Made In CHINA — Tampere Film Festival work experience

Zou Xueping, Zhang Mengqi and Wu Wenguang. Photo: Sohvi Sirkesalo

The world is changing with really remarkable speed. As Goldman Sachs projected China will have a larger economy than United States in 2027 which was drawn up before the Western financial crisis. Not only China’s economy draws plenty of the West attention, but also China state’s actions, political issues, culture and its dramatic growing international status. However, to some of, or a large scale of people in the west, China is, still, more likely a mystery, as well as massive misunderstanding of this country.

Tampere Film Festival supplied three Chinese documentary directors, Wu Wenguang, Zou Xueping and Zhang Mengqi, with a good chance to reveal real parts of China by showing Chinese movies. And it was my great honor working as an assistant and interpreter for the Chinese group.

Mr. Wu, is representative of people from his generation (born between 1960s—1980s), narrated his own stories between his mother and himself, meanwhile, it conveyed historical rudiments at that time in China. Zou Xueping and Zhang Mengqi, who are units of the new generation (after 1980s), expressed their interests of China history and delivered their own thoughts about challenges the new generation are facing at and their suppositive future.

Not only me, but also, I think, the local people acquired new perspectives of China. The directors come from different places than where I have been living in China, rather different than people from Europe. Individuals often aren’t really aware of is that fact that China is extremely diverse and very pluralistic in many ways, for example village life from these three directors’ show. You can’t run a place on this scale simply from Beijing, even though we think this to be the case.

For my part, spending time with these three directors expands my vision of what are happening in other parts of China. Their works also remind me that what a single person could contribute to his motherland----a simple scene, a short documentary could help people understand more about China, could touch so many people recording a country’s memory!

GuanJun Liu
The author is a TAMK Degree Programme in Media student
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Tampere Film Festival
Read more stories by and about our Media students on the Artmedia blog
Read more stories about Tampere Film Festival on the Artmedia blog
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Languages Through Lenses 2010: Experiences

The Prix Europa -festival opening gala, Berlin

Third year film students Outi Hartikainen and Hannu Koivuranta took part in a shortfilm competition Languages Through Lenses last year organized by the EU and European League of the Institutes of the Arts (ELIA). The mission was to produce a 60-90 second shortfilm promoting the importance of foreign cultures and languages.

15 scripts were selected to the competition and all received a 5000 EUR production grant. Three works from Finland were selected: “Connection Lost” from TAMK, “The Forest of Babel” from Aalto university and “Pancakes” from Turku Arts Academy.

Getting selected to the competition turned out to be a bigger thing than expected. In addition to the production grant the main applicant student were sent to Amsterdam to a two-day scriptwriting workshop held by BBC screenwriting veterans Guy Meredith and Roger Gregory. During those two days students presented their projects' scripts while Guy and Roger helped to develop them even further. In the meantime Amsterdam presented a great opportunity to meet fellow filmmakers and art students.

The featured projects were very diverse. The competition had selected more art students than film students and it was clearly reflected in the projects. Several art projects found it difficult to be developed in a more traditional scriptwriting way.

"Connection Lost" team members at the Prix Europa festival. From left
director Outi Hartikainen, cinematographer/script writer Hannu Koivuranta,
sound designer Arttu Hokkanen and producer Niilo Gustafsson

After Amsterdam each project went on to develop independently. “Connection Lost” was shot in July and it employed approximately 25 people. One month was spent in post-production. During the production ELIA was kept up to date about the project and the use of the production grant. Screenwriting lecturer Arto Koskinen served as a tutor for the project.

When the collective deadline was due the final projects were supplied to Berlin on DVDs where they would take part in Europe's largest TV- and radio festival Prix Europa. Four students from Tampere went on to represent Tampere University of Applied Sciences, Art & Media: Outi Hartikainen, Hannu Koivuranta, producer Niilo Gustafsson and sound designer Arttu Hokkanen. They were accompanied by Senior Lecturer Arto Koskinen.

All the 15 selected projects competed in their own category (Languages Through Lenses). During the three days in Berlin the students had the opportunity to take part in workshops, cocktail parties and film screenings at e.g. The French Embassy.

