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

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)

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
November, IPerG will be releasing a new game called Mythical: The Mobile Awakening, you will find information
about this at www.mythicalmobile.com

To find out more about IPerG and their research see: www.pervasive-gaming.org

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.

 

Just fucking love, beer and vampires!

 {mosimage}

These wise words are thrown at the Finnish
audience by Fernando Ribeiro, the front man of the gothic metal band Moonspell,
during last Tuska festival in Helsinki.
The Portuguese singer is, apart from an excellent showman who knows how to
encourage the public, an interesting character who splits the time between his
band and his passion for literature and philosophy. FREE! Magazine had a
long and exciting talk with him at the festival backstage just after the show,
with some cold beers cooling down the hot summer evening.

How was the gig today?

Well, we started at 2 p.m. and there was a lot of daylight! They
have this midsummer sun here, but I think that it was a great show. Definitely
different, less “atmospheric” and more “rock and roll”, but worthy every minute
of it.

Some people say that Finnish audience is a
bit cold. Did you have that impression?

No, they are just different. I mean, I
always think that speaking about an audience is something always very
difficult, and people jump too fast into conclusions, especially people from
Portugal, Spain or Latin America, they always think that the others are cold,
because they are very reactive, they have this “caliente” Latino feeling, but I
think that people in Finland are quite “into the music”. You see it here, where
metal scene is huge. Metal music scene is respected by everyone, from the Prime
Minister to the metal fan, and that does not happen in Spain, or Portugal or Latin America, so I think that it is just different ways
of appreciating. For Moonspell, when we get into the stage, we know how is
going on, and I think that in their own way, Finnish people were enjoying very
much, believe me, they were not cold at all.

Do you know that this year there is this
huge “heavy metal trend”, even in Idols TV show, the winner is heavy metal
singer.

Oh, is he?

Yes, his name is Ari Koivunen.

No way!!!

You have had a tight relation with Finland all
over the past years. During the recording of your album The Antidote you
were working with the producer Hiili Hiilesmaa and also with the bass player
Niclas Etelävuori from Amorphis. So how did it happen that you had these links?

I think that all started on the road. We
love playing in Finland.
First time we played here I think that it was in 95. Our album, Irreligious,
always charted very high here. So basically we had already a very good
impression about the Finnish crowd and the Finnish scene. Then we did a Tour
with Amorphis in the States, and even when they were from up north and
we were from down South, we got along very well. A big connection and we became
friends after that. This was a butterfly effect. When we thought about
recording Darkness and Hope (the first album we recorded in Finnbox in
2001) we said, why not to try Finland?
So we spent 5 weeks recording here, and we loved it, because it is much laid
back, very relaxed. albums, especially

Did you record on winter?

Yeah, we always record lots of stuff on
wintertime. But for us it was a break from the routine.And then when we came
back from The Antidote tour with Hiili it was even a better experience.
We were always switching a bit the producers, not to get them “used to our
work”, so it can be a novelty from album to album, but we loved our time in Finland. I mean,
recently we did a 5 days tour here; we played Helsinki of course, Oulu, Jyväskylä, Nivala and Tampere. And it was very successful. There is
a great empathy between us and Finland
and I think that playing here in Tuska was like the cherry on top of the ice
cream

Do you have preferences for other Finnish
bands, apart from Amorphis?

I like a lot of Finnish bands. I like the
early stuff from HIM, especially up the Razorblade’s Romance, I like The 69
Eyes
, I like Before the Dawn, Swallow the Sun…they are countless. There are so
many bands from black metal, heavy metal…

It is kind of amazing how relatively small
the country is, and how many great bands come out!

Yeah, it is amazing, and a thing I know
about the Finnish, very different from some of Swedish bands for example, it is
that they can be the biggest band in the world, and they are still very nice
people, very down to earth, and they like what they do, they like the music and
hang around, and they have this metal feeling inside, which is basically a great
thing to be around them. There are so many bands… Apocalyptica is a great band
as well, Ita-Saksa… lots of them…

Were you thinking when you started in music
business that you would reach so far? Do you consider yourself a privileged
being able to tour around the world?

