Apollo Award

To celebrate the 5th anniversary of the festival, DocPoint launches a new award alongside The Aho & Soldan Lifetime Achievement Award. The new Apollo Award will be handed to a Finnish individual or organization contributing remarkably to Finnish documentary film. The award is named after the first documentary film production company in Finland, Ateljee Apollo, founded in 1904.

Awardees:

• Iikka Vehkalahti (2012)
• Production Company Epidem (2009)
• Jörn Donner (2008)
• Ilkka Kippola (2007)
• Jarmo Jääskeläinen (2006)

Apollo Award 2008: Jörn Donner

The DocPoint Apollo Award is a recognition of Jörn Donner’s (b. 1933) achievements as a producer, director and a general force behind Finnish documentaries. An eclectic talent of culture, Donner has moved swiftly from one media to another, but cinema has always remained close to his heart. He has been active for five decades, generating a long career not only as a film-maker but also as a cultural influence. For example, Donner was involved in establishing the Finnish Film Archive in 1958.

Donner’s directorial career began with a documentary: he made his debut at the age of 21 with Aamua kaupungissa (Morning in the City), which examines the city of Helsinki. As a documentarist Donner is an exception among Finnish film-makers because many of his works are essay films in form. As a film-maker Donner is a strong auteur, whose presence and life-experience are seen and heard on screen. Among others, Donner’s filmography includes the Finnish documentary classic Fuck Off!, a ruthless and frank description of the state of the union in the beginning of the 1970’s.

Jörn Donner is among the most successful international film-makers in Finland. Ingmar Bergman’s Academy Award-winning Fanny and Alexander (1982) is the most famous of Donner’s productions, but with his company Jörn Donner Productions he has produced several documentaries by high-profile Finnish directors, including Marja Pensala, Pirjo Honkasalo, Markku Lehmuskallio and Anastasia Lapsui.

Apollo Award 2007: Ilkka Kippola

In 2007 DocPoint had the honour to hand the Apollo Award to researcher and archivist Ilkka Kippola, nicknamed "the wizard of archives".

During his career in Finnish Film Archive Ilkka Kippola has taken part in the production of hundreds of Finnish documentary films as an archive material specialist. He is a trusted co-worker of such internationally acclaimed Finnish film makers as Markku Lehmuskallio and Mika Taanila.

Photo: Lasse Leclin

Apollo Award 2006: Jarmo Jääskeläinen

The first Apollo Award, launched in 2006, was handed to documentary film director, producer and founder of documentary programming slot Dokumenttiprojekti on YLE TV2, Jarmo Jääskeläinen. He was awarded for his significant work for advancing Finnish documentary film. Dokumenttiprojekti started the quantitative and qualitative boom of Finnish documentary film and opened the way to international recognition.

Jarmo Jääskeläinen was born in Vyborg in 1937. He has had a lengthy career in Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE as a journalist, correspondent, director and tutor. He has studied film in Lodz Film School in Poland and his fims have received numerous domestic and international awards.

Jarmo Jääskeläinen has has a great impact on how the general public understands creative documentary film. He brought international classics as well as hit documentaries to Dokumenttiprojekti's programme. He was also an important supporter, co-producer and financer in the international breakthrough of some of Russian's top documentary film directors (e.g. Alexander Gutman, Vitaly Mansky) in the early 1990's. Jarmo Jääskeläinen can, for a good reason, be called "the Godfather of Finnish documentary film": without him and Dokumenttiprojekti the status of documentaries would most likely be something else than what it is today.