Where to see the longest movie

The World

For the Geo Quiz we’re getting out the popcorn — several buckets of popcorn — and settling in for a screening of the world’s longest movie.
The ticket’s cheap: in fact it’s free but the feature lasts 240 hours. Yup, it’s 10 days long. So, we want to know, where is this mega-pic being shown?

Here are few clues: It’s in a Scandinavian city, east of Stockholm, and it’s on the Baltic Sea. It’s known for it’s graceful neo-classical buildings.

And it’s also known for the work of controversial architect Alvar Aalto, one of his buildings features in today’s quiz. In fact the film is being shown on the side of the structure.

So what’s the capital that’s hosting the world’s longest flick?

The answer is Helsinki. Paula Toppila directs the Contemporary Art Festival going on right now Helsinki. The festival is sponsoring the first screening of the film that’s being projected onto the side of that structure designed by world-renown architect Alvar Aalot. The building is the main character in the film.

“Local people call it the sugar cube because it has the shape of a sugar cube. It’s covered with marble sheets. So it’s bright white and it’s a modernist building so has a very clear shape,” says Toppila.

During the 10 day film, movie goers can watch a time lapse version of the building being buffeted by weather and time. Each day represents what will happen to the building during a 4 or 500 year period.

“So it will wear out gradually. It’s a reminder of how everything is temporary and no building is there necessarily forever, especially if human time finishes and there is nobody to take care of them anymore. so it encourages us to carpe diam and to seize the moment right now and do the things you want to do today and not postpone them.”

Paula Toppila says she doesn’t know what happens in the final scenes of the 10 day long film.

“At the end of the film we are not sure. We have to go and look for the last hour. Because it’s 10 long this very long film”.

Toppila doesn’t expect anyone to sit through the entire ten days… In fact, she’s expects it will mostly be a curiosity as people grab lunch in the Helsinki Market Square.

But even the casual passer by, she thinks, will stop to appreciate the depiction of subtle decay, and just what happens as time marches on.

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