MAKE HALDEN SMILE
KULTURHUSET
Thursday 30 October
10:00am - 5:00pm
Make Halden Smile brings Halden together as we invite people of all ages and nationalities to activities and get-togethers.
Join us for a day of interesting conversation, free food served by Halden's Volunteer Center, two very different films and lots of fun.
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10:00 AM-11:00 AM
Mayor Fredrik Holm will preside over the official opening of HIMF 2025 together with Secretary General of the Slovak UNESCO Commission and former Ambassador of Slovakia to Norway and Iceland Denisa Freichova.
​We will then have a conversation with Ambassador Freichova about growing up behind the Iron Curtain during the Soviet occupation of the then Czechoslovakia.
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11:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Music has been used to protest against injustice and oppression, and at the same time, music has been suppressed by totalitarian regimes.
We will have a musical introduction before showing the film Music + Revolution = Velvet Revolution from Slovakia, with a subsequent conversation with Ladislav Snopko.
Ladislav Snopko is the narrator, and had the idea for the film. He was a central figure during the fight against the occupiers leading up to the Velvet Revolution in 1989, and who later served as Minister of Culture in Slovakia. The film will be shown at the Kulturhuset at 13:00.
15:00 – 17:00
Lunch courtesy of the Halden Volunteer Center.
We continue the good cooperation from last year with Halden Volunteer Center, which serves food from many nations. There will also be an opportunity to meet our guests from Slovakia and make new acquaintances.
One Week (Buster Keaton, 1920), with live piano by Kjetil Schjander Luhr
Silent film musician Kjetil Schjander Luhr gives us an interesting insight into the challenges and opportunities of the job as a pianist for silent films, and then plays the piano for Buster Keaton's insanely funny short film debut One Week.
From the invention of film in the late 1800s until the introduction of sound films in the late 1920s, all films were accompanied live by musicians or orchestras, and each screening of the same film would therefore be completely different from the previous one. How does this unpredictable element affect the film experience, and what kind of music is really suitable for silent films?
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