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h. 17.00 - Cineclub “L’Ultimo Spettacolo” - Corso Trinità 161 - Sassari
Masterclass: CINEMA IN INVISIBLE PLACES with Johanna Saarinen, Milja Mikkola, Ari Lehtola, Timo Malmi from Midnight Sun Film Festival, Sodankylä, and Sergio Scavio. Moderator: Carla Caprioli

This non-academic meeting is dedicated not only to film buffs and cultural operators, but to all those who have heard of the Midnight Sun Film Festival and want to know more about its story and the reasons for its success: 25,000 visitors during five summer days in Sodankylä (Lapland, Finland), a town of 8,000 inhabitants near the Arctic Circle, more than a thousand kilometers from Helsinki.

The meeting is hosted by the film club 'L'Ultimo Spettacolo' ('The Last Picture Show') in Sassari, which has been defined "a community of spaces that has a clear idea of ​​the city", and we will have with us his founder, Sergio Scavio.

Of our Finnish guests, three (Ari, Executive Manager; Johanna, Production Manager; and Timo, film critic and current Artistic Director) already came to Asuni as guests in 2005, to the very first edition of our festival, at that time called "Asuni Film Festival". We will talk about the specifics of an event, the Midnight Sun Film Festival, born as a utopian bet in November 1985. This is how it is described by Peter von Bagh, its Artistic Director from 1986 to 2014:

"It was four in the morning. Impenetrable darkness loomed behind the window. Some alcohol had probably been consumed. "Why," he asked the municipality's Cultural Secretary, "don't we establish an international film festival here?" And why not, really. Anssi recounted his vision to the Kaurismaki brothers, with whom he was collaborating at the time: he also called me and asked me to be the festival director. I cannot claim to have understood the genius of his idea from the start and, the stupid man that I am, considered the notion of the filmmakers he wanted to invite for the first edition (John Huston and Akira Kurosawa) utopian. Fortunately I regained my senses sufficiently in a couple of months and decided to participate in the work to arrange the first festival. And so the first Midnight Sun Film Festival began on Friday, June 12, 1986.".

"A few key principles have always been followed in preparation for each year's festival: no bureaucracy and an unconditional 'no' to the atmosphere of pretence, manipulation and quasi-discussion that plagues thge majority of national so-called cultural events in Finland. Official bodies have always maintained a safe distance to the festival, and we have never been honoured by the top decision-makers of Finland's cultural administration. We consider this a desirable state of affairs. We would not have known how to entertain them in any case. We have, however, been helped by partners such as the Press Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose contribution has enabled us to invite the very best of international film critics to attend the festival (and we have always put them to work in tasks such as introducing some of the films in our programme..."

"Without [filmmakers] the world would be a much more miserable place - and so much more incomprehensible"
(from Peter von Bagh Sodankylä Forever - Masters of Cinema Under the Midnight Sun, Rosebud 2010, pages 11, 17 and 354)

At the end of the masterclass, projection:

19h00 - Cineclub “L’Ultimo Spettacolo” - Corso Trinità 161 - Sassari
KUUN METSÄN KAISA- KAISA'S ENCHANTED FOREST - LA FORESTA INCANTATA DI KAISA by Katja Gauriloff (Finland/2016/75’) - premiere in Italy
Meeting with our Finnish gueste

trailer

Credits of photo gallery: all the photos are reproduced courtesy of Midnight Sun Film Festival and taken from their web site, gallery MSFF year 2016. The authors are mentioned in the list below.

