The Midnight Sun Film Festival receives the State Prize for Cinema
The National Council for Cinema awarded the State Prize for Cinema to the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Sodankylä for the high quality of its programming and the nurturing of the cinematic art. The year 2015 will mark the Festival’s 30th anniversary.
The State Prizes awarded by the National Arts Councils are given in recognition of the recipient’s meritorious work or long-term activity in support of the art form.
The National Council for Cinema Rationale
The Midnight Sun Film Festival is among the world’s most unique festivals. Next year the celebration of light, cinema and cinephilia has been held in northernmost Finland for 30 years already.
The Festival has carried out important and consistent work by placing both classic films and new cinema within the reach of the audience, and by providing unforgettable moments in the company of the most legendary filmmakers in the world.
The Midnight Sun Film Festival, “Sodis”, has raised and nourished already several generations of lovers of the cinematic art. Its reputation has spread around the globe, popularising not just cinema but also Finland and the Finnish culture. Another indication of the Festival’s uniqueness is that it is impossible to imitate: the inimitable magic of Sodankylä is born out of the location, the time of the event, the programming, and the people.
The National Council for Cinema wants to bestow the award to the Festival for its high-quality programming, uncompromising nurturing of the cinematic art, and its determined enthusiasm. The cinema, Finland and the world all need the Midnight Sun Film Festival.
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR TIMO MALMI
THE STATE AWARD FOR FILM ACCEPTANCE SPEECH 28.11.2014
Madam Minister, members of the national arts councils, fellow award recipients, dear guests.
On behalf of the Midnight Sun Film Festival Artistic Committee, and on behalf of the whole Festival, I want to express our appreciation for becoming the first festival to receive the State Award for Film. We dedicate this significant honour to Peter von Bagh, our late Festival Director. His uniquely stimulating work in laying the Festival’s foundation and his unstinting efforts during almost thirty years of festivals has made the Midnight Sun Film Festival famous in Finland as well as widely abroad. We also dedicate this award to the Festival staff and our large number of voluntary workers, whom von Bagh eloquently thanks, collectively and individually, in his recently published autobiography Muisteja (Remembrance). But we also dedicate this award to our golden audience, of which “Petteri” writes in Remembrance: “I will never grow tired of praising the curiosity of our audience. (…) Arriving in Sodankylä opens up avenues for one’s quintessential curiosity. ‘Different’ or ‘difficult’ films are subjects of equal interest as popular successes.”
Whenever festivals appear in the news, the press often writes about the audience figures or the financial aspects. Upon receiving the National Arts Council today it is our pleasure to draw attention expressly on art, the quality of film programming, although its general level in Finnish cinemas, in the packaged media business, and on television is increasingly alarming.
We endorse the view Petteri used to emphasise: only what was nationally and internationally best was also sufficiently good for the Finnish audience. In Sodankylä, the audiences have for decades now abundantly rewarded this faith in the quality and diversity of the programming. At this turning point, and on the threshold of the 30th Anniversary of the Festival, the State Award for Film is for us an appropriate encouragement to gratefully take forward this tradition of artistic quality – slightly adapting the title of Peter von Bagh’s film and book about the Festival – In Sodankylä, Forever.
