02/03/2005 - One of the biggest retrospectives of Finnish cinema in France is currently taking place in the city of Rennes in Brittany as part of the 16th Travelling Festival

One of the biggest retrospectives of Finnish cinema in France is currently taking place in the city of Rennes in Brittany as part of the 16th Travelling Festival (26 February-8 March).

Each year, the Festival takes the local audience to a cultural and film discovery trip to a particular city in the world, and after London, Tokyo, New York and Marseille, Helsinki (and Finnish cinema as a whole) is in the limelight this year. Over 200 Finnish films and 70 guests are taking part of the event among whom Jarmo Lampela, leading figure of the new generation of Finnish filmmakers, and the famous brothers Aki and Mika Kaurismäki. Today (2 March), the eldest of the two, Mika will meet the local audience following the screening of one of his films: Liar (Le menteur, 1981). The three directors as well as one of their masters, the late Valentin Vaala will have their own retrospective with over 30 feature films and some short films.

A general overview of Finnish cinema will cover six decades of filmmaking with 16 key feature films such as the silent movie The Highest Victory (Korkein Voitto, 1929) by Carl von Haartman, Game of Luck (Onnepeli, 1965) by Risto Jarva, The Collector (Neitoperho, 1997) by Auli Mantila and among the most recent productions Blue Corner (Haaveiden kehä, 2002) by Matti Ijäs.

Travelling Festival also offers a ‘carte blanche’ to the Finnish Film Archive, a documentary series with works from Veikko Aaltonen, Susanna Helke, Virpi Suutari and Visa Koiso-Kanttila, a series of seven student films from the film department at the University of Industrial Arts in Helsinki and a collection of short films programmed in co-operation with the Tampere International Short Film Festival.