Raimo Silius, founding member of the Tampere Short Film Festival Association.

Raimo Silius' Column: Here we come again!

This year marks the 32nd Tampere International Short Film Festival. Two major changes have been introduced into the event. This time, all the films taking part in both the national and international competition series will be screened twice. With the addition of the new Micromovies-contest, this results in a total of 54 screenings.

The other important rearrangement this year is that the festival center has been moved to the Finlayson area in the very center of Tampere. There are now nine theaters showing festival films, more than ever before. Movies are shown in four halls of the Plevna movie theater complex, at the Pakkahuone hall of Tullikamari, in the Kino-Palatsi cinema and in the new Hällä-theater. In addition to these regular screening halls, there is the 25th anniversary show of the Pikku Kakkonen children's program in the large auditorium of Tampere Hall, and the Trash Film Festival at the Yo-talo Student Union restaurant and club.

The major changes of the 32-year-old festival have occurred with intervals of approximately ten years. The first International Short Film Festival was held at the Kino-Palatsi movie theater in 1970, with screenings in both the Hällä theater and the Yo-talo club as well. In 1971 and 1973-1981, the event was held a fair distance from the city center at the Tampere Polytechnic Institute.

In 1980, the young director Aki Kaurismäki anticipated the end of the festival's exile. In his words, "the festival can not operate on plain yoghurt, but smoking must be allowed in the lobby area, and there must also be a restaurant serving beer for the spectators and even wine for our foreign guests."

The festival soon returned to the city center. The event was centered in the Kino-Palatsi movie theater from 1982 to the spring of 1991, when the theater stopped showing movies and the festival had to move again. In the years between 1992 and 2001 the festival screenings were held in the Pakkahuone hall of Tullikamari, the small auditorium of Tampere Hall and the Studio movie theater. Kino-Palatsi returned to the festival's list of venues in 1996 for the screening of rare gems from the Finnish Film Archives, and it still serves this function.

So the history of the Film Festival is divided in three episodes in terms of venues: The eleven years in the Kino-Palatsi in 1970 and 1982-1991, the ten years at the Tampere Polytechnic in 1971 and 1973-1981, and finally the ten-year period at the Tullikamari and Tampere Hall in 1992-2001. It remains to be seen whether this year's event starts another ten-year episode.

The shorter the better. See for yourself in Tampere, March 5 - 10, 2002!

TEXT: Raimo Silius
TRANSLATION: Petri Raivio
PHOTO: Inkeri Salonharju
UPDATED: March 4, 2002

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