Helsinki is the capital and most populous city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About 675,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.25 million in the capital region and 1.58 million in the metropolitan area. As the most populous urban area in Finland, it is the country's most significant centre for politics, education, finance, culture, and research. Helsinki is 80 kilometres (50 mi) north of Tallinn, Estonia, 360 kilometres (220 mi) north of Riga, Latvia, 400 kilometres (250 mi) east of Stockholm, Sweden, and 300 kilometres (190 mi) west of Saint Petersburg, Russia. Helsinki has significant historical connections with these four cities.
The music of Finland can be roughly divided into folk music, classical and contemporary art music, and contemporary popular music.
Lordi is a Finnish hard rock and heavy metal band. Formed in 1992 by the band's lead singer, songwriter and costume maker Mr Lordi, Lordi are known for wearing monster masks and using horror elements with pyrotechnics during concerts and music videos. The band rose to fame in 2002 with their hit single "Would You Love a Monsterman?", and won the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 with their song "Hard Rock Hallelujah".
The Red Guards were the paramilitary units of the labour movement in Finland during the early 1900s. The Red Guards formed the army of Red Finland and were one of the main belligerents of the Finnish Civil War in 1918.
Arno Rafael Minkkinen is a Finnish-American photographer who works in the United States.
Michaël Borremans is a Belgian painter and filmmaker who lives and works in Ghent. His painting technique draws on 18th-century art, as well as the works of Édouard Manet and Degas. The artist also cites the Spanish court painter Diego Velázquez as an important influence. In recent years, he has been using photographs he has made himself or made-to-order sculptures as the basis for his paintings.
Aku Louhimies is a Finnish film director and screenwriter. He has directed feature films, documentary films, commercials and music videos. His international breakthrough was the 2016 serial drama Rebellion. He directed and produced the 2017 war film The Unknown Soldier which is the biggest box office hit since 1955 in Finland.
Alenka Gotar is a Slovene soprano singer, born in Rodica in 1977. With the song "Cvet z juga", she represented Slovenia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 in Helsinki, Finland. Achieving seventh place in the semi-final, she became the first Slovene to qualify to the grand final, where she ended fifteenth with 66 points.
The Tangomarkkinat is the world's oldest tango festival. It is held early every July in Seinäjoki, Finland. As well as competitions to find the country's best tango singers, composers, and dancers, the festival features public dancing to live music provided by the best Finnish entertainers. Music for public dancing is not restricted to tango: it includes all the dance rhythms popular in Finland: but tango content must, according to the rules, be at least 40%.
Beauty Queens are a Serbian girlband, formed in Helsinki, Finland, in May 2007, after Marija Šerifović's victory in the Eurovision Song Contest 2007. The girls sang the backing vocals, and became very popular. They also reached third place at Beovizija 2008.
Aalto University is a public research university located in Espoo, Finland. It was established in 2010 as a merger of three major Finnish universities: the Helsinki University of Technology, the Helsinki School of Economics and the University of Art and Design Helsinki. The close collaboration between the scientific, business and arts communities is intended to foster multi-disciplinary education and research.
Petri Kuljuntausta is a Finnish composer, musician, sound artist and author of three books on electronic music and sound art. Since the 1990s he has belonged to a new generation of composers in Finland interested in experimental and electronic music.
International Comics Festival is an annual event organized and led by Belgrade’s Student Cultural Center (SKC). The Festival is the biggest comics event in Serbia, and one of the most important in the region. Each year, the Festival is being held during the last week of September.
Let the Peoples Sing is an international choral competition currently organised by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). The final, encompassing three categories and around ten choirs, is offered as a live broadcast to all EBU members. The Silver Rose Bowl is awarded to the best choir in the competition.
Hilde Teerlinck is a Belgian curator, and General Director of the Han Nefkens Foundation, Barcelona.
Finnish art started to form its individual characteristics in the 19th century, when romantic nationalism began to rise in the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland.
The Captive Queen, Op. 48, is a single-movement, patriotic cantata for mixed choir and orchestra written in 1906 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The piece, which is a setting of the Finnish author Paavo Cajander's Finnish-language poem of the same name, is chronologically the fifth of Sibelius's nine orchestral cantatas.
Chaos Constructions is the oldest demoparty in Russia, previously known as ENLiGHT. Nowadays, it is considered to be an annual computer art festival and IT conference.
Marina Vladimirovna Fedorova is a Russian figurative artist and painter. Marina Fedorova’s artworks were nominated for the Kandinsky Prize. Works by the artist are kept in the collections of the State Hermitage Museum and the State Russian Museum.