Yes, of course. Sometimes you do not even
have time to think, because this life is very fast. We only started to think
about our career in 1998, when we were doing Sin/Pecado,  I was not expecting it but at the same time I
worked hard to get it, so I am happy that I have it, and I am happy to have the
consciousness that there is nothing for granted, and you have to work everyday.
I now come here to Tuska festival in Helsinki,
and we have an excellent position in the band list, we have a 75 minutes set,
in the big stage, but I don´t come here thinking “we are Moonspell”. I come
here to seduce the audience, so they will have a good experience and they can
have what they paid for, rewarding them in many ways. When bands take things
for granted, believe me, they start to do shitty music and shitty things.

It is quite notorious this collaboration you
did with the Portuguese writer Jose Luis Peixoto. How was it?

It was great! We always had this literature
influence in Moonspell. We have learnt from the best, from Iron Maiden, from
Celtic Frost… they always quoted authors in their lyrics. So we didn’t do
anything groundbreaking. We just introduced this influence to Moonspell as
well. My other activity is doing books; I have already published my third book
of poetry and is doing great in Portugal.
At any time I am invited to write short tales, but I do not have much time to
do it… In any case, I always try to find the time to read…

Tell us more about how started this project
for The Antidote with Peixoto.

Peixoto is a big metal fan, and he always
wanted to do something like this. And we are big literature’s fans, and
particularly Peixoto's fans, so I think it was something, like a marriage not “in
heaven” but “in hell”, or something like that… He invited us to make some music
for a crazy presentation of his book. People from book industry are quite
conservative so they were not much into the idea, so we switched around, and
the idea was that we did the music. We did all the energy for the music and he
took pieces of the lyrics, the images…and he wrote a novel composed by short
tales, and each chapter was based on a song. It was a big success in Portugal,
people were very interested in it, and I think that turned out to be very
original. I mean, it is not that we are planning to do this in every album, but
I loved it, and I am very good friend of Peixoto, and it was something really
groundbreaking.

Have you read the Kalevala?

Yes of course. Well, it is not the kind of
book that I would read from page 1 until page…2000 or whatever… but I reckon
that it is a special book. I bought a paperback copy, I have read a bit. I
think Tolkien ripped off a lot!

{sidebar id=8}Saramago, the Portuguese Nobel prize of
literature, was here visiting Helsinki
a couple of months ago. What is your opinion about him?

I love Saramago. I am very proud that he is
Portuguese and I am very sad that he had to move out to Spain, to
Lanzarote, because his country could not accept him as he is. I haven’t read
all the books but I think that he is an amazing writer and he is worth every
word that is written about him and the Nobel Prize. We had a show where there
were Saramago, Peixoto and Moonspell playing. We met him, he is very old, he is
like 82 but very lucid, and he told us that he liked what we do. He was very
nice and his label gave us a lot of books. We were very nervous, playing a
metal song for a Nobel Prize, but in the end came out very well. 

And you are also kept busy translating books.

Yeah, I am translating one now: I am a
Legend
; it is going to be a movie now with Will Smith. The book is going to
be translated into Portuguese and released by the time of the movie. It is a
great story. Richard Matheson Is a very good author, very well known in the
States, he did a story called Duel that was the script for the first
Spielberg movie, and I am going to translate it into Portuguese. Honestly I do
not have time for that, but I am so hooked into books and literature and
translations, doing something else than the band that I also find time to do
it.

Have you read or seen any horror story you
specially liked lately?

I have been reading a lot of fiction, but
not really horror fiction. I read the book Behold the manEcce Homo; it
is a good book. I am reading now fiction about philosophers, about Schopenhauer
and Nietzsche…but it has been a while since I have read pure horror literature.
I am definitely going to read again I am a Legend. I already read it 2 at
least, but it is a fucking great book!

Do you give a lot of importance to the
concept of death?

Of course. In Portugal there is no bigger
obsession than death. There is always a conception about the end. Not that I
see myself as a morbid person but it is something that fascinates me in all the
aspects.

I heard you are going to work in your new
album in Denmark.

Yeah, we are already settled in Denmark. The
album is recorded and we are going to start mixing next Wednesday.

How was the experience?

It was amazing, considering that it is just
a re-recording, but it is a project that we assumed very seriously. We wanted
to give a chance to play good songs that were badly played and very badly
produced in the past. So it will be a bit of a surprise for many people. It is
not our new album but it is not that we are just doing for people to buy it. It
proves that we already did good songs when we were very young. It is all the
stuff pre Wolf heart and it is going to be called Under Satannae.

When is going to be released?

