Radio Dolores

Radio Dolores: Arvo is leaving Tampere to join the International Brigade in Spain in 1937. He leaves behind his wife and son.

Tampere Film Festival
Kotimainen kilpailu 9
T34 | 9.3. THU/TO 16:00 | PLEVNA 5
P15 | 10.3. FRI/PE 18:00 | PLEVNA 2
Duration/kesto: 95 min
RADIO DOLORES
Katariina Lillqvist | Finland, Czech Republic 2016 | Animation | 18 min

Narrator: Jotaarkka Pennanen.
Beautiful soundtrack with e.g. Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers: "¡Ay Manuela!" (1943).

TFF: Radio Dolores is a puppet animation documentary of the everyday lives of shoe factory workers in 1930s Tampere. It tells the story of stove room rebels, the illegal radio transmitters of cold attics, and shoemaker Arvo, who disappeared in the Spanish Civil War and left his son only an accordion and a ticket to the jail in Malaga.

Radio Dolores on dokumentaarinen nukkeanimaatio tamperelaisen kenkätehtaan työläisten arjesta 1930-luvulla. Se kertoo hellahuoneiden kapinallisista, kylmien vinttien laittomista radiovastaanottimista sekä Espanjan sisällissodassa kadonneesta suutarista Arvosta joka jätti pojalleen perinnöksi vain haitarin ja matkalipun Malagan poliisivankilaan. TFF

AA: A masterpiece by Katariina Lillqvist, a poet in Finnish puppet animation, usually based in the Czech Republic, continuing the great tradition of Jiří Trnka and Jan Švankmajer.

Radio Dolores is a story of Finnish solidarity to the Spanish Republicans in 1936-1939. A story of solidarity as a matter of life and death. Even the ones who listened to illegal radio channels risked being sentenced to prison. Told as a first person narrative by the son of Arvo who disappered in Malaga having joined the international brigades in 1937 and whose wife was put to prison having listened to Radio Dolores. The son travels to Andalusia in the 1960s in search of Arvo and is also put to jail having played "¡Ay Manuela!" on the accordeon.

The Finnish milieu is the great Aaltonen shoe factory where Arvo meets his wife. She has started there at the age of 12, and her lungs are getting poisoned by shoe sole glues. The Aaltosen Kenkätehdas factory (1889-1984) was still a big presence in the 1970s when as a student even I once had a summer job there.

Radio Dolores is a beautiful piece of proletarian folklore, a display of the true heart of the international workers' movement.