The students and ELIA representatives rated each project in order to shortlist top three projects. Among them was “Connection Lost”, “The Forest of Babel” and “Langbeat” from MOME (Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design*) ,Hungary. The stay of these students was then extended until the end of the festival and the closing gala where the festival would present the winning productions. These three days were quickly spent watching documentaries and films, getting to know Berlin and meeting new people.

The main prize of Languages Through Lenses -category went to “The Forest of Babel” (dir. Elina & Mike Pohjola) while the other two projects received special commendations.

It is important to understand how magnificent the six month journey with Languages Through Lenses was and how much it taught about handling a project with this size budget and resources. In the end the final productions were meant for use by the European Union and ELIA. Having enriched our lives with some new experiences we definitely want to encourage our students to take part in competitions – not necessarily because of the winning but because of the experience. We hope to see you in this years Languages Through Lenses!

“Connection Lost” is will be shown next time at Tampere Film Festival's Kino TAMK -screening.

Languages Through Lenses 2011 competition is now active and the deadline for scripts is 25th of March. For more information check out the link below:
http://www.languages-lenses.eu

Hannu Koivuranta

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Read the previous stories about the competition (TAMK Art&Media Blog)
Watch "Connection Lost"
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Prix Europa
ELIA
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* happy comment by the blog editor: MOME (Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design) and TAMK are about to sign an agreement about staff and student exchange. Zsófia Ruttkay from MOME will give a workshop during TAMK Art&Media International Week April 11-14.

Connection Lost among top 3 in Prix Europa

Outi Hartikainen directs Raimo Grönberg while cameraman Hannu
Koivuranta checks the composition (Photo: Eero Alava)

Languages Through Lenses 2010 -competition is over.

Languages Through Lenses is one of Prix Europa's film competitions. Last spring the international jury chose 15 best scripts among 100 competitors from over 18 EU countries. The chosen fifteen got a 5,000€ grant each to produce a short film from the script. The underlying theme of the competition scripts was to motivate people to learn languages and get people interested in learning more about other cultures.

"Connection Lost", a script by TAMK's very own Hannu Koivuranta and Outi Hartikainen, was among the chosen and was filmed last summer.

After all the 15 films were finished, three of them were chosen as finalists. In addition to "Connection Lost", the top three consisted of "The Forest of Babel" by Aalto university and "Langbeat" by Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design.

The 1st place went to The "Forest of Babel". Getting to final three from among 100 film schools is still a huge achievement, so the blog would like to join in congratulations for the production team.

Watch "Connection Lost"
Read blog posts about the earlier phases of the competition
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Prix Europa
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4th manSEDANse started last night

manSEDANse 2009. Photo Sakari Karipuro

The manSEDANse is a festival of electronic music, art and culture. It is arranged by MARry, a non-profit organisation based in Tampere. The mission of MARry is to promote electronic music and culture in Finland.

manSEDANse is arranged in cooperation with Tampere Film Festival, Media Museum Rupriikki and Tampere University of Applied Sciences TAMK, the Degree Programmes in Fine Art, Film&Television and Media.

In addition to the music and club events taking place from Thursday to Sunday at Telakka and Klubi, manSEDANse presents exhibitions, seminars and workshops. Some of them are in English:

• Mansedanse Play, game workshop, Tue 5.10 14-18, Exhibition Hall TR1, Finlayson, presenters Score, Eric Svedäng, Petri Purho, Olli Sotamaa.
• Puredyne and livecoding Fri 8.10. 17-18, Exhibition Hall TR1, Finlayson, Dave Griffiths
• The Halldorophone and instrument building as art Sat 9.10. 15-16, Werstas auditorium, Finlayson, Halldór Úlfarsson

There is also an exhibition of ArtWorks and Game Lounge at Exhibition hall TR1, Finlayson. The exhibition features also works by TAMK fine art students Mirka Kinnula, Matti Sampela, Marko Vierimaa and Tiina Lehikoinen, the Game Lounge games by Score, TAMK students' game develop,emt club.


More information about
manSEDANse
manSEDANse events
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TAMK at Saint Petersburg Student Film Festival Beginning

The ninth Open Saint Petersburg Student Film Festival "Beginning" October 1-6 will show four TAMK film&tv student films. This is a nice achievement: By deadline 668 films from 100 film schools from 50 countries were sent to the festival, and the 60 best will be seen at the festival.

The competition programme for fiction films includes Memory of Tomorrow directed by Pekka Saari. The Chainsaw Poet by Lauri-Matti Perppei competes in the 5-minute fiction films category.

Cine Parallel non competition programme features Speakeasy! musical directed by Juha Kuoppala and Whistle While You Work by Jussi Sandhu and Ville Hakonen.

Last year the Miina Alajärvi film "The Electrician" won three awards at the festival. On Wednesday we will know how successful we will be this year!

Beginning Festival Home

Picture: From Speakeasy! musical. Heidi Lindén, Hiski Grönstrand, Jane Kääriäinen, Panu Mikkola. 
Photographer: Jatta Oksanen
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TAMK graduate film at Helsinki International Film Festival

23rd Helsinki International Film Festival (Love & Anarchy)
September 16-26

Memory of Tomorrow it the "Finnish Pearls" screening:
Sat 18.09. 12:15 - Kinopalatsi 10
Wed 22.09. 16:15 - Dubrovnik (Andorra)
Thu 23.09. 21:15 - Dubrovnik (Andorra)

Memory of Tomorrow, directed by Pekka Saari is one of our graduate films this year. It's the story about Aleksi (Heikki Nousiainen) loves two things, his wife Saila and his camera. After Saila suddenly dies, Aleksi seeks comfort from a medical experiment that extends his life beyond normal boundaries.

SThe film was invited to the national contest of Tampere Film Festival and also shown at ja Tampere Art Factoryssä, Wiz Art Festival in Ukraine, Finnconissa, Ropecon and Reikäreuna. End of September Memory of Tomorrow competes in Ostrava Kamera Oko Festival (Czech Republic)) Official Selection-category.

Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF)
Memory of Tomorrow
Previous story about Memory of Tomorrow
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From Assembly with Love, epilogue

Just a final report from the Assembly team. All of the equipment has been returned intact to their rightful places, but unfortunately we managed to get a parking ticket for our minibus. So the trip back wasn't a complete success, but almost.

We also have some statistics from Assembly, though only regarding the games we showed. The students from TiKo aimed at achieving certain goals in their games, and boy did they . In the space shooter Swarms they managed to kill 500 000 aliens during one session, while Miekka, the 3D dueling game which borrows heavily from Finnish history and mythology, went through over 1000 battles during Assembly. And the School of Art, Music and Media wasn't without epic success either. Overboard and Overtower had its fair share of fans, and I do remember noting at one point that someone had over 100 wins on Overtower (which would probably mean around 300-400 rounds overall). In addition, one brave visitors played Elder Strolls: Dungeons of Dementia to its planned (but unfortunately unfinished) end with all the stats at max (100!).



Thanks to Emilia Ala-Rami for this amazing feat!

And good news, everyone! Our ArtTech seminar is now available at: http://vimeo.com/14069673. On the right side you can also browse through all the other seminars, so if you missed Assembly this year, be sure to check out those videos.

Text: Eevi Korhonen
Photo: Juho Hartikainen / Emilia Ala-Rami
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Assembly Summer 2010 
Read all Assembly stories
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From Assembly with Love, vol. 4

The fourth day dawned with a sad feeling, and it was time to start packing and heading home. The Sunday mentality started to take over the Arena, but the most cunning had already started to disassemble their computer places in order to avoid the post-closing-ceremony rush. The people from TiKo had decided to join them, and since they'd been staying awake almost throughout whole Assembly, I think it was the right option.


The emptied booth

Assembly might be over, but the work continues! We must still drive all the way to Tampere and return all the stuff to their rightful places plus write the reports.


Sunday and the beanbags. Pictured from left to right Riku Heino (Media), Joni Rissanen (Media) and Paavo Marttila (Music from the campus in Virrat)

We already spoke to the other schools that we liked our co-operation and the booth so much that we already booked the same place for ourselves for next year. So keep your eye on this blog next summer too as a new bunch of students will take over Assembly!

