Ulla Leisio
Ulla Leisio is now retired, but in 2021–2022 she spent seven months as a broadcast and distribution expert for the Finnish Film Foundation. Leisio’s career was in film distribution, and she retired as the production manager of film distribution at Finnkino in 2006–2019. Finnkino represents films from Universal and Paramount in Finland and distributes films from the Danish Scanbox. Previously Leisio worked at Disney and before that twenty-odd years at United International Pictures (UIP). Ulla Leisio has a wide experience in film distribution covering all its sectors. She has worked with American studio films as well as domestic, European and other international films.
Marjo Levlin
Marjo Levlin (born 1966) is an artist and a filmmaker originally from Swedish-speaking Ostrobothnia, who now lives and works in Helsinki. In her works, she deals with both personal and universal topics, combining history with current phenomena.
Levlin started out as a painter, but now her medium is mainly short films and installations. She often constructs her works utilising collected and found objects as well as coincidence. In her latest works, archives, science and research have an even stronger role. Levlin’s works have been presented in both individual and joint exhibitions and screened at festivals since the mid-1990s.
In 2021, Levlin won the Risto Jarva award for her experimental documentary Ellipsis (2020), where the narrator runs into animal shaped shooting targets in a forest. From there, the narrator starts to uncoil a breath-taking and fascinating skein of cultural history about animal and human rights, about the power of the gaze, and about objectification and othering.
Juha Samola
Juha Samola has been happily retired for three years from his long-term (30 years) position as head secretary at The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture, AVEK. More and more, he appreciates well made, bold and thought-provoking societal films as well as art that is borderline surrealistic or otherwise a bit strange.
In 2020, Samola was awarded the DocPoint Apollo award for lifetime achievement, and the previous year, a similar accolade from The Finnish Documentary Guild (“The documentary deed of the year”). He is a deputy member of the board at The Finnish Film Foundation (years 2022–2024).
Samola walks or rides his bicycle and enjoys the cafes of Helsinki with a book.
