Category: Art

Sculptor and architect Giotto di Bondone
(c.1267-1337) is considered not only as one of the first Italian, but one of
the first European master painters that would have a great impact on future
generations. All around the chapel, you can assist to their images where joys,
pain, betrayal, good or evil are depicted always in a religious environment;
All involved in the painter’s characteristic blue background.

Useful Information:

Annantalo Arts Centre

Street address: Annankatu 30 Helsinki

annantalo.info@hel.fi

Exhibition: The perfect circle of a master –
Giotto’s fresco cycle in the Arena Chapel in Padua.

18 August – 4 November 2007-10-28

Free admission.

The exhibition is open to the public
Mon.-Fri 1-8 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 11 a.m.-5 p.m.

Open to groups Mon.-Fri 9 a.m.-1 p.m., advance notification requires as of 20 August by phone.

tel. +358 9 310 37168 (weekdays 10 a.m.-1 p.m.).

The restaurant will have a capacity of about 300 people and will offer Brazilian food, wine, beer and other drinks.

There will also be live music on offer at Bossa, starting with Brazilian music about once a week. Later on, Kaurismäki would also like to programme a wider range of music performances.

Mika Kaurismäki is the elder brother of director Aki Kaurismäki. Unlike Aki, he is especially known for his international co-productions.  During the past five years, Mika, who has lived in Rio de Janeiro since the early nineties, has delivered several films that focused on music and Brazil, such as Moro no Brasil (2002) and Brasileirinho (2005). His latest documentary, Sonic Mirror, explores different cultures through music and is centred around legendary jazz fusion drummer Billy Cobham.

Mika Kaurismäki earlier co-founded the well-known Moskova and Corono bars in the centre of Helsinki. Between 1999 and 2001, he also used to run a music club in Rio de Janeiro: Mika's Bar.

Bossa will likely officially open around the 15th of November, although the bar side of the restaurant will be taken into use already some time earlier.

Related:

Watching the sound – FREE!'s interview with Mika Kaurismäki 

Mika Kaurismäki – Official website

According to Daily Star columnist Kim Dawson, long-time Bond soundtrack writers Don Black and David Arnold have dumped British singer Amy Winehouse as their favourite to record the next 007 theme and now want Valo instead.

The Finnish rock singer was approached by the Bond team during a dinner at the BMI Awards in London on Tuesday (16.10), the tabloid’s columnist claimed. Valo attended the ceremony to collect an award for HIM’s hit song Wings of a Butterfly.

“David Arnold and Don Black were in deep conversation with Ville on the night,” Dawnson quoted a source she referred to only as ‘a slightly shaken but not stirred BMI spy’. “They love the song that won him an award. They think he has just the right ear to write a classic Bond hit with them.”

HIM manager Seppo Vesterinen only heard of the claims when he was asked for his comments by a Finnish journalist. “If the matter would have been under discussion, I would presume that I would know about it,” Vesterinen told STT from the United States.

HIM is currently on tour in North America. Earlier this year, Valo recorded Summer Wine, the soundtrack of German film Das Wilde Leben (2007), with Polish-born German actress Natalia Avelon.

The spy who shoved me – the column by Daily Star columnist Kim Dawson

HIM – official website
HIM – MySpace

Summer Wine – by Ville Valo & Natalia Avelon (YouTube)

The prize is partially funded by the City of Tampere‘s Luova Tampere (Creative Tampere) programme.

The winner of the prize is chosen in the same way as the receiver of its big namesake, the prestigious Finlandia Prize for Literature. Every year, the Tampere Kuplii comics association will name a selection committee that will choose a maximum of ten candidates from all the submitted comic works. The committee will then appoint a person who will make the final selection from the nominated works.

Anyone can propose a Finnish or Swedish language comic album from Finland for the prize. Also works in other languages will be taken into consideration by the committee.

The first Sarjakuva Finlandia will be presented on the 20th of April during the 2008 edition of the Tampere Kuplii (Tampere is bubbling) comics festival.

