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Chicago – Indie Film Programmer & Horror-rista Stephanie Sack is back with a Chicago matinee presentation of “Time of Roses,” an under-seen 1969 screening of an urban science fiction film from Finland, remaining the only representative example of serious sci-fi in their cinema history. The 11am matinee will be screened with the short “The Last Golem” at the Music Box Theatre, click Time Of Roses for details and tickets.

Risto Jarva’s “Time of Roses” is a rare flower in the histo­ry of Finnish cinema. Set during 2012 in a semi-dystopian world of gleaming white towers, Sony video monitors, and inflatable furniture, the film follows Raimo (Arto Tuominen), a prominent historian of late 20th century culture, researching the mysterious death many years earlier of a free-spirited erotic model, and hires an eerie double to recreate the murder for a TV show he is producing (Rita Vepsä in both roles).

Stephanie Sack Presents ‘Time of Roses’

Photo credit: MusicBoxTheatre.

There is something unique about science fiction films of the late 1960s and early 1970s. At least in films from western countries, they were made at a time of great political upheavel, a time when space travel and exploration was at an incredible height, and a time when there was also something of a 'back to the land' movement. The cold war and the threat of nuclear annihilation loomed large, many were beginning to sound the alarm of environmental degredation, while at the same time, the rise of technologies like computers and marked the first appearance of what would become the internet. Risto Jarva's seminal Finnish New Wave film Time of Roses, while not lost, has likely not been on a lot of people's proverbial...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2013—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2013 to create a unique double feature.

All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2013 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.

How...

Today's announcement from the International Film Festival Rotterdam (January 25 through February 5) concerns a tribute to Peter von Bagh, part of the main Signals section: "With over fifty film titles under his belt, Peter von Bagh may still be the better known in his other persona: as writer of more than twenty books, as television presenter, as artistic director of the Midnight Sun Festival in Sodankyla, which he co-founded in 1986 with the Kaurismäki brothers and as well Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna, since 2001. He also is editor-in-chief, since 1971, of the Filmihullu magazine, and a professor of film history in the Helsinki University of Arts."

On to the lineup, with descriptions from the festival, beginning with the features:

Lastuja – Taiteilijasuvun vuosisata (Splinters - A Century of an Artistic Family). Finland, 2011, 74’. A century of development, starting in the era of Finland's nascent nationalism, when the country still belonged to Tsarist Russia, ending in the heydays of post-wwii liberalism,...

Nordic (a.k.a. Scandinavian) Cinema – films made in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden – is known for its stark and foreboding landscapes, slow pacing, and strange humor that seems to toggle between absurdism, surrealism and just plain silly. Those are, admittedly, some over-arching stereotypes; but, personally, I most enjoy Nordic films that match those stereotypes to a tee. In fact, many of my favorite directors are from Nordic nations (Ingmar Bergman, Aki Kaurismäki, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Lasse Hallström, Lars von Trier, Lukas Moodysson, Susanne Bier, Risto Jarva, Erik Skjoldbjærg, Tomas Alfredson, Bent Hamer, Baltasar Kormákur, Dagur Kári, and Olaf de Fleur). I’m not sure what that says about me as a person? To the best of my knowledge, I am not of Nordic ancestry – so I cannot explain where I gained this strange affinity for Nordic cinema. In which case, I’ll just lay all of the blame...