Text and photos: Eevi Korhonen, 09IMP student
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Assembly Summer 2010 
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From Assembly with Love, vol. 3

Saturday was the third and the second last day at Assembly, so I thought that this would be a good time to shed some light over the culture of Assembly to the readers of this blog. Today we'll have the highlight of the whole event i.e. democompos (compos = competitions). Demos mean in this context audiovisual workds created through computre code, and these are the foundation of the whole Assembly event. Demos are the historical core of the event, and even though Assembly has expanded into other territories, demos are still a very important day of the modern Assembly. Demo teams compete in different categories e.g. oldskool (only demos that run on platforms released before 1993 are allowed) and 4k (the whole file must not exceed 4 kilobytes). The winners of the democompos are real showcases of programming, which require the coordinated effort of several people.



Picture from yesterday's air guitar competition. The competition song was Lordi's ""Hard Rock Hallelujah"

There are several other types of competitions at Assembly. Unlike you might think, Assembly encourages its visitors to exercise by organizing basket- and floorball competitions. The computer lovers might be more at home with less demanding sports like disk and CD throwing. You can also compete more passively like decorating your computer or your computer place.


Here's an example of an interesting decoration of a computer case

Our booth still stands even though we've run out of sweets and other giveouts. The games have been popular (at least the people working at the booth have been playing a lot). The students from TiKo have shown their bravery and relentlessness (or madness and consumption of energy drinks) by stayng awake and watching over the booth on both nights. Spares us the bother of having to tear down and build up the stand every morning to keep our valuable equipment safe.

Tomorrow it's time to go so check the blog for the final report.

Text and photos: Eevi Korhonen, 09IMP student
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Assembly Summer 2010 
Read all Assembly stories
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From Assembly with Love, vol. 2

Eevi explains about the ArtTech seminar:

Today's big event for us was the ArtTech seinar we held together with the other schools titled"Game Development Education, Clubs, and Cooperative Organizations in Finland". Each school had 10 minutes to showcase their programmes and game projects and we finished with a shared 15 min panel on the schools' co-operatives and cooperation. I was represented our school on both occasions (though I didn't mean to). In the 10 min slot I told about our 5D2 project, even though as an afterthought it would've been good to spend couple of minutes going over the Media programme, too. But I think our marketing will speak for itself anyway (today I've dropped off about a hundred leaflets all over the Areena).

So, I accidentally participated in the co-operative panel too, even though my original plan was to quietly exit the stage after my talk. At the end of my part I just couldn't figure out a way to do that gracefully and there were four chairs at the stage (meant for the speakers while they were waiting their turn), and on top of it all, the vent was being streamed live to thousands of people over the Internet and at the Areena. I managed to get through the questions with anyone noticing my lack of real expertise in the area (the correct panelist for Tampere would've been the guy who was tasked with running the panel, so he couldn't both ask and answer the questions without it looking bit silly).

By the way, you can follow the Assembly live over the net throughAssemblyTV. I probably should've mentioned this yestreday, so you could've followed the aforementioned seminar, but I genuinely forgot that also those were being streamed on the AssemblyTV. But no worries, for according to my knowledge those recordings will be later put on their own Vimeo channel. So just be patient, you'll be able to see it sometime later.

Tero tells what's been happening at the booth:

People have been stopping by our booth throughout the day, playing games and asking questions about our programme. The Score games seem to be constantly popular, drawing in players and interested crowds (perhaps due to the comfy bean bags?). Some of the 5D2 games have also turned out quite popular, Elder Scrolls being the game of choice for many of the players.

We managed to kind of fix the touchscreen, or at least figure out why it wouldn't co-operate with our little interactive tour of TTVO. It seems the display doesn't quite interpret clicking and holding down the mouse button the same way it handles touching the screen and holding your finger in place. As a quick fix we noticed that touching the screen and dragging your finger does work, so although a bit tedious to use, the tour is now somewhat functional.


Text: Tero Koskela and Eevi Korhonen, 09IMP students

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Assembly Summer 2010 
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From Assembly with Love, vol. 1

Greetings from Assembly!

Finally I have enough time to blog about the first day's events, and because pictures equal a thousand words, I've used them quite a lot in this entry. Day started slowly, as we left off an hour later than planned, which was not surprising. We had to make a detour to our driver's home and pick up some gas before finally heading towards Helsinki. We made it to Hartwall Areena without further incident, and so we could start building the booth.

Our van was pretty full as the picture shows. We had e.g. four bean bags, a fridge and a projector screen.


We could not avoid small problems at this point: there weren't enough long LAN cables, we had to move our stuff away from the fire post, cables and backbags littered the floor and on top of it all, our original layout for the whole booth area had to be redone. Everything was sorted out eventually, and the booth is (and has been for several hours now) in full Assembly mode.



The highlight of our stand is the 42-inch TV the people from TiKo have brought. It's used to run their very own Swarms game for Xbox360.

And it is my pleasure to announce that the TTVO interactive tour has been released. Unfortunately we could not release it hear yet, as we didn't get our hands on the touchscreen until today, so we had no chance to test our little show before today. We found out that the movement didn't work as we intended, so we have to fix it before we can run it on the touchscreen. But I hope we get it fixed, because it would be so awesome!


This is the ASUS-sponsored touchscreen which will hopefully run the interactive tour tomorrow. Meanwhile it is showing the TAMK slideshow, which is not bad either..

Text and photos: Eevi Korhonen, 09IMP student
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Assembly Summer 2010 
Read all Assembly stories
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From Assembly with Love, prologue

There's only one day between us and the Assembly. We'll be leaving early on Thursday morning to be at the site building our booth before the hordes of nerds overtake the Arena. We'll be blogging all the way to Sunday, so this announces our at least four-chapter-long tale of booth watching, computers and gallons of energy drink. So stay tuned to this blog!

The preparations for this weekend's event are almost complete! We have finished our masterpiece: The Interactive Tour of TTVO! It's the website/fictional tour we made with Flash to showcase what's it like studying here in TTVO (from the viewpoint of a Media student). Beware, there might be some heavy caricatures and we also had to condense the campus into a single hallway, so your experience will be more of a metaphor than an actual virtual tour.

Above a screenshot as a little taste of what's to come. The website will have its Grand Opening at Assembly, so you'll have to wait a little longer to try it out yourself.

Text: Eevi Korhonen, 09IMP student
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Assembly Summer 2010
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"Connection Lost" Victorius in the Languages Through Lenses 2010 Competition

Outi Hartikainen directs actor Pertti Hokkanen at the demo video shoots

The film competition Languages Through Lenses 2010 organized by European Commission, ELIA in partnership with PRIX EUROPA and in cooperation with CILECT brought victory to "Connection Lost", a short film script written by Hannu Koivuranta and Outi Hartikainen.

An international jury chose 15 best scripts from over a 100 participants from 18 EU-countries. Each script will be given a 5000 EUR grant for the production. The main themes of the scripts are about motivating people to learn languages and raising interest in different cultures.

A demo video was produced for "Connection Lost" and it was presented to the international jury. You can watch the video at http://vimeo.com/9813376. The video was made at the school studio in front of a greenscreen, but the final short film will be shot on location. Plans for using a motion capture -suit with live action filming are underway.

2nd year film students Hannu and Outi - together with scriptwriting lecturer Arto Koskinen - are headed to Amsterdam on the 15th and 16th of April to develop the script to its final version with international professionals. The competition itself is far from over since the short films to be produced from the scripts will compete at Prix Europa next October as a part of the Berlin Film Festival.

Story: Hannu Koivuranta

TAMK is ELIA and CILECT member
ELIA (The European League of Institutes of the Arts)
CILECT ( International Association of Film and Television Schools)
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Prix Europa
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"Connection Lost"-demo video from Hannu Koivuranta on Vimeo.

TAMK Students Awarded in Barcelona

TAMK School of Art and Media tourists in front of the university

The DobleClick-festival of University UVic was organised internationally for the first time this year, as a bunch of TTVO-students headed towards Barcelona and the town of Vic to change experiences with the university. The three-day festival consisted of not only screenings of both of the schools' films, but also of workshops given by students.

Director Minna Korhonen, cinematographer Nalle Mielonen and editor Nina Forsman were there to represent their film Family Portrait. On their workshop they focused on the use of stop motion animation in a film. In turn, the directors Ville Hakonen and Jussi Sandhu and the assistant director Milla Kaski of the film Whistle While You Work, handled green screen technique, and what they had overall learned from making the film - both in good and bad. The UVic-students' workshops consisted of everything from photography to copyright-issues.

The students thought the workshops to be very informative - even when they had been closely involved with the project in question. "Although I was a set assistant in Whistle While You Work, I hadn't known any details of using green screen in a film, until now", says Korhonen. Many of the students felt that just having given a workshop was a valuable learning experience.

TTVO-films also had success in the festival competition: Whistle While You Work grabbed the win for "Best audiovisual work" and a shared first place for "Commited Subject" with a UVic-film Hoy tampaco. Vesa Jokinen's animation Jack in a Box took home the prizes in "Best audiovisual credits" and "Creativity".

The students that took part of this trip wish all the best to the DobleClick-festival in the future and hope that the event will grow even bigger and more international. The event was filled with exceptionally good team spirit, so we believe that there will be no lack of motivation!

Story: Jussi Sandhu and Milla Kaski

The delegation was led by senior lecturer Pertti "Peeko" Näränen

Up: Ville Hakonen and Milla Kaski analyzing the green screen -process / Down: Teacher Cristina Perales and Festival organizer Miquel Cornellà capturing the workshop

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DobleClick
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TAMK Goes Tampere International Film Festival 2010

The students of TAMK School of Art and Media are annually involved in Tampere Film Festival in many ways. There are a lot of students active with the practical arrangements and duties; working or doing their work practice or voluntary work. The film and television students are also responsible for the broadcasts of the Film Festival Studio and organisation of the Film Fest Party.

The film festival is for many students a part of their studies, a considerable number of study points will be gained. The Film Festival studio is part of the Multicamera course, and participation in Film Festival seminars and workshops add to study points as well as work practice does. The biggest amount of study points is however collected in the process of shooting the films that are seen in the national competition screenings and the special show of School of Art and Media new student films.

This is how TAMK students show on the Film Festival programme:

Wed March 10
14:30-15:00 Film Festival Studio, Dina TV

Thu March 11
14:00-16:00 Memory of Tomorrow D: Pekka Saari Plevna 5 (National Contest 9)
14:30-15:00 Film Festival Studio, Dina TV
16:00-17:00 TAMK New Student Films, Pakkahuone
21:00-04:00 Film Fest Party, Klubi

Fri March 12
14:00-16:00 When I Move... D: Ville Salminen Plevna 5 (National Contest 10)
14:30-15:00 Film Festival Studio, Dina TV

Sat March 13
12:00-14:00 Memory of Tomorrow D: Pekka Saari Plevna 2 (National Contest 9)
16:00-18:00 When I Move... D: Ville Salminen Plevna 2 (National Contest 10)

Additionally many film professionals graduated from TAMK are visible at the Film Festival. E.g. five of the thirteen directors of the Finnish Music Video Show have studied here; Teemu Niukkanen, Jussi Kärnä, Iiro Hokkanen and Miikka Lommi in the Degree Programme of Media and Sami Sänpäkkilä in the Degree Programme of Fine Arts.


The films of the TAMK New Films Special Screening:
    * Adaption, D: Henna Inkinen
    * Asepussi/Gunbag, D: Jukka Hautajärvi
    * Esso, D: Petri Uusitalo
    * Helvetin hyvää työtä/Whistle while you work, D: Ville Hakonen/Jussi Sandhu
    * HERA D: Sanni Rajapolvi
    * Herääminen/The Awakening, D: Miro Laiho
    * Jackpot D: Petri Uusitalo
    * Kahvia ja tupakkaa/Coffee and Cigarettes, D: Tomi Pietilä
    * Korpin laulu/Raven's song, D: Aino Suni
    * Limppu/The Loaf, D: Pauli Kopu
    * Niin paljon sinua halusin/All that I wanted, D: Aino Suni
    * Oman onnensa leipuri/Lucky Baker, D: Markus Aaltonen
    * Perhepotretti/Family Portrait, D: Minna Korhonen
    * Pitkän päivän aamu/Finding Frank, D: Joona Sarisalmi
    * Toivon murusia/Crumbs of Hope, D: Emmi-Sofia Markkanen
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Tampere Film Festival March 10-14 2010
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A New Festival Sees Daylight in Tampere!

