Thursday, September 01, 2011

KAVA has bought rights to a huge part of Finnish film heritage

On 29 August 2011 KAVA (the National Audiovisual Archive of Finland) has bought from Finnkino rights to 300 Finnish feature films that were produced from the 1930s to the 1980s. The whole number of Finnish feature films is 1300.

Dvd rights of films already released on dvd remain with Finnkino. Television rights are mostly with YLE the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation.

The companies involved are:
- Suomen Filmiteollisuus (which produced 235 films in 1935-1962 - the biggest production company in the history of Finnish cinema)
- Adams Filmi
- Bio-Kuva
- Fenno-Filmi
- Filmityö
- Kinosto
- Maxim-Filmi
- National-Filmi
- Valio-Filmi
- Väinän Filmi

The incentive to the acquisition was KAVA's decision to start digitizing in 4K the Finnish film heritage. It makes more sense for the government to fund such a project when it also owns the rights.

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