41st Midnight Sun Film Festival was held 10.-14.6.2026 in Sodankylä, Lapland.
Following shared Archive Film Festival Network activities were presented as part of the 41st edition of Midnight Sun Film Festival.
AFFN Presents
The 1950s Early Works
Varda: La pointe court, France – Presented by Fiammetta Girola, Bergamo Film Meeting
Kakogiannis: Stella, Greece – Presented by Timo Malmi, Midnight Sun Film Festival
Kubrick: The Killing, USA – Presented by David Huspenina, Summer Film School
Tati: Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, France – Presented by Annamaria Materazzini, Bergamo Film Meeting
Wajda: Kanal, Poland – Presented Juha Rosma, film director and writer
AFFN / The 1950s Early Works – Turbulent Breakers — Midnight Sun Film Festival
AFFN / The 1950s Early Works Archives — Midnight Sun Film Festival
AFFN Film
A Film Short Film About Love, was screened during the festival and is scheduled for a nationwide distribution in Finland on October, 2026.
AFFN Education
What a Ruckus! – Children’s Foley Workshop
Workshop welcomed all young people and those young at heart to an interactive silent film play-along experience focusing on sound!
The participants experienced what it’s like to be a foley artist using different objects, instruments, body parts and vocalizations to breathe life into Lotte Reiniger’ silent Cinderella (1922).
The hour-long workshop explored the impact of sound in film, promotes creativity through play and active listening and offers opportunities to practice being a foley artist. Work shop was led my awarded folye artist Heikki Kossi.
AFFN Industry
“Archive Film Alive” – AFFN INDUSTRY
PART 1) The Importance of Archival Film in Film Education
Film education helps children and young people develop audiovisual media literacy and provides them with the tools to engage analytically and critically with the digital society of the 2020s. Why is film education particularly important today, and what role can archival film play in it?
The significance of film education and archival film will be discussed by film educator and Executive Director of the Kokkolan Kinojuhlat film festival Kaisa Kukkola, Executive Director of Espoo Ciné Tytti Rantanen, Specialist at Koulukino Saara Konttinen, Cultural Coordinator of the Municipality of Sodankylä Anna Yliniemi, and graphic designer and author of the AFFN visual style David Huspenina.
Kitisen Keidas, Wednesday 10 June, 11:00–13:00
PART 2) Presenting Archive Films – Svenska Filminstitutet: From the Archives
With extended inroduction by the head of programming Jon Wengsröm from the Svenska Filminstitutet about the restoration of early cinema and redistribution followed by a screening of analog restorations with live music by pianist Maud Nelissen.
”This selection of early films tries to recreate the spirit of programs from the period, as it mixes drama and comedy with trick films and documentaries. It also displays examples of various early colouring techniques, and opens with Le coucher de la mariée made by photographer Eugène Pirou in 1896, considered to be cinema’s first erotic film, and ends with Les flammes diaboliques (1907), an example of the visual fireworks of Segundo de Chomón. In between, we are taken to sites of ancient Egypt (Louqsor et Thèbes, 1911) and Coney Island (Bremen to New York by the Liner George Washington, 1909), as well as a fictionalized Palestine in the biblical Ruth et Boaz (1910).
The nitrate prints in the Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute (source of the projection prints screened here) were identified by independent archivist, historian and researcher Camille Blot-Wellens, and were all recently photochemically preserved, most of them at the Institute’s former in-house laboratory.”
Big Tent, Thursday 11 June, 12:15-14:45
