Finnish documentary director wins life time award

The annual Helsinki DocPoint Documentary Film Festival has kicked off in Helsinki, and this year's Aho & Soldan Lifetime Achievement Award was again given to Finnish director Kanerva Cederstrom. The well-known director will be conferred the award in a special event on Saturday, the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE reported on Wednesday. Cederstrom is honored for her experimental style, which combines freedom of expression with creative use of materials. As a professor of documentary film in Aalto University, she has also been greatly influential in the documentary field in Finland. She has directed more than 20 documentary films since 1980s. Cederstrom described her expression as "poetic". "It's not narrative, but rather consists of rhythm and elements that give rise to a vision, thought," she said. Because of her creativity, "Cederstrom's work sets an example for DocPoint to follow," said Ulla Simonen, the Artistic Director of the festival. This was the second time that Cederstrom won the award. She was also one of the two winners of last year's Aho & Soldan Lifetime Achievement Award. A total of 132 documentary films are to be screened on the one-week festival. Participants were from more than 20 countries, including Finland, Sweden, the United States, Britain, Germany, Austria, Canada, Russia, Spain, Japan, Argentina and others. According to Simonen, one of the main focuses of this year's DocPoint was to break the boundary between fiction and documentary and mix the both elements in the works. DocPoint is an international Documentary Film Festival, which has been held in Helsinki annually since 2001. DocPoint introduces new domestic and international documentary film every year.