Like all the great ideas in Finland, this was also born in sauna in the end of year 2009.  At that time some guys from Bubiklubi came up with the idea of arranging new festival in Tampere during the next summer.  Time passed and the idea changed into a plan, and now if everything goes as planned in the end of July there’s going to be a music festival at the main campus of TAMK. This yet-nameless-festival will be just like all the other festivals – it offers good music performed by Finnish artists, food, drink and other entertainment. The biggest difference is the price – the organizers want to keep the price of the tickets as low as possible, so that the main target group – the students, wouldn’t miss this event because the lack of money. This is possible because Bubiklubi isn’t trying to make profit with this event.

But wait a minute... what is Bubiklubi?

Bubiklubi is one the clubs in TAMK and it has arranged many big studentparties and happenings during schoolyears.  So, arranging events is at least someway familiar to the boys, but arranging something this big isn’t. So they have to be a little bit nuts trying to do something like this. The boys are admitting that the biggest challenge will be finding the money to make this event even possible. However, they aren’t  terrified of this, they only have to work harder.

At this moment, the group is trying to find sponsors and technical staff. The advertising starts in the spring, before the schools end.

We will hear about this event later, it’s guaranteed.

Written by: Sanna Lindroos
Media Production '07

Campus Party Europe in Madrid 15-18 April

The Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation will celebrate the Spanish EU presidency this spring by inviting the most innovative young talents to the greatest event of Internet and Digital Media ever, the Campus Party Europe in the Magic Box, Madrid April 15-18.

Asociación E3 Futura is responsible for organizing this stunning celebration of young creativity; creators of the best projects in all 27 EU member states are invited with trips to Madrid, meals and accommodation covered. There will be three villages of knowledge: Science, Innovation and Digital Creativity.

Innovation Village

If you have developed software, an Internet or Mobile application or Social Media Service that you proudly know is unique and brings digital media further; nominate yourself to be invited to the Innovation Village of the Party.

Innovation area participants will present their projects; participate in workshops, challenges, parties and other activities of Campus Party. Everybody has also the opportunity not only to be invited, but also to be awarded at the event.

TAMK is cooperating with Campus Party; the head of the Media Programme Cai Melakoski is coordinator of the innovation village. You can also contact him (cai_aet_tamk.fi), if you have a project that deserves to be present in Madrid.

Campus Party Europe

Photo from Campus Party Valencia 2009

Hello from EUROPRIX Festival, Graz

EUROPRIX Multimedia Festival, now third time in ever so wonderful and hospitable Graz, was once again unforgettable. Populated by members of the 20 nominee teams, digital media industry representatives, lecturers and students the three days were filled with energy and creativity plus all other fun stuff.

On Thursday the festival was opened at the regional TV-station with an exhibition of nominee projects and get-together. Friday morning I participated in a project consortium meeting, and then moderated the Academic Lounge with my friend Jak Boumans, secretary general of European Academy of Digital Media. We had most awarding discussion and networking with colleagues from universities cross Europe.

In the afternoon we joined other festival participants for the "4 SCREENS 4 YOU CREATING CONTENTS" event with inspiring keynotes by Alois Ferscha (Research Studio Pervasive Computing), Juha Kaario (Nokia Research Centre), Charly Pall (Google) and Madanmohan Rao (Mobile Monday Global), moderated by Latif Ladid (IPV6 Forum) and tasted with excellent discussion.

Friday evening we opened another nominee project exhibition at Kunsthaus Graz, then young people disappeared to Graz by night and elderly gentlemen like me went to hotel.

Saturday was the most important part of the festival. All day long we saw the nominee teams present their projects. This has always been the most giving content for me; after having seen all the entries already during the jury work and having fell in love with a number of them it is a hilarious experience to see the young talents showing them alive.

Saturday evening witnessed the most exiting part of the festival: The EUROPRIX Awards gala. The winners this year are:

• Online/Web projects: Donkeypedia, Netherlands
• Mobile applications: Showtime!, Austria
• Games: Swords & Soldiers, Netherlands
• Category Interactive Computer Graphics: Vuvox, Israel
• Content Tools & Interface Design: Flow-er, Israel
• Interactive installations: Akustisch, Switserland
• Digital Video & Animations: Desconstruct, a stereoscopic experiment, Germany

Overall winner: Swords & Soldiers, Netherlands

The Special Award for the project with the best business potential went to Moogo.com (Finland), and The Adventures of Tinger (Germany) got the Special Jury Mention for a game with a high level of interactive storytelling.

