Santa's Wild Home

Green lights dance across a star-filled sky, and snowflakes sparkle on the trees. It is little wonder Lapland is famous as a realm of elves and flying reindeer, the magical home of Santa Claus. This northernmost region of mainland Europe, however, is a real place, with real animals such as reindeer, Great Gray owls, wolverines, eagles, wolves, musk oxen and Brown bears who live out their lives in the tundra and forest.

Spring in Carpathian Ruthenia

Karel Plicka was also cinematographer of this short movie. Editor in charge was Alexander Hackenschmied. There is an extraordinary emotional charge, every shot is working on its own, such as photographs, paintings and poetic complement intertitles in this short. From the perspective of nature and the perspective is shifting to the people and their habits, work and clothes. Peculiar documentary shots underscore Ruthenians (men, women and children) who are interested in looking into the camera and the curious "eye" showing off their habits.

Mythscape: Remembering The End Of The World

Based on more than two decades of systematic research and cross-cultural comparison by comparative mythologist David Talbott, Remembering the End of the World reconstructs a cosmic drama when planets hung in the sky close to the earth–an epoch of celestial wonder giving way to overwhelming terror. This highly visual presentation offers new answers to enigmas that have baffled experts for centuries. Why did every ancient civilization celebrate a former “Age of the Gods”, an age claimed to have ended in earth threatening disaster? What was meant by the lost “Golden Age?” Why did ancient sky worshipers refer to Saturn as “the sun?” Why was Venus worshiped as the “Mother Goddess?” And why did both Old and New World astronomers celebrate the planet Mars as a great warrior whose battles shook the heavens?

It's The Same Story

Two storytellers put forth their versions of the story of Shravan Kumar. The art for the film uses painted images from a wooden portable shrine called a Kaavad. The film is a collaborative work between traditional Kaavad storytellers and Kaavad artists from Rajasthan, together with the filmmaker. Combining lush animation with live-action, the film is an interpretation of two stories which are forever fused in the act of telling and retelling.

Two Forces

Docudrama about the Soviet occupation of a Finnish village in the fall before the Winter War.

A Day With the National Ice Hockey Team

This documentary by the Finnish Broadcasting Company covers the Finnish national ice hockey team preparing for the spring 1974 World Championships. The film crew is there at meetings, training sessions, tactical meetings and also visits the infirmary. Along with the coaches Kalevi Numminen, Raimo Määttänen and the team leader Teuvo Peltola we also see glimpses of Heikki Riihiranta, Juhani Tamminen, Lasse Oksanen, Stig Wetzell and Veli-Pekka Ketola.

Ice Hockey World Championship Jubilee in Tampere

The Tampere-based VipVision production company recorded the scenes of jubilation at the Tampere Central Square in the spring of 1995 when the Finnish national ice hockey team celebrated after winning the World Championships. The fight song Den glider in rings out more than once, and Pate Mustajärvi works the crowd into a singing frenzy.

The Seer and the Unseen

A magic realist fable about invisible elves, financial collapse and the surprising power of belief, told through the story of an Icelandic woman - a real life Lorax who speaks on behalf of nature under threat.

Laço de Fita

Jarmila Šuláková – královna lidové písně

Over Mountains, Over Valleys

The Matica slovenská (a mostly government-sponsored cultural, academic, and archival institution) employed Karol Plicka (1894-1987) as its ethnographer, who was able to make documentary shorts from about 1926. He obtained funding from the President’s Office in 1928 to produce an hour-long documentary about village life, Through Mountains and Valleys (Po horách, po dolách). It was awarded a Gold Medal at the International Exposition of Photographic Art in Florence and received an Honorable Mention at the International Venice Film Festival in 1932.

Who plays me, hears my voices

"Who plays me, hears my voices”, shows a recent moment in the life of Gaston Lafourcade, a classical pianist and harpsichordist who, at the age of 83, enters a recording studio for the first time in his life to record a solo album and to join his daughter, Natalia Lafourcade, who during a recess period in her career, decides to embark on this adventure as a love letter to her father and as a way to enjoy what brings them together, beyond blood ties: their deep love for music.

The Last Dragon

"The Last Dragon" is a nature mockumentary about a British scientific team that attempts to understand the unique incredible beasts that have fascinated people for ages. CGI is used to create the dragons.

Nostradamus Decoded

Debunking the mythology surrounding the 16th century French prophet, Nostradamus.

Valokeilassa Atte Blom

TV document about the Finnish music producer Atte Blom.

Kuoleman lista

A dramatic documentary film that deals with the Nazi rise to power in Germany in the 1930s and the development of the persecution of Jews up to the Holocaust. The film tells about the attitude of the Finnish government to the request for the handover of the Finnish Jews presented by Heinrich Himmler in the summer of 1942. The main focus of the film is the life of Jewish refugees in Finland in the years 1938-1942 and the attitude of the Finnish government to their handover in the fall of 1942.