Probably in Spring or Autumn of next year,
2008 .I am very happy with the work of the producer Tue Madsen. And I was very
happy to work in Denmark.
It was very relaxing; I was like on vacation in a way. We did it in Aarhus, very quiet place.

Talking a bit about the near future, you
will play in Wacken festival, that is one of the most important metal festivals
in Europe. Excited about that show?

Well, for us it is just another festival.
Being honest, we could have played in a better position. A lot of people go
there to see Moonspell. I think that Wacken could have shown a little bit more
of respect for Moonspell, because we showed a lot of respect for Wacken, but
well…maybe the festival is becoming too big…

So you are not so happy about it?

I am happy about playing in Wacken but I am
not happy about the position. Moonspell deserves much better but on another
way, that is not what is stopping us for making a show. But for me Wacken is as
important as Tuska, or as important as other festival where we could play for
2000 people, as important as Istanbul,
where we are playing in August. I hate when people are making a ranking of
festivals, for me it does not matter, I respect all the festivals and all the
audiences! 

{mosimage}
Wolfheart (1995): Our first album. We were
kind of “marking territory”. I think that it was an album that nobody thought
it would work, but it became a classic in the underground. I am very proud of
that album because I think that it is very original in the scene.

Irreligious (1996): It is probably
altogether our best album, because it has really great songs, and normally it
is all about the songs. And still today when we play Opium or Mephisto. Those songs were ahead of their time. I don´t want to sound big headed, but for
me it is one example of how gothic metal should definitely be.

{mosimage}Sin/Pecado (1998): It was a rupture album.
It was a very good album with different stuff, and hits like Second Skin,
but a lot of people were not interested in listening to it, because they were
totally hooked to Irreligious and they did not give a chance to the
album, so I think that it is one of our most sensitive albums, and I still love
it. Probably a lot of people did not understand the album. For us it was an
album that we had to do.

The Butterfly Effect (1999):  It was going completely nuts in London. It has to do with
the fact that came out in the period of 1999-2000 and I was very interested in
what was going on, about this tension. Now we settled down, well…not exactly,
but not so crazy as in 1999. It seems we are fans of that album more than
composers.

Darkness of Hope (2001): It is probably our
most heartbreaking and sad album… it is not called Darkness of Hope for any
reason. It comes from the heart and it is very dark, but I think that it is a
great album. Not to listen when you are depressed because it can get you very
down, I think.

{mosimage}The Antidote (2003): It is one of the best
Moonspell albums. It is very tribal and one of the most original albums. It has
this song that I love called everything invaded, you saw the response
today: killer! It is an album we did very well.


Memorial
(2006): It is a bloody album; I
would say “In your face” album, with very good metal songs. It was “our baby”
in the past months and I think that people really enjoy it.

Sunrise Avenue guitarist fired

Referring to the title of Sunrise Avenue’s album On the Way to
Wonderland
, Kärkkäinen said on Friday: ‘My trip to Wonderland has
unfortunately ended. Why things have gone this way, I unfortunately
don’t exactly know myself either. The decision wasn’t mine. I would
have been ready to give my all, if things wouldn’t have gone this way.’

Sunrise Avenue is planning to continue, but a new guitarist has not
been hired yet. The group’s gigs in Seinäjoki (5.10) and Helsinki
(6.10) will be moved to other dates which will be announced later. The
band will try to be ready with a new line-up in time for the European
tour in October and November.

Sunrise Avenue – official website
The band on MySpace

 

That forgotten album

When writing for FREE! I often suffer of
nostalgic moments looking back to my younger years when living in a suburb near
Madrid. And I
remember, in 1996, to have listened dozens of times the original cassette that
I bought from the Germans Scorpions: Animal Instinct.

Scorpions, as many other rock/heavy bands
with great success in the 80s were not going through their best moment,
although there were still big. It would be in their next work,when recording
their classics tunes with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, that they would
come back to main positions in the media coverage and charts.

{sidebar id=7}I remember being 16 and running wild in the
streets with my gang of friends, heading to the fair where we could spot some
chicks, jumping and singing Wild Child, or feeling a shadow of sadness
every time I listened to the last track alone at my room: Daddy’s girl;
emotive son about a girl harassed by her father. But I could hardly tell you a
song I did not like from that album. For rock and Scorpions fans, the work was
released without a great success, but for me, that will be always “my Scorpions
album”. Something similar happened with Aerosmith, when I received as a
present from my sister and my mother the cassette of Done with Mirrors,
but the Americans still save one song from that work in some concerts and
special occasions: Let the Music do the Talking. How wise Aerosmith are!
A question of age, definitely.

Do you remember what albums that never got
big success made you feel great when you were younger? Write a comment and let
the reader share the experience. Maybe there is a great album out there waiting
to be re-discovered.

Finally, for motor sports and F1 lovers, and
being a follower of Alonso, I show you here a funny link that my friends
sent me some days ago, with a very special “Finnish touch” at the end of it.
Enjoy it!

I’m not sleazy!

If you don't believe me go and have a look here.
Am I right? Those of you who don't know my regular charming good looks may be
fooled into thinking that this is my daily appearance, but you would be way off
the mark. I am not a bad looking bloke, even if I do say so myself, and have
managed to dig out the best of my genetic code and handed it on to my beautiful
young daughter – lucky gal!

Naturally I haven't always felt reasonably
comfortable with my appearance, like most teenagers, I wished for a fairy
godmother to wave a magic wand or, at the very least, a paper bag that didn't
dissolve in the rain. Acne, lack of height and a lengthy period wearing
spectacles, not glasses, but spectacles left me dangerously named and exposed
in nerd territory – I even liked Star Trek, which didn't help my dress sense
either.

Medication cured the acne, a painful growth
spurt brought me up to average height and contact lenses were a gift from the
gods, but there were still issues. As I approached my 18th birthday my mum
asked what I wanted for a gift, but when my mind went blank she jokingly
suggested a nose job. Years later, the topic of the nose job came up and she
was shocked to discover that I, Cyrano de Bergerac, hadn't taken it as a joke.

My life had increasingly more
self-conscious moments as the years rolled on, especially on a weekend to Paris
that was destined to become the "Will you marry me?" trip. My future
wife and I were strolling along the Seine when a persistent caricature artiste
captured her in his chair and his cartoonist friend then grabbed me. After a
few minutes of scribbling and colouring they proudly show the childish result
and announce an outrageous fee. Following some angry negotiation, my artist
angrily declares, "Well, I could have drawn your chin bigger – you have
big chin!"

A big nose AND a big chin! I felt as though
my face was swelling up like it had an allergic reaction to a bee sting – at
least they weren't the only big things on my body that were large and swollen.
Anyway, finding shoes to fit by large and swollen fit proved tough on occasion…
what part of my body did you think I was discussing? The whole body image thing
is tiring and even though my wife casually pointed out that my stomach has
become larger the other day I desperately try to ignore it all.

You know the worst part? As time passed by
I have discovered that it isn't just physical attributes that attract attention
from vicious observers. Every week I co-host a live radio show with a Greek
friend and it was due to this show that my voice came under fire from a forum
user: "The Greek certainly came across better, the Brit sounded a bit
smarmy and false." What! Smarmy and false… come on! I do not sound slimy,
but then if you pair the slimy voice with the sleazy photo on FREE!'s front
page there's little left for me to do, except become a lawyer.

Professionalism on stage

{mosimage}Juan
Echanove
is one of the most popular Spanish actors in the last twenty years. Although
known by his sweet and kind roles, Echanove adventures into difficult and
challenging performances like his role in Calixto Bieito’s adaptation to
theater of the controversial novel by Michel Houellebecq, Platform, which was just presented during Helsinki Festival.

 

Platform is
an uncomfortable play. It talks openly about pornography, sex tourism,
terrorism and the differences between the rich Western world and the developing
countries. The three representations in Helsinki are the last ones of a long
year with 200 performances since its premiere in the Edinburgh Festival where the
Spanish actor was honored with the Herald Angel award. Echanove speaks clearly
and frankly. He admits that he is exhausted after so many performances,
although willing to go once more on stage and fight with the demanding role of
Michel. Right after speaking to FREE! Echanove will start warming up his body
and his voice

Why did you
choose to play the role of Michel?

My decision
was completely based on my confidence in Calixto Bieito, our director. I
couldn’t imagine that there could be a play based on Michel Houellebecq’s novel, but if
Bieito was able to see a great show on it, it was good to trust on him.
Probably I wouldn’t have accepted to play this role if Bieito wouldn’t have
been involved.

