Tampere Film Festival and Yle in collaboration: a historical film screening and discussion on artificial intelligence

Tampere Film Festival and the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle will jointly organise both a film screening and a public event during the upcoming festival week. On Sunday 10 March Yle Teema and Tampere Film Festival will organise a special screening Childhood in the South Seas, where the documentary films Monica in the South Seas (2023) and Moana with Sound (1926, 1981) will be shown.

The historical film Moana was made in 1926, when documentary film pioneers Robert and Frances Flaherty travelled with their family to Samoa to film local life. The Flaherty’s daughter Monica Flaherty restored the film with indigenous voices and songs more than half a century after filming, and the result was Moana with Sound.

Monica in the South Seas, on the other hand, is a documentary directed by Mika Taanila and Sami van Ingen about Monica Flaherty’s ambitious work for the complete sound version of the film Moana. The documentary tells about the inaccessibility of the past, the fantasies of Western people and Monica’s life’s work. Monica Flaherty was the great aunt of van Ingen, the co-director of the film.

The screening, which will take place on Sunday 10 March at 1 pm at Finnkino Cine Atlas, is free to enter, but to secure a seat you must claim a free ticket for the screening in advance from the festival’s own ticket outlets, which open on 4 March.

The public event will discuss artificial intelligence and screenwriting

In cooperation with Yle Kulttuuricocktail, an open discussion event related to artificial intelligence and screenwriting will be held. The subject of the discussion is the effect of artificial intelligence on the scriptwriting of films and TV series, and professionals in the film industry will be speaking about it. The event will take place on Saturday 9 March at 2 pm at Finnkino Cine Atlas.

At the beginning of the discussion, the documentary Written by AI (2024) directed by Ada Johnsson, will be watched. The documentary follows how director Siiri Halko and, for example, actress Seidi Haarla are working with the algorithm. Inside the documentary, a short film directed by Halko and made with the help of artificial intelligence, is seen. The background of the work is the scripts of Finnish hit films, based on which artificial intelligence has produced new scene scripts.

The documentary’s cinema premiere is at Tampere Film Festival, and it will be published on Yle Areena on 11 March and shown on Yle Teema on 12 March. The subject will be further discussed on the show Kulttuuricocktail Live on 13 March.

Written by Machine is a co-production between Yleisradio and the Department of Film at Aalto University.

The full programme of the Tampere Film Festival will be published and individual tickets will go on sale on Wednesday, 14 February.

TAMPERE FILM FESTIVAL & YLE TEEMA: CHILDHOOD IN THE SOUTH SEAS
Sun 10.3. | 13:00–16:00 | Cine Atlas 2

Monica in the South Seas
Finland | 2023 | 73 min | Directors: Sami van Ingen, Mika Taanila | Fin/Eng

Moana with Sound
United States | 1926, 1981 | 98 min | Directors: Robert Flaherty, Frances Flaherty, Monica Flaherty | Eng

TAMPERE FILM FESTIVAL & YLE KULTTUURICOCKTAIL: AI AND SCRIPTWRITING
Sat 9.3. | 14:00–16:00 | Cine Atlas 3 | In English

Written by AI
Finland | 2024 | 25 min | Director: Ada Johnsson | Fin/Eng