Friday, April 18, 2008

Meidän poikamme

FI 1929. PC: Suomi-Filmi. D: Erkki Karu. DP: Eino Kari. M: Emil Kauppi, Lauri Näre. Starring Axel Slangus, Helge Ranin, Birgit Sergelius. Print preserved by KAVA, with Finnish / Swedish intertitles, and e-subtitles in French, viewed at Salle Henri Langlois, La Cinémathèque francaise, Paris, 18 April 2008. - Introduced by Jean-Francois Rauger I made a short presentation on
1) Suomi-Filmi company, the oldest in Finland
2) the bi-lingual character
3) Erkki Karu, the visionary founder of the continuity of large-scale Finnish film industry, his interest in Finnish subjects, landscapes, and characters
4) Axel Slangus, the distinguished theatre man, his long film career from Nummisuutarit (The Village Shoemakers, 1923) till Ingmar Bergman's Jungfrukällan (The Virgin Spring, 1960)
5) the film's links to the military farce, a kind of a founding stone of Finnish military farce
6) the music by Emil Kauppi and Lauri Näre, which was played live in Helsinki by the brass band of the Hämeenlinna Tank Battalion, and the kantele
mainstream Finnish cinema, against which Tulio and Vaala reacted

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