Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Mohsen Makhmalbaf is a major figure in world cinema whose been in exile from his home country of Iran since 2005. Much of Makhmalbaf’s work draws upon his activist background, asking pertinent questions about politics, cinema and the role of an artist.
He has directed nearly 30 films, garnering some 50 awards including the Ecumenical Jury Award at Cannes (2001), a Federico Fellini Gold Medal from UNESCO (2001)
and the Parajanov Award for outstanding artistic contribution to World Cinema from Yerevan Film Festival (2006).
Once in the XX Century is a gallery-based exploration of the oeuvre of Lithuanian filmmaker Deimantas Narkevičius. The works included in the exhibition are:
Seamus Harahan presents Fucking Finland, an anthology of film freshly completed for his Festival commission.
With a hand-held video camera and armed with a painter’s eye and a musician’s ear, Harahan’s journey begins in Suomenlinna, an inhabited Finnish sea fortress with obvious parallels to Berwick, and traces a line across to Tallinn, Estonia and then on to Rostock, Germany.
With a hand-held video camera and armed with a painter’s eye and a musician’s ear, Harahan’s journey begins in Suomenlinna, an inhabited Finnish sea fortress with obvious parallels to Berwick, and traces a line across to Tallinn, Estonia and then on to Rostock, Germany.
The ferry connecting Hanko and Rostock becomes a melancholic pop metaphor for the old Iron Curtain era, creating audacious – maybe even insolent – links between places that were enveloped in two different and opposing ideological blocks not that long ago.
The Fucking Finland Series is supported by the Elephant Trust.
