Monday, June 13, 2011

Finlandia-katsaus newsreels online

KAVA (the National Audiovisual Archive of Finland) has put the complete set of the country's most prominent series of newsreels, the 700 Finlandia-katsaus newsreels (1943-1964) online on the Elonet website.

It is an important historical source. For instance Finlandia-katsaus 573 covers President Kekkonen's meeting with President Kennedy during his visit to the United States 16 October - 3 November, 1961. We witness confident attitudes in a turbulent time in the Cold War 50 years ago. That year, the Soviet Union had detonated nuclear test bombs at the Novaya Zemlya, including the biggest ever above ground, the Tsar Bomba, the shock wave of which broke windows in Finland. If I die of cancer one day, it may be because of it; never in my lifetime have I received so much radioactive radiation as then. Chernobyl was peanuts in comparison. A month after visiting Kennedy, Kekkonen visited Nikita Khrushchev.

No comments: