year three new themed series will be introduced at the festival: Itä Lähellä (The East Nearby; films from the Middle East), México Lindo (Mexican directors) and Perverssi mediaopas (Perverted Media guide; media critical documentaries with subjects stretching from hip-hop culture to modern art).

The advance ticket sales will start on the 7th (festival passes) and 11th of September (individual tickets).

 

20TH HELSINKI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL – LOVE & ANARCHY

20 – 30 September, 2007

Festival cinemas in Helsinki:
Bio Rex, Mannerheimintie 22-24
Kino Engel and open air cinema Kesäkino Engel, Sofiankatu 4
Andorra and Koff-screen Dubrovnik, Eerikinkatu 11
Maxim, Kluuvikatu 1
Kinopalatsi, Kaisaniemenkatu 2

More info: www.hiff.fi
 

Categories
Cover story Misc

Sport 2.0

{mosimage}Is it a sport? Is it a reality show? It’s
Leet! A couple of years ago, a young Finnish entrepreneur Jaakko Mäki-Petäjä
thought that it would be a good idea to create a new sport. But how to make
people play it? Easy! Recruit teams around the world, take them to a reality TV
show and offer a one million dollars reward. That’s the Leet challenge.

What it looked like a crazy idea late at
night, which would be soon developed into an adventurous business opportunity.
Jaakko and his partners at Spring Sports Ltd, Keni Simola and Iiro Lahdenranta,
met with top executives of the sports and media industry, like Formula 1 chief
Bernie Ecclestone and British television producer Mark Burnett. A few months
later, they were ready to present Leet to the world.

Justin Chacona, Marketing Manager for
Spring Sports, is the first face in front of the Leet cameras. He briefly
explains the concept of the new game: “The sport itself is played with a plastic stick
with which players can receive, carry and pass a rubber ball. Two teams of up
to ten players, only four of which may be on the playing surface for each team
at any given point, must try to surge past their oppositions’ defense to reach
the goals located high in the air at each end of the fifty-five yard long
arena.”

This
concept reminds Rollerball, the old sci-fi film from the seventies, but Leet is
not about smashing heads and slaughtering the opponent. “While essentially a
non-contact sport in nature”, continues Justin, “Leet is specifically designed
to exploit the best of one’s speed, agility, and hand-eye coordination. Hard,
rough, and full of non-stop movement, Leet can be enjoyed and played in your
backyard (where ‘Street Leet’ rules apply) or on top of the world in the
international Leet arena.”

{sidebar id=11}Start training

But before the competition, it was
necessary to create the rules and have someone to instruct the players. The
Leet team needed a trainer so they hired Coach Flanagan who became the fourth
member of the company. He spent one thousand man hours creating the rulebook,
travelling to China to test the prototypes of the sticks.

To spread Leet, the necessary equipment
(the stick and the ball) will be sold through the web in January. Then everyone
can start training and preparing for the TV show. Filming will start in the
autumn of 2008, but you can already pre-register your team at www.leet.tv There you can already take a glimpse
of what Leet is about, but expect a full launch of the website in less than one
week.

Categories
Misc News

Also DMX replacement gig cancelled

According to DMX’s management the hip-hopper still hasn’t gotten permission to leave the United States. He was stopped at the airport when he was about to travel to Finland for the kick-off of his European tour at the beginning of the month, apparently because he had failed to attend a court session involving driving without a licence.

The concert in Helsinki on the 2nd of August was cancelled only one day prior to the scheduled date, as was a performance at Pipefest in Vuokatti scheduled for the next day. This time, the Finnish concert organizer Speed Promotion & Agency was given four days to spread the news that the replacement gig in Helsinki won’t take place either.

Furious
Concert promoter Kalle Keskinen is furious. ‘Now it’s enough! Complete messing around! As far as we are concerned DMX can be in court and stay in Yankeeland for the rest of his life!,’ Keskinen rages in his press release, written in capitals and containing lots of exclamation marks.

‘I am sorry for all the DMX fans! And we, too, have wasted enough time and money on this case. I am sick and tired of it!,’ the angry concert promoter continues.

Video
The management of the rapper has announced a video by DMX with explanations and apologies.

Keskinen: ‘Let’s see whether we will get any video […] here in Finland or if it, too, will stay at customs, in police custody or at passport control.

‘We won’t start this game with the gentleman in question for a third time any more however! Under no circumstances do we want to cause new disappointment to the fans, nor do we want to get disappointed ourselves!’


Refunds
Ticket holders can get their money back at Lippupalvelu ticket offices.

DMX

Speed Promotion & Agency (in Finnish)

 

Related:
DMX gigs in Finland cancelled, European tour delayed

Categories
Misc News

Night of the Arts draws record crowd

The show by the acrobats from Melbourne who performed on top of 4-metre high flexible poles was the single most watched performance in the history of the Night of the Arts. According to the police, their first performance drew an audience of 20,000 people. Their second even managed to attract about 30,000 spectators.

Police taken by surprise
Taken by surprise by the huge number of people watching Strange Fruit's  performances, the police had to close off Mannerheimintie in front of the parliament building and trams had to be diverted. Long-distance bus traffic suffered delays.

The Night of the Arts is part of the yearly Helsinki Festival and was this year organized for the nineteenth time. In all, the 2008 edition of the Night boasted more than 200 different cultural happenings throughout the city.
This year, the event was held for the first time on Friday instead of Thursday.

The Helsinki Festival continues until the 2nd of September.

Helsinki Festival

Strange Fruit
 

Categories
Cinema Interviews

Watching the sound

{mosimage}Once again,
the reputed Finnish filmmaker Mika Kaurismäki focuses on music with the
documentary Sonic Mirror. Guided by legendary jazz drummer Billy Cobham,
Kaurismäki’s camera travels to different parts of the world to present music as
one universal language. From Espoo to the kids in the streets of Brazil to an
community of autistic people in Switzerland to the primal music in Nigeria,
Sonic Mirror is a vibrant trip where there is rhythm is the only language. The
film premieres in Finland this Sunday as part of Espoo Ciné festival and Mika speaks to FREE! about it.

{sidebar id=10}What is Sonic Mirror for you?

It’s an
attempt to demonstrate that rhythm is one of the main things in human life. It
is something that unites all of us. It does not matter where you are. It’s a
universal language.

Billy Cobham, a drummer who played in Miles
Davis’ Bitches Brew and with John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu
Orchestra, is the central figure of the film, but Sonic Mirror is nothing
similar to biography.

We decided
from the beginning that we didn’t want to make a portrait of Billy. That would
have been too easy and obvious even for him. We wanted to do something
different. Billy Cobham is the central figure, but Sonic Mirror is not just a
portrait of him. That would be a completely different thing because he’s
involved in so many activities. We wanted to make a film about rhythm and
education.

How did you translate rhythm into the language of
cinema?

Cinema is
also rhythm. I think music and cinema are very close. In both of them there’s
nothing concrete. Everything comes from imagination. It is hard to think of a
movie without music. Even silent movies had music.

You worked on this movie without a previously
written screenplay. Like in music you had to improvise. How was the experience?

In the
beginning the only idea I had is that music and rhythm are a universal
language. In many occasions, like with the autistic people, we didn’t know what was going to come out of it. It was an experiment. It was impossible to
write a screenplay. You can't tell beforehand how autistic people react to music.
It was the same thing in Brazil. I shot in different stages. In one year, I
shot during five or six different periods. I shot a bit and then thought what to do
next. I was writing the film with my camera.

Did you change much during those stages while
the film was in production?

I changed
some things. For example, I didn’t use anything of some shooting session. It’s
not because it was bad or I wasn’t happy, but somehow when I found the right
line between the autistic, the poor street kids in Brazil and the Nigeria
scenes, everything was in place. That shows how the music is born in its tribal
mode. It’s like the heartbeat. Then there was no room for many things I shot
before, but I will make some other products with it, some dvd or something
else.

It was
during editing When the film really took shape. We had around 200 hours of
material so the editing was very challenging. When I think back to that moment,
I realize that we got most of the final film in the first cut, but then we
changed the order of some things. It was very complicated, indeed. It was like
writing the script after shooting.

What are the plans for the material that is not
included in the documentary?

We filmed
much. We have a lot of material about Billy Cobham’s life. There will be
something about it. Also we want to release the Cobham’s concert at April Jazz
with the UMO Jazz Orchestra. It will be a DVD of the complete show and maybe
some extra material like interviews, making of and more.

Do you have any plans for the future?

After
making three music documentaries, I’m planning some fiction. I’m writing the
script now and I will do it in Finnish and I will shoot in Finland.


Sonic Mirror at Espoo Ciné – Sunday 26.6 at 19.15 in Louhisali, Tapiola. More information and tickets:
www.espoocine.fi

Categories
Misc News

Registration OurVision 2008 has started

OurVision 2008 takes place during the spring of 2008. New this time is, that also musical talents from Northern America, Europe and Oceania may apply.

This year’s first edition of Caisa’s song contest was won by 25-year-old Samantha Marie José Sayegh, who originates from Lebanon.

On the Night of the Arts from 7 pm ‘till 8.30 pm, Caisa will host the Best of OurVision 2007 Concert, with highlights from the first edition of the popular contest.