1. Guests bus: copyright Antti Yrjonen
2. Painting a panel for the festival : copyright Ella Karttunen
3. Big tent arrangement: copyright Ella Karttunen
4. Queuing out of the big tent: copyright Santeri Happonen
5. Heidi Gauriloff (costume designer) and director Katja Gauriloff, copyright Juho Liukkonen
6. Sauna: copyright Antti Yrjonen
7. Around the fire: copyright Juho Liukkonen
8. Staff: copyright Santeri Happonen

Video

installation by Simone Cireddu and Barbara Pinna at MEA, Museo dell'Emigrazione di Asuni

Scientific coordination by Umberto Cocco
Production: Paesaggio Gramsci with a contribution by Fondazione di Sardegna and Unione dei Comuni del Barigadu

In 1946, after World War II, with the agreement Des hommes contre du charbon (Men in exchange of coal) between Italy and Belgium started the first great Italian migration. Many thousands Sardinians went abroad to work in the mines, between Limburg and Wallonia, Genk and Charleroi. They went away from Sulcis and from inland areas, from a belt extended from Marmilla to Barigadu, Mandrolisai, Goceano, Marghine, Logudoro, and from Planargia to Baronie. Some stayed forever in Belgium; some others, after the experience, came back to Sardinia. In a continued alternation of memory and forgetfulness, light and dark, in the video installation LA MINA ten surviving miners narrate their lives, expectations and dreams. Faces and voices of men who recall what was happening on the ground and underground, in wells, in tunnels of a diameter between 45 centimeters and one meter where they were forced to lay flat, often naked, in mud and black slime, as in the worst trenches. They didn't know it was a war, a damned job they describe with difficulty, comparing it to hell, in which they describe themselves as scratching mice, crawling snakes, pigs rolling in mud. Because "the mine is mine, it is a difficult job: you knew when you went down but not when you could be able to come back to the surface."

Sassari - Thursday 16th March 2017, 10h00 - Accademia di Belle Arti 'Mario Sironi' - Via Duca degli Abruzzi, 4 

Seminar: GOING TO A FILM SCHOOL OR FILM FESTIVAL IS A WASTE OF TIME BUT SODANKYLÄ IS AN EXCEPTION...

with Paolo Zucca, Davide Bini, Carla Caprioli, Bernardo Bolognesi and the managing/organising team of Midnight Sun Film Festival - Sodankylä (Finland): Ari Lehtola, Timo Malmi, Milja Mikkola and Johanna Saarinen

During the seminar some excerpts will be projected from MR. ROSSI GOES TO LAPLAND - IL SIGNOR ROSSI VA IN LAPPONIA by Bernardo Bolognesi (Italy/2005/74’) and SODANKYLÄ FOREVER - THE CENTURY OF CINEMA by Peter von Bagh (Finland/2010/49’). To be discussed:

• why do we organise a film festival in 'nowhere land'?
• to which audience is the MSFF addressed?
• 30 years and 25,000 visitors a year (during the 5-days of the festival): which lessons can we draw from the MSFF's experience?
• film festivals in lands affected by de-pastoralism and de-industrialis - social and economic consequences
• remote areas as privileged film locations

Our seminar title is a sentence by Terry Gilliam, a recurring guest of the Midnight Sun Film Festival:

"Going to a film school or film festivals is a waste of time..."

... but Sodankylä is an exception because you can buy a reindeer coat here."

(Peter von Bagh Sodankylä Forever - Masters of Cinema Under the Midnight Sun, Rosebud 2010, page 354)

The seminar at the Academy of Fine Arts 'Mario Sironi' in Sassari. From left: Ari Lehtola, Paolo Zucca, Milja Mikkola, Carla Caprioli. Standing: Davide Bini (photo Patrizia Garau).

Narrative/performance with Francesco Abate and Jacopo Cullin: a commentary on Sea and Sardinia by David Herbert Lawrence and Lawrence's vision of Sardinia.

'S'arrevesciu' in Sardinian language means 'an uneasy person'.

Asuni, Sunday 19th March 2017 17h30 - MEA, Museo dell'Emigrazione

At 18h30 - projection of 6 DESIRES: DH LAWRENCE AND SARDINIA by Mark Cousins (UK/Italy/2014/85’) and a meeting with its co-author and producer Laura Marcellino

Followed by a degustation of local food

NOTE
A free downloadable version of Sea and Sardinia by David Herbert Lawrence is available on the web site of publisher Ilisso
(Text can be freely and entirely downloaded via the abovementioned link, or using the QR code included in that page)