Gunilla Burstedt, Director of the School of Film Directing of Gothenburg University and Poul Nesgaard, Principal of the National Film School of Denmark wishes the students welcome

A group of lecturers and students from TAMK School of Art and Media participated in the annual Nordic Film School meeting hosted by the film school at Gothenburg university. We post two reports from the event:

Lecturer Anne-Marie Söhrman Fermelin and Aino Suni, TAMK, networking

Lecturer Arto Koskinen:
The teachers from all the central film and TV schools around the Nordic countries gathered to present their own teaching methods and sources for educational inspiration in the premises of the School of Film Directing at University of Gothenburg. Representing TAMK was yours truly. I presented a method I'd developed myself, which allows the student to get in touch with their own creativity and ”their own voice” in their writing. This method got a lot of positive feedback because a lot of the schools in the same field face the same problem – students examine the emotional world of their stories from too far, while they should first get in touch with their own world. It is impossible to make unique works without first finding your own uniqueness.

The next day the students from the same schools presented their works and exercises. Ready pieces were forbidden at this presentation, because the idea was to let students have the opportunity to see  exercises and hear how they were made. The director of the Danish film school Poul Neesgard shared his opinion that Finnish schools possess certain originality and some elusive element that other Nordic countries don't seem to have. On the third day there was the traditional interschool NORDICIL meeting, where future meetings, teacher exchanges and common seminars were planned and agreed upon.

Grande restaurant opening coctails

Niina Virtanen, a student of Media Production (in her movie blog in Finnish):
So Aino (Suni) and Niina (Virtanen) headed to Gothenburg on last week's Tuesday to a meeting of Nordic film schools. With us were also three other projects and representatives from our school: Miro Laiho with his film ”Herääminen” (The Awakening), Martta Tuomaala with her film ”Aatamin naiset (Adam's women) and Mikko Keskiivari with his film ”I am Youtube”.

On Wednesday we were joined by Kerttu Hakkarainen, the camera operator for our film, and another student from our school, Hannu Koivuranta. They had already spent several days in Gothenburg in master class tutelage of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.

There was some time to see Gothenburg

At the university each of the six schools got their own viewing room, where they could show their own films. During the day we visited the other schools' rooms and acquainted ourselves with the productions of our colleagues. The films were seen by a quite nice number of people, though regrettably not many of them were brave enough to comment or ask about the films. Based on their reactions though, the reception was positive.

Read the full report by Nina (in Finnish)