It is one
of your most challenging works.

The text of
this play is very dangerous. It is very intimidating. It burns. It is a bomb.
In a very precise manner, it tells the lowest qualities of modern Western
civilization, of a nowadays individual from good old Europe. The play shows
normal people of my age, 45-50 years old and their expectations and emotions.
Indeed, it is very challenging and complicated to be for two hours such a
character, with those low human qualities and under the influence of alcohol
and pills.

How did you
create this character?

I went to
Barcelona for six weeks and lived alone in an apartment. I didn’t do anything
else but rehearsals in the evenings and building the character in the mornings.
I tried to make the complex psychology of Michel real, to find out how the
feelings of such a person would be, creating something real beyond the literary
work of Houellebecq. I wanted to know how a person of those feelings and characteristics
would be for real.

Did you do
anything special?

I did the
usual work when preparing a role. There was a lot of background documentation. I
did some research on the main issues that Michel Houellebecq addresses with his
thinking and criticism about society. The issues are the power of money over
poverty, terrorism and pornography and sex tourism.

Is it
easier for you to play a character that it’s so different from you?

No, it’s
the same. Acting is a job. A friend of mine says that being an actor is either
very easy or impossible. With this performance I learned to be shameless of many
things, for example things related to sex. It is not easy to talk about your
father’s dead while looking at a screen showing a double penetration. This is a
very tough role. Every performance I lose two or three kilos and it’s not
because of its physical intensity, it’s because the emotional intensity. But
there must be a good distance between the character and the actor. Sometimes
actors say that they are so identified with the character, that they own it.
That’s bullshit. My job is wonderful, but it is also tremendously complicated.
It’s a job like a pianist or violinist. All my life and education have been
devoted to acting. It’s natural for me to go on stage.

This is a
high point in your career.

It’s funny
because a role like Michel, who has nothing to do with me, marks a turning
point in my life and in my career. It’s a point of growing up. Doing
performances like Plataforma, one realizes that it’s not worthy to go on stage
if there is not a real motivation, if it’s not risky and meaningful.

Do you
think you could have played this part earlier in your career?

Absolutely
not. This was the right time. I think I would not accept if I had been called
next month. But as I said before, Calixto played a very important role. He
called me and I accepted even before knowing what was the play we were going to
do. He’s one of the best contemporary directors in European theater. If you are
an actor, you must be at his command at least once.

How is
working with Calixto?

He is a
sweet guy, very sincere and a very practical person. I like those qualities. He
is honest. He knows the audience; he knows what the audience looks at and why. He’s
unique.

The Helsinki Festival starts today


The Helsinki Festival is this year expanding its
programme. Arts from the Baltic Sea region will be very much to the fore. The
Festival presents three leading orchestras, several theatre groups and visual
arts from around the Baltic. There are also more free Festival events on the
programme than in former years. The revamped Night of the Arts caters for a
wider range of tastes than ever. The sculpture exhibition in Esplanadi Park and
the open-air movies in the Lasipalatsi square will all be free. The summer
season at the Huvila Festival Tent ends with a six-hour open-house day
masterminded by Pekka Kuusisto.


T
he Helsinki Festival begins with Kaija Saariaho’s dramatised Passion de
Simone
directed by Peter Sellars (US) at Finlandia Hall. The orchestra will be
conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. New works by Magnus Lindberg, another
contemporary Finnish composer of international repute, will receive their
Finnish premieres in a two-concert cavalcade of chamber and orchestral music
also starring Lindberg as a pianist and conductor.

The visiting orchestras include the Oslo Philharmonic and the Swedish Radio
Symphony; the St. Petersburg Philharmonic will be playing music by Sibelius,
something it rarely does in Helsinki. Appearing at the Festival will be
violinists Lisa Batiashvili, Viktoria Mullova and Christian Tetzlaff, and
pianist András Schiff – all great favourites with Finnish audiences.
Representing the Finnish vocal elite are Monica Groop, Camilla Nylund and Topi
Lehtipuu
, all of whom enjoy a fine international reputation.

The hundred-strong Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra will be playing familiar
tunes from pirate films at the family concert that is always a Children’s
Festival hit. In addition to music, theatre and film the children’s programme
will include an exhibition on the theme of Giotto with numerous workshops and
tie-in events at the Annantalo Arts Centre.

