Wreckamovie Festival - Friday 16th- Sunday 18th July 2010

(For press enquiries please contact kris at starwreckstudios dot com)

The Wreckamovie Festival is a celebration of film, video and multimedia productions created by the Wreckamovie community.

We are taking over the University of Jyväskylä's Ilokivi building from the Friday 16th to Sunday 18th of July, where we'll be hosting an exhibition on the top floor and screenings in a small cinema on the bottom floor.

It's also a celebration of Star Wreck, the film series that started this all off. Its creators, Energia Productions, will also be there to discuss their new film Iron Sky.

The Wreckamovie Festival is happening in association with Finncon 2010, Finland's largest science fiction convention ( http://2010.finncon.org/ ). Finncon is happening nearby in the Jyväskylä University main building (Building C), so you can go to both events and move freely between them. You can walk from one event to the other in less than a minute. :)

Thanks to local sponsors and cultural grants, Finncon and the Wreckamovie Festival are both totally free! You don't need tickets, you don't need to book. Just turn up, everyone is welcome!

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Festival Schedule

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Friday 16th July

Exhibition Upstairs:
(The upstairs exhibition isn't open on Friday, as the upstairs is in use by someone else. The upstairs exhibition will open on Saturday morning.)

Friday Screenings Downstairs:
Screenings on friday will be entirely fan films (including Star Wreck) that are based on various fantasy and science fiction series.

The provisional timetable is as follows, this is still subject to change:

1030 - Teasers, trailers and making-of clips for productions that are coming soon

1200 - Jinxed & Stabbed

1400 - Star Wreck: Behind The Scenes

1500 - Star Trek Intrepid

1600 - Star Wreck Legacy

1730 - 2Pi: Behind the Scenes & 2Pi Teaser

1800 - Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning

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Saturday 17th July

Exhibition Upstairs:
1030 - 1830
The Wreckamovie exhibition on the upper floor featuring photos, props, posters and other items from WAM and related productions. It's a chance to meet WAM producers and members in person, and have a chat over a cup of coffee.

Saturday Screenings Downstairs:
Saturday's videos and films generally have fun or tongue-in-cheek themes, and cover a very wide range of genres and styles.

The provisional timetable is as follows, this is still subject to change:

1030 - Teasers, trailers and making-of clips for productions that are coming soon

1100 - Memory Of Tomorrow

1200 - Looking towards the Iron Sky: A selection of official and fan-made videos related to Energia's highly-awaited sci-fi comedy

1300 - Huba

1400 - Wreckamovie Music: Showcasing music videos produced through Wreckamovie, including American singer-songwriter Ukelilli and Finnish/British indie pop band The Firsts

1500 - Symphony of Death

1600 - Looking towards the Iron Sky: A selection of official and fan-made videos related to Energia's highly-awaited sci-fi comedy

1700 - Tokio Baby (Finnish & Japanese dialogue with English subtitles)

1800 - Snowblind: The Finnish premiere of the Wreckamovie-produced feature length post-apocalyptic western. Snowblind's production leaders are from Germany, but the film itself is entirely in English.

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Sunday 18th July

Exhibition Upstairs:
1000 - 1830
The Wreckamovie exhibition on the upper floor featuring photos, props, posters and other items from WAM and related productions.

Sunday Screenings Downstairs:
Sunday's films focus on more serious topics, ranging from the tragic to the surreal.

The provisional timetable is as follows, this is still subject to change:

1000 - Valkaama

1200 - Tokio Baby (Japanese scenes with Finnish subtitles)

1300 - What Became Of Us

1500 - Blacke Revenant

1600 - (to be announced)

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Productions Taking Part

The following are some of the independent productions that are taking part in the Wreckamovie Festival.

Note that this is a festival about the production process as much as the finished product. Some of the projects below are completed, some are still in production or post-production, some are being developed. If something isn't ready to be screened in full, there will still be other material shown such as behind-the-scenes footage, trailers, interviews etc.

Also, not all of these are films, many are other kinds of project. Wreckamovie has been used by projects in all kinds of media.

Anselm, The Young Werewolf - Anselm the Young Werewolf is a surreal tale that explores a young man's desire for love, acceptance, and dignity.

The Beanstalkers - A fantasy comedy about two friends who buy a tin of magic beans, in a postmodern reworking of the classic fairy tale.

Behind The Camera - A regular round-up of news and interviews from the world of film by Croatian radio station 5+.

Blacke Revenant - A short thriller about a hitman who runs into some unexpected problems while carrying out the wishes of a client.

Chihuahua - A burlesque pop video for the Helsinki-based britpop band The Firsts, featuring the shortest single of the 21st century.

"Eddie Izzard" by Ukelilli - Pop video featuring an ode to the British comedian and celebrity transvestite Eddie Izzard, written and performed by the cult singer Ukelilli

Flight of THE Leviathan - A sci-fi about the frozen crew of a warship, woken up to take revenge on the aliens who have attacked Earth.

Huba - Finnish comedy sketches from the Huba group, including material produced for Yle television.

Iron Sky - A dark and humourous sci-fi tale of Nazis who have escaped to the Moon, made by the creators of Star Wreck and currently Finland's highest-budget film. Despite its rather bizarre premise, it is actually more serious than their previous film, and features a script by the Finlandia-winning writer Johanna Sinisalo.

