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| Jouko Aaltonen: Pieni punainen (2020). Mao and Stalin were among the idols of Finnish Maoists. |
FI © 2020 Illume Oy. P: Jouko Aaltonen.
D+SC: Jouko Aaltonen. Cin: Marita Hällfors. M: Heikki Valpola. Mozart: Requiem (played in Matti Puolakka's funeral). S rec: Lou Strömberg, Jonne Lydén. S design: Martti Turunen. ED: Samu Heikkilä. Graphic design: Tuomas Korolainen / Mene Creative Oy. P manager: Oona Saari. ED ass: Jasmina Hämäläinen. Post-production: Toast.
A documentary film featuring: Kyösti Mankamo, Heli Santavuori, Heikki Pihlaja, Raimo Laakia, Jaakko Laakso, Hannele Pihlaja, Pia Lansman, Pertti Koskela, Veli Rosenberg, Jaakko Muilu, Olli Santavuori, Hannu Ruonavaara, Merja Ojala, Matti Puolakka, Maija Keskisarja, Juhani Tanska, Pate Tirkkonen, Ilpo Oksanen and Pekka Kauppinen. Archival: Tauno Olavi Huotari and Tauno Puolakka.
Language: Finnish. English subtitles by Tiina Kinnunen.
78 min
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/394193492
Streaming in Finland: 4.5.2020 Yle Areena. Telecast: 7.5.2020, 10.5.2020, Yle TV1.
Corona lockdown viewing / First of May lockdown viewing.
A private Vimeo link viewed on a 4K tv set at home in Helsinki, 30 April 2020
Jouko Aaltonen's new documentary film is a remarkable oral history project covering the history of Maoism in Finland. In many Western countries Maoism was influential in the youth radicalism of the 1960s, but in Finland it remained marginal. To international representatives of Maoism belonged also Cambodia's Khmer Rouge.
A great split among international Communism took place after the death of Stalin in 1953 and the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in 1956 where Nikita Khrushchev exposed and denounced Stalin's terror. International Communist parties in general distanced themselves from Stalin, but Mao's China was the exception. The rift between China and the Soviet Union grew. China condemned the leaders of the USSR as "revisionist traitors" who pursued a course of "social imperialism". The conflict escalated to war between China and Russia in 1969 at the Ussuri River.
The turbulences of the post-Stalin development were in the background of Mao's "Great Leap Forward" which led to 30 million deaths in the Great Chinese Famine which started in 1959. An expression of China's fight against revisionism was the creation of the Little Red Book, a canonized text of Mao's cult of personality in the "Cultural Revolution" which started in 1966. 20 million died in the campaign which belongs to the most devastating cases of destruction of culture in the history of mankind. For instance film production was reduced to filmed records of model operas and ballets. Prominent film-makers were tortured to death.
The Maoists with their militant anti-Soviet stance were conspicuous in the Finland of the 1960s that tried to pursue a policy of peaceful coexistence with the USSR. The Maoists denounced Khrushchev and Brezhnev but idolized Stalin. They belonged to the Finnish Communist Party but their aim was to establish a party of their own. They were openly committed to violent revolution.
Although the movement was tiny, it was infiltrated by and spied on by at least five outside forces, including the Finnish secret police and the Chinese embassy.
Aaltonen follows the various stages of the movement from a strict severity to more relaxed attempts to approach the mainstream of the young people (party-going now had a new meaning) and even an attempt to establish a commune in the countryside. The cultural shock of actually visiting China and witnessing its deep poverty is recorded.
The magnetic key personality of Finnish Maoism was Matti Puolakka (1947–2018). In the 1970s he distanced himself from "the great story of Marxism" and pursued for the rest of his life philosophical ideas as an independent thinker. Aaltonen managed to interview Puolakka on film before he died, and footage on Puolakka's funeral is incorporated. Puolakka's posthumous papers contain tens of thousands of files.
Pieni punainen is a complex, bewildering and thought-provoking documentary with lasting value. My only reservation is that it takes for granted viewers' awareness of the catastrophe that was taking place in China while Maoism became fashionable in Western countries.
Jouko Aaltonen's work adds a fascinating contribution to Western cinema's expressions about Maoism, including Jean-Luc Godard's La Chinoise and Michelangelo Antonioni's Chung Kuo, Cina.
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: THE OFFICIAL INTRODUCTION:
