The festival office was crowded with competition candidates.
	- From Doorman to Previewer

Viewing the Competition Candidates Takes Some 850 Hours

This year, the different competitions of the Tampere Film Festival feature over 190 movies. The screeners went through over 2500 competition candidates before announcing the films chosen for the competitions. Only some two percent of the candidates were accepted to the competitions this year.

In terms of candidates, Tampere Film Festival is one of the three largest short film festivals: the other two are the German Oberhausen and French Clermont-Ferrand festivals.

Selection Process Changes toward the European Model

This year, the selection of the competition entries has been organized differently than previously. For the past ten years, the preselection jury has consisted of cinema professionals from outside the festival organization.

This year the competition films were chosen by a jury assembled from the staff and board of the Film Festival. The festival director, Antti Vuorio, was also a member of the jury.

– In practice, the preselection has not changed a lot, because the festival board consists similarly of cinema professionals such as producers, representatives of television companies and critics. The preselection is now closer to the European model in which the festival chooses its own entries, Vuorio relates.

Vuorio believes that the new preselection model will motivate the organizers better than ever.

– The festival staff had better back up the selections, as they are their own.

The Selection Process Is a Long One

The preselection has three stages. The first stage begins already during the previous year, when the festival staff and co-operation partners, the experts of the field, view the year's movie selection at international festivals. If Tampere Film Festival receives an entry which has already had a good response at international festivals, it will be directly recommended for the competitions.

At the second stage, the selectors view all entries sent to the Tampere competitions. The viewing is started well in advance, in September as the first films arrive. However, roughly nine out of ten entries do not arrive until the last week of the entry schedule. A few hundred movies are accepted to the final viewings, and the competition entries are chosen from this group.

This year the selections were made by a group of about 20 people. Antti Vuorio says that the preselection put a great stock on the representation of different continents, countries and genres. The separate competitions are also considered as a whole, which should represent the features the festival wishes to convey to the audience.

– Tampere Film Festival is a so-called ”general” festival with various genres. Festivals which concentrate on specific themes or genres are a different thing altogether,” says Vuorio.

During the festival week, the audience sees only a fraction of the works viewed by the preselection jury. Vuorio himself has visited ten international film festivals last year, and viewed over 800 movies in three months.

One way to estimate the time taken up by the entries is to multiply the number of films by 20 minutes. This adds up to 50,000 minutes for the 2,500 movies; over 34 days and nights.

	Preselection done, festival to go. Festival director Antti Vuorio looks at a computer screen for a change.

TEXT: Elina Jokisalo
TRANSLATION: Antti Pasanen
PHOTOS: Elina Jokisalo
UPDATED: 1 March 2002

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