Iron Sky: Operation Highjump - A spin-off computer game set in the same universe as the Iron Sky film, but featuring events from many decades before. In 1947 the United States carried out a massive military exercise in the Antarctic, unaware of a Nazi spaceport hidden on the frozen continent.

Landing - In another world, three people find themselves trapped on a deserted planet with no hope of rescue. Can they find some reason to stay alive?

Materia: The Awakening - Following on from the stunning animated futuristic short Materia, the Awakening continues the storyline. The graphics are created using Blender, the free open source 3D modelling software which is a favourite of Wreckamovie users.

Memory Of Tomorrow - A Finnish sci-fi short, featuring an old man looking back on his life and finding that it is not quite what he remembers.

Mitä Meistä Tuli (What Became Of Us) - An amusing, disturbing and touching feature-length drama about school friends and how their lives followed different paths as they grew up. The film received a cinema release in major Finnish cities.

Norwegian Ninja - A surreal combination of political satire and special effects action, telling the story of Norwegian politician Arne Treholt's exploits as a ninja during the Cold War.

Sample - A short computer-animated stick figure story about a laboratory accident and its consequences.

Snowblind - Different genres and styles collide in unexpected ways as a post-apocalyptic snowfilled world is the setting for an action-packed Western. Snowblind is the first Wreckamovie film in 3D.

Star Trek Intrepid - A British fan-made series based on "Star Trek", the Intrepid series takes a more traditional and serious approach to fanfilms.

Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning - What started out as a simple fan-made Star Trek parody turned into something that shook up both amateur filmmaking and the Finnish movie world. The first feature-length Finnish-language sci-fi, and by many measures the most watched Finnish-language film in history, Star Wreck ITP began a chain of events which led to the creation of Wreckamovie.

Star Wreck Legacy - Before the breakthrough of "In The Pirkinning", Star Wreck was a cult series of four animations, which then stepped into the world of life action with "Lost Contact".

Star Wreck 2Pi - A fan film of a fan film, 2Pi is not an official part of the series, though it does feature cameos by some of the official cast. Two P-Fleet ships have been ordered to test a new type of engine, but one problem seems to lead to another...

Stick Wreck - A fan-made animated short set in the Star Wreck universe, featuring animated stick men.

Symphony Of Death - A stylish, surreal and violent tongue-in-cheek short about some rather odd characters interacting in a ruin-filled world.

Tokio Baby - 15-year-old Saara is stuck at her parents' farm, and dreams of escaping to Animecon, a Japanese animation and comics festival. She is saved from dying of boredom by her imaginary friend Aiko, whose totally zenless anarchy makes the rift between Saara and her parents even bigger. (Wreckamovie fans might like to know that Tokio Baby is by Blind Spot Pictures, the co-producers of Iron Sky.)

The Truth Today - Did you know that there are Nazis hiding on our Moon? Iron Sky's community-created newspaper parody (which has appeared in both print and online) was twice mistaken for real news earlier this year by several major conspiracy theory websites, despite the Truth Today's immediate denials that it contained anything remotely truthful.

Untitled Dystopia - Surreal shot film about an artist in a near-future world who lives with a talking disembodied head.

Valkaama - Feature-length drama about a group of three very different people, as their lives intertwine in unexpected ways which culminate in a journey to Valkaama. (The film is set in Sweden, but the dialogue is entirely in English.)

Verhäxt und Ufgspiesst - A feature-length Swiss fan-made Buffy and Charmed parody, from the creators of Star Wreck 2Pi.

World Film Collective - A unique organisation designed to help some of the poorest children in the world, the WFC organises filmmaking workshops in many different countries including developing and rich world nations. Most WFC productions are short documentaries shot on mobile phones, where kids tell the world about how they live their lives.

Wreckamovie - The world's first and largest film production community, WAM allows anyone to create or participate in all kinds of film, video and other kinds of production in a spirit of free co-operation.

Contact Details

If you want to speak to the festival organisers for any reason, please contact kris at starwreckstudios dot com

A little bit about Jyväskylä

Jyväskylä is a university town with a population of about 130,000 people, and it has its own airport at Tikkakoski which can be reached by connecting flights from Helsinki. There's a high speed rail link from Helsinki with Pendolino trains (takes about 3 - 4 hours), and of course you can drive or catch a bus to Jyväskylä too.

There's a variety of restaurants, pubs, cafes and night clubs, obviously not on the scale of a major city but still a pretty good selection.

The surrounding countryside is really really beautiful and they've integrated it quite well into the urban areas, so you always feel like you're next to a large forest. There's a huge number of lakes in Finland and you can go on lake cruises on boats that leave from Jyväskylä harbour. Some of the larger boats have restaurants on board, so you can eat while you cruise along.

The temperatures in Jyväskylä in mid-July are usually around about 20-25 degrees centigrade, sometimes pushing into the 30s if you're lucky. It's a typical European summer.

Maybe the biggest reason foreigners would know the town is the Finnish stage of the annual World Rally Championship, which takes place in and around Jyväskylä. The Finnish stage has a reputation for being the most difficult part of the entire world rally. (Next year's Finnish stage starts on the 1st of August in case anyone's interested.)

Those of you still wanting to see more of Tampere can reach it fairly easily from Jyväskylä, there are lots of trains and buses every day with a journey time of about 90 minutes. They start very early and run until quite late so a day trip to Tampere is very easy.