Maarit Jaakkola, one of two editor in chiefs
Emmi Marttinen, picture
Marjo Väliaho, translation
Shrill applause! Tampere Film Festival has joined those festivals that have decided to create the official history for short films.
It may feel strange that the oldest European short film festivals have been there for decades but there is still no agreement on what is meant by the term ”short film”. What is the duration of a short film? What is a good short film like?
This year, Tampere Film Festival joined the project originated by the Irish Cork Film Festival that is to create the international canon of short films, the ”official” collection of the most important short films, during the next two or three years. There is no intention to create a binding verbal definition but to show and gather brilliant examples of short films.
The word ”canon” will surely give chills to many. We have always regarded short films as a fascinatingly wild and free jungle; short films have nothing that is moulded and they are food for thought. In short films, there are no paved roads or exact co-ordinates. Each viewer makes their own way through the terrain that is loosely enclosed by fiction, animated films, documents and experimental films, thus making a personal map of the terrain.
However, it is important to create some kind of a canon so that short films find new audiences in the future as well. For example, no one has so far written a book about the history of the Finnish short films. There are no theories about short films as there are about short stories in the study of the literature. Moreover, there are gaping holes in documenting the silent history of the film festivals.
In addition to the educational institutions, organizations and media, film festivals are such institutions that comment upon and review short films and initiate new people into this world. For many of the journalist students that have written articles to this newspaper, this is the first contact with short films. At this moment there is also among the juries a youth jury that has to create criteria for the best Finnish short film. A canon would indeed make the initiation with this genre much easier!
The canonization project should be taken seriously, but not too seriously. The fact that this project was mentioned in Tampere´s application for the European cultural capital shows the serious attitude towards the project. Even so, it should be remembered that a film is a film is a film - an unyielding and disobedient form of artistic expression - as the main guest of the festival, Jonas Mekas, stated in the press conference of the Film Festival.
Updated 12 March 2007 8:32