Sarjakuva Finlandia (in Finnish only)

Tampere Kuplii (mostly in Finnish)

In
total, the festival will show 154 different films, (chosen from the
316 sent to the competition), that will compete to get the classical
prize Hinku and Vinku,
consisting of a picture and flowers for the winners. The prizes are
given for those considered as the best in fiction and documentaries,
with the categories sub-divided between professionals and amateurs.
As well, short films of less than three minutes of duration are shown
for the FoxOff competition, being the subject of the present year
“temptation”. Kari Yli-Annala will be on charge also of
choosing the best experimental film during the festival.

During
Fox Days the visitors will have the chance also to see
a selection of the best music videos from the past Oulu festival, and
a review of the films made in other Nordic countries in the “Nordisk
Panorama” screenings. Other topics that acquire importance during
this year is the region of Karjala with Iris Olsson´s
film Kesän lapsi and KJ Kosken´s Unerlmana Karjala,
or the problems of the teenagers when growing up and facing adult’s
life in the films Heavy Metal by Zaida Bergrothin, Elää
by Reeta Aallon and Lilli by Oliwia Tonteri.

24th
Kettupäivät. 7.-10.11.2207
At
Andorra cultural centre (Eerikinkatu 11. Helsinki)
Ticket
for 1 screening: 3 euro.
Ticket
for 10 screenings: 20 euro.
For
more information visit: www.kettupaivat.fi

The presentation, organised by the Hamburger Kunsthalle, is the first ever retrospective of Schjerfbeck’s art in France. It contains 125 paintings, watercolours and drawings as well as documentary material.

Helene Schjerfbeck (1862 – 1946) is one of the most acclaimed female painters from Northern Europe, and her unique, ascetic yet expressive style is drawing a lot of attention from outside Finland. Earlier, the exhibition already attracted nearly 200,000 visitors at the Gemeentemuseum at The Hague and the Kunsthalle in Hamburg.

The art on show in Paris is on loan from Helsinki’s Ateneum Art Museum and other museums in Finland and Sweden, as well as from private collections. Key works in the exhibition are The Convalescent (1888) and The Seamstress (1905) as well as Schjerfbeck’s imposing self-portraits, particularly those from her later years that approach the issues of ageing in a very bold and straightforward way.

The Helene Schjerfbeck exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne runs until the 13th of January, 2008.

Helene Schjerfbeck, a modernist observer of life – Virtual Finland

Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (in English)

Mollberg also worked as a radio and TV drama director with Finnish public broadcasting company YLE for nearly forty years. Between 1968-1986 he was the director of the theatrical department of YLE TV2.

Mollberg had been suffering from leukaemia for the past four years. He
passed away in a health centre in Loimaa, western Finland, on Thursday
morning (11.10.2007).

Rauni Mollberg – Wikipedia
Rauni Mollberg – Internet Movie Database (IMDB)

The Unknown Soldier (1985 film) – Wikipedia

In Sweden the group currently stands at number 4, in Austria, the Netherlands and Greece at 5 and in Norway at number 7 of the official album charts.

In the UK, the album entered at number 25, a fact many newspapers and on line media in Finland have found worth dedicating separate articles to.

In their home country Finland, Dark Passion Play sold double platinum in record time and  went straight to the top of the album chart. Nightwish’s latest single "Amaranth" also tops the Finnish singles list.

The album has done less well in Belgium, Poland and Ireland, where it entered the charts at 36, 50 and 62 respectively.

The band from Kitee, southeast Finland, kicked off their first world tour with vocalist Annette with a sold-out concert in Tel Aviv last Saturday (6.10.2007). Next Monday the group will start the North-American leg of the tour in Springfield, USA.

Nightwish – official website

Kunsten at græde i kor, Schønau Fog’s directoral debut, tells about an 11-year-old boy’s attempts to keep his dysfunctional family together. The prize money will be shared between the director, scriptwriter Bo hr Hansen and the film’s producer, Thomas Stenderup.

The prize will be presented on the 31st of October during the annual session of the Nordic Council in Oslo.

Although member countries Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland can each choose two candidates for the Film Prize, the Finnish jury decided to only send in one film this year as it found Miehen Työ the clear candidate and couldn’t find another equally strong domestic film.

Earlier this year, Miehen Työ was also submitted as Finland’s selection for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and for the European Film Awards.

