Triangle of Hope by Juho Kuosmanen to be shown at Tampere Cathedral – Esa Toivola to improvise live accompaniment on organ

Juho Kuosmanen’s Triangle of Hope will be shown at Tampere Cathedral on Friday, March 8, as part of Tampere Film Festival’s programme. The screening will include three short films: Scrap-Mattila and the Beautiful Woman (2012), The Moonshiners (2017) and A Planet Far Away (2023). At Tampere Film Festival, the films are screened under the name Triangle of Hope – Short Films by Juho Kuosmanen.

Juho Kuosmanen (b. 1979) is one of the most respected directors in Finnish cinema. He’s known in Finland and abroad for his feature films The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki (2016) and Compartment No. 6 (2021).

At the Tampere Film Festival screening, the music to the short films will be improvised by Tampere Cathedral’s organ player, Esa Toivola. The screening starts at 19 and has free entry.

– Among our modern lives, it’s important to offer people glimmers of hope. When we thought about showing silent films at Tampere Cathedral, Juho Kuosmanen’s films were a fairly obvious choice. Kuosmanen’s short films are humorous and humane stories about the obstacles of everyday people that are overcome by working together. And it’s definitely exciting to experience the movies with Esa Toivola’s music in the festive milieu of the Cathedral, says Riina Mikkonen, Executive Director at Tampere Film Festival.

The viewer empathises with the underdog

The common threads that run through the films are warm humour and a point of view characteristic to Kuosmanen’s films: the viewer follows the story empathising with the underdog. The main characters in the films are a lonely scraps salesman, two moonshiners, and two siblings living on a lighthouse island.

The first film of the evening, Scrap-Mattila and the Beautiful Woman from 2012, is a story based on truth about a scraps salesman targeted by rumours and suspicion in a small town. The fictional film nears a societal documentary, since the film is loosely based on the life of Seppo Mattila, a scraps salesman playing the leading role.

The second film, The Moonshiners, is a new version of the first Finnish fictional film by the same name from 1907. The version directed by Kuosmanen had its premiere in 2017, when Finland celebrated its 100th year of independence and it had been 110 years since the original film premiered.

The original Moonshiners is lost, but Kuosmanen made his version based on information that survived about the film. Shot in three days, the hilarious adaptation is reminiscent of silent comedies from the beginning of film history. One of the two main characters is played by writer and theatre director Juha Hurme.

The third silent film, A Planet Far Away, combines old space odysseys and grand questions about life and death. The main characters are two siblings living on a lighthouse island, lighthouse keeper Marlanda and her little brother Maximilian, who dream of a reunion after death. Main character Marlanda is portrayed by Jaana Paananen, who appears in each of the three films.

Tampere Film Festival’s fifth time at Tampere Cathedral

It’s the fifth time that Tampere Film Festival and the Evangelical Lutheran Congregation of Tampere collaborate to organise a silent film screening at the Cathedral. The music of every screening has been improvised by Tampere Cathedral’s organ player, Esa Toivola. 

Tampere Film Festival’s first screening at the Cathedral in 2019 was the silent film Murtovarkaus (1926) based on a play by Minna Canth. In 2020 the film shown was The Phantom Carriage (1921) directed by Victor Sjöström, in 2022 it was The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, and last year it was the Ukrainian silent classic, Man with a Movie Camera (1929) directed by Dziga Vertov.

Tampere Film Festival will take place on 6–10 March, 2024. The full programme of the festival will be published and individual tickets will go on sale on 14 February.

TRIANGLE OF HOPE BY JUHO KUOSMANEN

Friday 8 March 2024, 19:00–20:00, Tampere Cathedral
Free entry
Age restriction S (allowed for all ages)
Can be understood in Finnish and English

Scrap-Mattila and the Beautiful Woman (2012)
Duration: 27 min
Directed and written by Juho Kuosmanen
Camera work by J-P Passi
Cast: Seppo Mattila, Outi Airola

The Moonshiners (2017)
Duration: 16 min
Directed by Juho Kuosmanen
Written by Juho Kuosmanen and J. V-s
Camera work by J-P Passi
Cast: Jaana Paananen, Juha Hurme, Tomi Alatalo

A Planet Far Away (2023)
Duration: 17 min
Directed by Juho Kuosmanen
Written by Juho Kuosmanen and Anna Airola
Camera work by J-P Passi and Arsen Sarkisiants
Staging by Kari Kankaanpää
Cast: Jaana Paananen, Aku-Petteri Pahkamäkimäki