New circus, Chekhov and contemporary European theatre

International circus, theatre and dance are more in evidence at this year’s
Festival than ever before. One of the Festival’s big attractions is Collectif
AOC, a French new circus group that will be erecting a 600-seat tent in
Meripuisto Park near Kaivopuisto. ‘New circus is conspicuous in this year’s
programme,’ says Festival Director Risto Nieminen. ‘Helsinki will also be
acting host to a number of current names in European theatre and dance, such as
dancer-choreographer Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and the enfant terrible
of Spanish theatre Calixto Bieito.’ The Stage festival to be held for the first
time at the Korjaamo Culture Factory has invited along five European theatre
groups.

The four-year Chekhov series culminates this year in three topical interpretations
of works by the Russian master. For the production of The Three Sisters
directed by him Declan Donellan (UK) has formed a cast of leading names in
contemporary Russian theatre. The Von Krahl Theatre from Tallinn is bringing
along a re-reading by Kristian Smeds of The Seagull, while Dmitri Krymov, a hot
name in Russian theatre, will be staging a collage of four Chekhov plays.

New rhythms, nostalgia and mysticism at the Huvila Festival Tent

The packed programme for the Huvila Festival Tent ranges from pop and world
music to poetry and a children’s day. Among the most eagerly-awaited guests
this year are French chanson star Juliette Gréco and blues legend Taj Mahal.

Bringing along a breath of the rich musical tradition of the Middle East will
be the Syrian Ensemble Al-Kindi reinforced with a Sufi singer and a Dervish
dancer, and Turkish Mercan Dede, combining electronic rhythms and Sufi ambience
straight from Istanbul. Ville Leinonen will be inviting dancers to take the
floor at the Huvila Saturday hop. ‘It’s great we were able to get Ayo, an
artist very much on the rise, for the Huvila Festival Tent,’ says Production
Manager Kaarina Gould. ‘In addition to new rising stars and old world music
hands the Huvila profile will take in such hybrid evenings as Lännen Jukka – a
joint gig by J. Karjalainen and one of the leading names in American old time
music, Dirk Powell.

Flow moves to the Suvilahti power station area

The visual arts will be make their presence felt in the city right at the
beginning of May, when the sculpture exhibition Las Meninas by Manolo Valdés of
Spain takes over Esplanadi Park. The series of 21 sculptures can be viewed free
round the clock until the beginning of September. The exhibition of work by
Carnegie award-winning Karin Mamma Andersson from Sweden will be travelling to
the Kunsthalle straight from the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Meanwhile the
Amos Anderson Museum will be putting on an exhibition of oil paintings by Anna
Retulainen
.

On each of its three weekends the Helsinki Festival will be screening movies
free in the Lasipalatsi square. The Orion Cinema will be showing a unique
retrospective of work by Iranian Abbas Kiarostami. The life and works of Andrei
Tarkovsky
will be portrayed through documentaries about him.

The revamped Night of the Arts, shifted this year from Thursday to Friday
(August 24), is an urban event providing a feast for arts lovers all through
the night. Culture vultures will thus be able to revel in events numbering well
over a hundred in new and sometimes unexpected settings scattered round the
city. The enlarged Runokuu will be taking lyrics and literature out into clubs,
churches, public transport and nature trails and strengthening the role of
verbal art in the Festival programme.

The popular Flow festival will be focusing on the hottest contemporary rhythm
music from indie rock and folk to various subgenres of electronic music and
swinging jazz. One new urban venue is the area round the former Suvilahti power
station. As the August evenings draw in jazz fans can look forward to Viapori
Jazz on the island of Suomenlinna and the UMO Jazz Fest.

Helsingin Juhlaviikot – Helsinki Festival 17.8-2.9
www.helsinginjuhlaviikot.fi

North goes South

{mosimage}
It sounds
strange: a Scandinavian festival in Italy. Usually you
can find a lot of Latin festivals or even African one but never
Scandinavian.
From here the need, felt by a group of people, of trying to organize in
Milan,
with the help of some important partners and sponsors an event that
could promote the Scandinavian culture in Italy with the aim of
stimulating the exchange between different cultures.