The Nordic Film Prize was awarded for the first time in 2002. The first – and so far only Finnish – winning film was Aki Kaurismäki’s Mies vailla menneisyyttä (The Man Without a Past).

Kunsten at græde i kor (The Art of Crying)

Miehen työ – Official site (in Finnish)
Miehen työ / Man's Job – Blind Spot Pictures

Nordic Council Film Prize

Related:

Miehen Työ up for Nordic film prize and Oscar

Vanhanen and (then) Kuronen had a nine-month relationship after the Prime Minister and his wife Merja had announced their divorce in April 2005. After their romance ended, Kuronen frequently appeared in the media to talk about the relationship.

Complaint
In February 2007 Kuronen published her tell-all book, in which she exposed intimate details about the romance and the Prime Minister’s private life. After the publication of the exposé, Vanhanen filed a complaint against its publisher Kari Ojala with the police, who investigated the case to see if charges could be filed.

Vanhanen himself announced on Friday on his web log that his complaint had led to charges and expressed satisfaction that there would be more clarity about “where the boundary of privacy runs”.

Principle
"I want to discuss the principle at stake here,” Vanhanen said to YLE News on Sunday. “Apparently some people think that the prime minister doesn't have the courage to go to court over this, and it seems that there are no limits to what is acceptable. Now we'll see whether these limits exist.”

Sensitive-skinned
Susan Ruusunen and her publisher have denied that they have broken the law by publishing the book. “Our defence will leave from the freedom of speech,” Ojala said in a reaction to Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. “Finns should surely continue to be able to write memoirs in which other people are mentioned.”

“But what do you do when there’s a sensitive-skinned Prime Minister,” the publisher added.

Susan Kuronen changed her last name to Ruusunen, the maidenname of her grand grandmother, earlier this year.

The world-famous activist also heavily criticized the ‘subsidies of surpluses’ in Europe, which, according to him, have a huge negative effect on the development of certain African countries. Geldof also stressed the importance of corporate social responsibility.

The seminar was aimed at business executives in Finland and was also attended by Finland’s President Tarja Halonen.

Watch video footage of Geldof’s speech

In the band’s home country, Venus Doom entered at number 2 in the official album chart, where it is currently standing at number 3, behind Tuhannen riemua by Lauri Tähkä & Elonkerjuu and Eppu Normaali’s Syvään päähän.

Venus Doom has also done relatively well in album charts in Sweden (14) and Italy (20), with more moderate successes in Britain (31), Australia (32), Ireland (36), the Netherlands (36) and New Zealand (38).

HIM’s previous album Dark Light made it to number 18 in the Billboard 200 chart.

Those who already bought the ticket can change their tickets in the evening of the concert at the Jäähalli box office. Porcupine Tree will play also in Tampere the following day. The opening act for both concerts will be Finnish band Hidria Spacefolk. The band's only concert in Finland so far was at Ilosaarirock Festival last summer.

The English band is one of the most acclaimed progressive rock bands to come up in the last 20 years. Lead by guitarist Steven Wilson, Porcupine Tree has released 12 albums. The last one, Fear of a Blank Planet, released last spring, features the guest appearances of Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson and legendary King Crimson leader Robert Fripp.

Porcupine Tree: official site | MySpace

Hidria Spacefolk: official site | Wikipedia

Porcupine Tree + Hidria Spacefolk
15.12 Jäähalli, Helsinki – Tickets 42e
16.12 Pakkahuone, Tampere – Tickets 38e

The previously announced screening of the documentary about Sigur Rós’ home coming tour on Thursday the 28th of September at Andorra cinema has been cancelled.

Home – Sigur Rós will see its world premiere at the Reykjavík International Film Festival in Iceland, three days ahead of the Finnish premiere in Helsinki.

People who have tickets for the screening at Andorra can buy tickets for the Sigur Rós gig and closing screening at the pre-sale on Wednesday the 26th of September. The next day tickets will become available to others as well.

Sigur Rós last performed in Finland during two sold-out concerts at Helsinki’s Kulttuuritalo in 2005.

Sigur Rós: official site | MySpace | photo blog

Heima / Home – Sigur Rós: trailer [Quicktime, 4:17 min.]

Rakkautta & Anarkiaa 20th Helsinki International Film Festival

Related:

Love, Cinema and Anarchy