OurVision

International Cultural Centre Caisa
(Fennia block)
Mikonkatu 17 C / Vuorikatu 14
Helsinki

Night of the Arts (24 August 2007)

Categories
Cover story Misc

Are you in a game?

{mosimage}
Art-theft,
stake-outs and penetrating high security areas may seem like a list of
television themes but you may find yourself caught in the middle of one of them
without even knowing. Some may say that the era of pervasive gaming is upon us,
where digital mobile technologies mean that we can interact with unseen
opponents 24/7. However, the fact is that pervasive games, or games which
transgress the “magic circle” of traditional games, have existed as long as street
carnivals.

 

 

Pervasive
gaming aims to break the boundaries (the “magic circle”) of what are considered
traditional games. These boundaries include: place, the games can be played
anywhere; time, although the gamer may choose when they want to consciously
interact with the game, the gaming never stops; and people, individuals may not
even know that they are a part of a game.

Researcher Jussi Holopainen, a key
collaborator and planner of IPerG (Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming)
recalls stories where people have played roles in pervasive games without even
knowing that they are doing so. Holopainen, who has researched the
relationships between technologies, gaming and play since 1998 at Nokia
Research Centre, recalls one scenario where the challenge of a game was to
penetrate a high security area of a hotel. Gamers were trying to persuade staff
to allow them into the area. Unknowingly, the hotel staff had become
characters/obstacles in the game. In another example, gamers were required to
obtain a specific artwork from an art gallery. In this scenario, the unaware
staff had considered the scenario so far-fetched that they began “playing” with
the gamers.

Anyone
anywhere may be consciously or not involved in a game, whether through pure
spatial circumstance or due to the technology that they utilise. Holopainen
describes how traditional games generally had a start and an end, whereas
pervasive games are continuous. In Citywide games, non-players may also become
spectators, particularly when gamers have drawn attention to themselves through
actions out of the ordinary. Through these scenarios professionals such as
performance artists have capitalised on the combination of a live audience and
real-space, and the capabilities of broadcasting online via wireless
technologies, to bring art out of the gallery. On rare occasions, unaffiliated
bystanders have been hijacked through gamers mistaking them for other gamers.

IPerG began
in 2004 and will continue until 2008. It is a collaboration between the University of Tampere,
Nokia Research, Interactive Institute, Swedish Institute of Computer Science
(SICS), the University of Nottingham, Fraunhofer Institute, Sony NetServices, Gotland University and Blast Theory. IPerG is
devoted to supporting research in pervasive gaming which spans topics such as
analysing how new technologies can be incorporated into pervasive gaming, what
the ethical implications are of pervasive gaming, how gaming may be developed
in terms of entertainment and feasibility, and what the social impacts of the
gaming are.

Holopainen’s own research looks at how PDAs (Personal Digital
Assistants) and regular mobile phones may be utilised for gaming purposes. A
characteristic which makes gaming via these mobile devices more significant
than via regular PCs is that they have been designed specifically for personal
usage. In other words, the mobile phone is an individual’s trusted belonging
containing highly personal information such as SMS:s and phone numbers.
Holopainen cites research of mobile phone games from the older Nokia 3310, 3330
and 5110s Snake Game (incidentally the most played mobile phone game in
history) to games which utilise all the functions of a phone such as the
calendar and alarm.

In regards
to the future of pervasive gaming and pervasive game research Holopainen
speculates that in the future, more so than now, games will be running all the
time. Where now the idea of observing grown men secretly handing large brown
envelopes and intercepting other’s telephone calls may seem peculiar or
criminal, in the future there is the possibility that continuous real-space
gaming may become as normal as SMS, or even the Snake Game itself. Interfaces
are constantly being re-developed which may make even virtual space more
tangible to the user. One field that Holopainen suggests should be expanded in
regards to research is the investigation of ethics. One workshop that covers
such a theme is Ethics of Pervasive
Gaming, to be delivered at the PerGames conference June 11-12th
in Salzburg, by
Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros and Annika Waern.

In
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Categories
Misc News

New film distributor offering quality films

Metropol Cinema will start modestly, circulating only one copy of the film. The film (Finnish title: Ei minua kukaan rakasta; English: Not Here To Be Loved) will open on 28 September at a Finnkino cinema in Helsinki. The copy will later circulate through the rest of Finland.

The company will decide later how many different films to distribute on a yearly basis and whether to circulate more copies of each film.

Managing director of Metropol Cinema is Sam Kamras, whose family used to run Bio City, a seven hall cinema showing quality films in the centre of Helsinki. The theatre went bankrupt last year due to disappointing visitor numbers.