 


T
he
Ragnarock Scandinavian Music and Art Festival opened his first edition on the
7th of July in Milan Magnolia, near the Idroscalo. From 5 pm until late night,
you could find a photographic exhibition of 
the Danish Søren Solkær Starbird, for the first time in Italy, a fashion
show, a Scandinavian buffet and five concerts. Near the stage and the bar you
had also the chance of reading an Iperborea book, the biggest Italian publisher
of Scandinavian literature who has organized a books banquet and a reading
area, or you could also win a flight ticket to Copenhagen or Stockholm.
Everything for only 6 euro.

Starbird
himself, a great example of music photography, explained the criterion by which
he has selected the pictures underlining the aim of the festival: promoting the
Scandinavian culture:“Related to the
philosophy of the Festival, to the promotion of musical Scandinavian talents, I
decided to choose a selection of photographies that mainly show Scandinavian artists,
especially Danish. The theme of the exhibition is, then, linked with the one of
the Festival, in a continuous dialogue between the artistic and the musical
dimension”.

The result
was a musical trip throughout eighteen shots realized while touring with the
most important bands of nowadays.

But not
only photography, as I said: fashion show of five Scandinavian stylists from
the European Institute of Design (IED) and five different bands who were performing
on the stage (Promise and the Monster, Niepoort, Jonna Lee, The Fashion and
Prins Thomas
).

One thousand
and five hundred people welcomed this first edition of the Ragnarock
Scandinavian Festival, showing how much is widespread the interest towards the
Nordic culture and stimulating, I hope, the organization of other events like
this.

 

27th Helsinki City Marathon August 18th 2007

{mosimage}The marathon starts in the vicinity of the statue of the legendary
Paavo Nurmi. The finish line is at the Olympic Stadium. Twenty
refreshment points guarantee that runners are well taken care of.

 Every
participant will be given a fine medal, T shirt and  diploma. The
runners are also offered facilities for an exotic experience of Finnish
sauna, shower and swimmin pool at the Swimming Stadium near by.



Program:

Friday August 17th 2007

The race
office is open at the Olympic Stadium from
12am to 8pm

Marathon expo from 12am to
8pm

Saturday August 18th 2007

Disney
minimarathon for kids 5-13 years from 10am to
1pm

Marathon starts at 3 pm

The race
office is open at the Olympic Stadium from
8am to 9pm

For registration and more information
check: www.helsinkicitymarathon.com

Colours in a natural relation

{mosimage}Dan Beard is
a young British artist who works and lives in Tampere. A couple of months ago he had his
first solo show in Galleria Oma Huone, and now continues moving around the art
scene of Helsinki with this new current exhibition that brings his paintings to
Kanneltalo, the cultural centre in Kannelmäki, Helsinki.

 

 

There, you can see a total of 15 woks where
the colours sometimes get mixed and other times fight with each other, trying to
find their own space in the canvas. Sensual shapes appear as a final result on
some paintings that could even remind of the matrix of our existence: the
vagina. Some other times the colors adopt the form or a millenarian dragon but
most of the times they simply let you explore your own feelings when
contemplating his palette of bright blues, greens and yellows exploding in
front of your eyes. A risky conception of art that maybe will not satisfy the
most conservative viewers, but worthy to check nevertheless.

Together with Beard’s paintings, the
galleria exhibits the sculptures of Jussi Aulis, pieces of metal and
rusty tin composing human shapes that resemble strange warriors or even a
reminiscence of Don Quixote. It is fresh and pretty recommended.

2-27.8
Jussi Aulis' sculptures and Dan Beard’s
paintings in Kanneltalo Gallery, Helsinki (next to Kannelmäki railway
station)
The exhibition will be open also during Helsinki
Night of Arts 24.8.07

 

{mosimage}{mosimage} 

Director French version of Paasilinna film to visit Espoo

The leading role in the French film is played by Christopher Lambert, who is mostly known for his action roles. Unlike the Finnish version, co-written (with Paasilinna and Kullervo Kukkasjärvi) and directed by Risto Jarva, Le Lièvre de Vatanen (2006) is situated in Canada and was filmed in Bulgaria. In the film, the name of Vatanen is about the only link with Finland.

The drama will be shown at the Espoo Cultural Centre in Tapiola, Espoo, on 26 August. Rivière will introduce the film right before the screening. Also Paasilinna, whose books are very successful in France, will take part in the film’s presentation at the festival.

The French language film will be shown with English subtitles.

 

Le Lièvre de Vatanen (in French)

Espoo Ciné International Film Festival

Arto Paasilinna [Virtual Finland]