Donkeypedia also won the Nokia Ubimedia MindTrek Award in October.

More info about winners and nominees (europrix.org)
More about EUROPRIX in the School of Art and Media blog

During the festival it was also agreed that the cooperation between EUROPRIX and TAMK School of Art and Media will be continued in many ways. EUROPRIX will be present at our International Week and Tampere Art Factory Festival in May.

Pictured: The Moogo.com team (Finland) was awarded with The Best Business Potential Award, from left to right Antti Ala-Ilkka, Mikko Nurminen, Kimmo Pekari

Electrician Team: First We Took St.Petersburg, Now We Take SiChuan

This is a note from director of Electrician Miina Alajärvi, sent to members of the Electrician group on Facebook:

Heihoi!

I'm writing from my vacation in Sweden. Good news reach even here! The Electrician keeps on competing around the world!

The Electrician is competing for student film award in Kettupäivät (Finnish for "Fox Days"), an annual Finnish short and documentary film festival in Helsinki. The 26th Kettupäivät will take place from November 4 2009 until November 7 2009. They haven't announced the schedule yet, but I'm inviting everyone in Helsinki to come and see it to Andorra! I'll be there for sure.
Kettupäivät

I got good news today,
The Electrician has been nominated for Special Jury Award of International “Gold Panda” Awards for Student of 2009 (10th) Sichuan TV Festival. The first website is amazing. Not a word in English. Totally psychedelic!
09年新晋3D主流网游《天下贰》，网易六年亿资打造
10th Sichuan TV Festival

And last but not least The Electrician is off to Italy!
THE ELECTRICIAN's been officialy selected for the next edition of Imaginaria’s festival. The 7th Imaginaria will take place in Conversano, Italy from 11 to 15 november 2009.
Imaginaria Film Festival

So Finland, China and Italy in November. In China they actually still do execute people with electric chair. How will they like Marvin?

puss ach kram
Miina

***
The Electrician won three prizes in the Beginning Film Festival in St.Petersburg.

The Electrician will be busy next weeks at following festivals:
4.-7.11: Kettupäivät, Helsinki
4.-8.11: Arctic Fury Film Festival, Rovaniemi, Finland
6.-8.11: 10th SiChuan TV Festival
11.-15.11: Imaginaria Film Festival, Conversano, Italy
17.-21.11: YOUKI 11 international Youth Media Festival, Wels, Austria
19.-20.11: Arctic & Fabulous Film Festival Jyväskylä, Finland
19.-22.11: Up-and-coming International Film Festival, Hannover, Germany
4.-12.12: Rencontres Henri Langlois, International Film Schools Festival, Poitiers, France

The Electrician, with premiere in February this year, has been shown at several festivals in Finland and in Norway, Switzerland, UK, Germany, Portugal, Czech Republic, Puerto Rico and Russia.

The Electrician is a cooperation between TAMK and Salford University.

The Electrician home
Electrician group@Facebook

Electrician in the School of Art and Media blog

The Electrician Won Three Prizes in St.Petersburg

VIII Open St.Petersburg Student Film Festival "BEGINNING" took place this week in St.Petersburg, Russia. The global contest of the festival invited again this year two films from TAMK to be shown in the category for Fiction films.

This time it was success for the Electrician. Sound designer Jarno Muhonen was awarded as the Best Sound Supervisor and scriptwriter Jussi Jokihaara with the Best Script of Fiction Film. Director Miina Alajärvi was granted a diploma for the image of the cinematographic language.

Jussi Jokihaara's script was a result of his work when he was a student of the MA in Screenwriting programme, jointly arranged by TAMK and University of Salford.

The Electrician is the story of Marvin - an executioner in charge of the electric chair, who has to find a new way to use his unusual skill when he becomes unemployed. The film is a co-production with Salford University, UK.

Earlier this month the Electrician became second in the Audience Award Competition of the Reikäreuna Film Festival.

The Electrician will keep busy this autumn, it has been invited to:
Upcoming International Film Festival Hannover
Shnit International Short Film Festival in Berne and Cologne

Beginning festival&winners

The Electrician home (also trailer)
All posts about the Electrician (TAMK School of Art and Media blog)
The Electrician@Facebook