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DOCPOINT CELEBRATES THE PIONEERS OF FINNISH DOCUMENTARY FILM The Festival will kick off with Dreamland on Saturday the 23rd of January, at Maxim.

The 9th DocPoint - Helsinki Documentary Film Festival will take over the cinemas of Helsinki on the 26th-31st of January. This year DocPoint celebrates the pioneers of Finnish documentary film: producers Aho & Soldan. Year 2010 marks the 85th anniversary of the respectable company.

In honouring the occasion, the festival will feature a wide Aho & Soldan retrospective, compiled in association with the National Audiovisual Archive. In the opening ceremony documentary film director Kiti Luostarinen will receive the Aho & Soldan Lifetime Achievement Award. The award is worth 5,000€, and is sponsored by the Finnish Broadcasting Company.

The pioneer of Finnish colour photography Claire Aho is honouring this year's festival with her attendance. In celebration of the Aho & Soldan anniversary, the festival's traditional silent film concert presents films by Aho & Soldan. The silent films of the Tempo concert are accompanied by the renowned Finnish jazz group The Five Corners Quintet.

DocPoint 2010 is also a festival of new Finnish documentary films. At least two of the premieres, Auf Wiedersehen Finnland by Virpi Suutari and Steam of Life by Joonas Berghäll and Mika Hotakainen will be distributed all over the country.

Along with high quality Finnish documentary films, the festival will also feature films that have gained attention at festivals all over the world.

Several directors from this year's theme countries, USA and Poland, will attend the festival. Among them, the renowned Polish father-son combo of Marcel and Pawel Lozinski, American director and actress Samantha Buck and music video director Mike Palmieri.

Other filmmaker guests include French director and DocPoint Masterclass lecturer, Nicolas Philibert, and Ross Whitaker, director of Saviours as well as Vadim Jendreyko, director of The Woman with the 5 Elephants. Both films are featured in the From One Generation to Another programme.

The kick off film: Dreamland by Thorfinnur Gudnason and Andri Snær Magnason

DocPoint will kick off on the 23rd January at 6 pm at the Maxim theatre (Kluuvikatu 1) with Icelandic hit novel based film, Dreamland. It shows Iceland's change from a NATO base and a cradle of fishing to a playground for large multinational companies. The movie has received strong reactions in Iceland, and it gives a thorough insight into what the country was before the economic meltdown. Writer and director Andri Snær Magnason is attending the festival.

DocPoint Tallinn will start on Friday the 29th January and its opening film will be Dreamland, at the same time as it will be screened in Helsinki.

DocPoint ticket pre-sales have startedat the DocPOint Online Box Office, at Bio Rex, and Finnkino ticket offices. For additional information see:

http://www.docpoint.info/node/1654