DocPoint 2025 Opening Words by Inka Achté
DocPoint 2025 began on Tuesday, Feb 4, with a full Bio Rex Lasipalatsi screening of Arantzazu Gomez Bayon’s Forget About Cinema! Minister of Science and Culture Mari-Leena Talvitie and DocPoint’s Head of Programming Inka Achté opened the screening. You can read Achté’s opening speech below.
Dear guests,
It is an immense pleasure to have you all here at the 24th edition of DocPoint.
I am also deeply grateful, because this is not a given. Our current government has chastised Finnish arts and culture to the extent that has left many paralysed or withering. This is not only short sighted, but also uninformed from an economic point of view. Arts and culture nourish the soul of a society and create the basis of a strong community, and they have distinct importance in employing people and bringing in tax euros.
Marian Wright Edelman, an American activist for the rights of children, said the famous words “you can’t be what you can’t see.” She was talking about the importance of representation and role models in shaping children’s aspirations and opportunities, but the same is true of all of us. Without representation -images, symphonies, stories, films- about us and by us , there is no us.
But I don’t think I need to preach to this audience about how vital shared stories are in creating a shared sense of identity and values. Let’s talk about documentary film, nonfiction cinema. Documentary films are not just about reporting on an unusual phenomenon or telling an unbelievable story. They also have the incredible power of transporting us into the experience of a person whose experience we may otherwise not have any access to.
I can not think of anything more important in a highly polarized era where it has become so impossible for people to understand each other and converse with each other (this is why, by the way, polarisation and community have been the core themes of this year’s DocPoint programme).
What I also love about the non-fiction form is how versatile and creative it can be in expressing something about the world. We are living in a time where people have become accustomed to consuming non-fiction on VOD platforms such as Netflix. However, it could be argued that these platforms have also done a disservice to documentary film. They are driven by algorithms, prioritizing over- produced, slick content that has mass appeal and performs well with broad audiences, stifling creative author driven documentaries with independent and original point of views which we could experience collectively in a cinema, like we are today.
The film we are going to see as an opening film tonight, Forget About Cinema! by Aranatzazu Gomez Bayon is a powerful testament – and a much needed reminder in this era of VOD domination – of the power of creative documentary as a genre. The title Forget About Cinema! seems tragicomically apt in this era of budget cuts to Finnish arts and culture, but in the film the title has a more personal meaning.
While being acutely aware of the history of cinema, this film, almost in an anarchistic way, refuses to be categorized. The filmmaker combines observational cinema, reconstruction, symbolism and essay film, to tell a deeply personal yet universal story about trying to remain yourself while becoming a mother.
Ladies and gentlemen and everyone in between, please give a warm welcome to the director of Forget About Cinema!, Aranatzazu Gomez Bayon!
Inka Achté
Image: Sami Sorasalmi
