Upcoming events
Christmas comes to Moominvalley at Jackson Lane
Jan 3, 2025
Christmas Comes To Moominvalley – evening performance on Friday, 3 January 2025 at Jacksons Lane, 269a Archway Road, London N6 5AA
We have made arrangements for a group booking of tickets for Friday, 3 January 2025.
There will be an opportunity before the show for a short introduction to Jacksons Lane and after the show to meet the cast and we will also arrange post-show drinks.
We can offer tickets at £14 or £20 for members and guests to choose.
If you wish to book a ticket please email the Hon. Secretary on secretary@anglofinnishsociety.org.uk and make a payment of £14 or £20 per ticket by 13 December 2024.
For more details of the show, please see:
Christmas Comes to Moominvalley – Jacksons Lane Events – The Home of Contemporary Circus
Film Projection and Talk by Kirsten Adkins: Singing the Wooden House
Jan 14, 2025
Tuesday, 14 January 2025 at 6 p.m. at the Community Hall of St Anne’s Church, Soho, 55 Dean Street, London, W1D 6AF.
Film Projection and talk by Kirsten Adkins, a filmmaker based in Glasgow, of her film Singing the Wooden House (30 minutes):
A journey to a border zone, in search of a wooden house provokes questions on selfhood and national identity, place and belonging and the lasting implications of flight and return.
Rajavyöhyke translates from Finnish to English as border zone. Signs that line an 800-mile border, cross the forests and lakes of Finland and Russia. They operate as a modest indication of who belongs, and where. In April 2023 I travelled with a camera to a wooden house near the border town of Imatra, in the region of Karelia. The area was fought over during the Winter War between 1939 and 1940, and the Continuation War between 1941 and 1944. My mother and her family, who lived in the house were neither Finnish nor Russian. They were exiled to Sweden, settled in Stockholm and they never returned: some 400,000 people were evacuated as the border between Finland and the Soviet Union shifted. With a new war in Europe, rajavyöhyke articulates an increasing tension between opposing geopolitical forces. This year, Finland joined NATO. Sanctions were issued against Russia and the wooden house now owned by a family from St Petersburg is once again abandoned. In November 2023, at the time of writing, Finland closed the entire border to Russia, for the first time in its history. There is an unsettling stillness and marked absence of people near the rajavyöhyke. A few voices carry across the lakes on the border – it is unclear whether they are Russian or Finnish.
Biography
Kirsten Adkins is an artist and filmmaker who has a professional background in documentary television. Kirsten’s filmmaking and writing practice is concerned with stories of home, belonging and migration. She is currently working on a forthcoming edited anthology (Routledge 2024), and curated project space that is concerned with ways that artists and filmmakers use hybrid practices in film, poetry, song and dance to provoke questions on place, identity and belonging. Her interdisciplinary practice is informed by her work in news and factual programmes at the BBC where she worked as a producer and director. Kirsten has exhibited, presented, published, and broadcast nationally and internationally. She teaches filmmaking and artists moving image at the University of Glasgow. See also: Kirsten Adkins
If you wish to attend please email the Hon. Secretary on secretary@anglofinnishsociety.org.uk – guests are welcome (subject to availability). The event if free but cash donations for refreshments will be welcomed on the day.
Annual General Meeting
Apr 9, 2025
Our AGM date has now been set with further details to follow nearer to the time to Members of the Society.