Karpo

Ari Matikainen: Karpo (2020). Featuring Hannu Karpo (born 1942) in his signature wolf fur cap bought in Rovaniemi. The best-known confrontational, crusading, straight-shooting, muckraking, watchdog journalist in Finnish television history is now the subject of a documentary portrait feature. A famous program of his was called Karpolla on asiaa [Karpo's Got Something To Say]. The slogan of the movie in translation: There's Still Something To Say.

FI © 2020 Napafilms Oy. P: Liisa Karpo.
    Non-fiction.
    D+SC: Ari Matikainen. Cin: Jarkko M. Virtanen. VFX: Nuutti Koskinen. M: Kalle Koivisto, The Shubie Brothers. S: Janne Laine. ED: Matti Näränen.
    Based on vintage Hannu Karpo television programs (1962–2011)
    Featuring: Hannu Karpo in vintage programs and contemporary interviews conducted on the road.
    Featuring: Sampo Karpo, Mirja Pyykkö, Urpo Kangas, Inkeri Kallio, Hannu Pasanen, Merja Ylä-Anttila, Tauno Äijälä, Pentti Jokinen.
    Soundtrack listing: "Rush Hour" (comp.+arr. Fritz Maldener), perf. Maurice Pop. – "Ruusuja hopeamaljassa" (comp. Hannes Konno), perf. Suomi Rautalanka Group. – "Totuuden tiellä" (comp.+lyr. Janne Rintala & Aki Tykki), perf. Aki Tykki & Kanuunaorkesteri.
    84 min
    Premiere: 25 Sep 2020, distributed by Scanbox Entertainment Finland Oy, theatrical distribution by Finnkino Oy with Swedish subtitles by Joanna Erkkilä.
    Viewed at Tennispalatsi 11, Helsinki, 27 Sep 2020

AA: The director Ari Matikainen has brought us a versatile series of feature-length theatrical documentaries during the last 13 years: Lone Star Hotel (2007, about the popular singer Jorma Kääriäinen), Russian Libertine (2012, about the Russian dissident Viktor Erofeyev), War and a Peace of Mind (2016, about the Finnish PTSD after WWII), and now Karpo, about the fur-capped crusading journalist in Finnish television.

Karpo richly deserves this hommage. His long career spans over seven decades of Finnish media, most importantly television. His oeuvre is also a saga of Finland during a period of its greatest change. Early on Karpo, the self-described city snob, transformed into a spokesman of vox populi. Karpo was not a populist, but he covered the issues of the forgotten people that voted populists.

Karpo has a rare talent in interviews. He is direct and in-your-face, but on his poker face there is always a spark of humour and empathy. He is always for the little people, never afraid of the powers-that-be, not even of his superiors who were afraid to fire him but tried their best to smoke him out. There is a Gogolian angle in Karpo's account of bureaucracy.

"An nescis, mi fili, quantilla prudentia mundus regatur.” "My son, if you only knew with how little reason the world is governed". Hannu Karpo could use as his motto these winged words of Axel Oxenstierna, the Lord High Chancellor of Sweden (who was portrayed by Lewis Stone in Rouben Mamoulian's Queen Christina).

Learning to know the people of Finland, Karpo understood that it was he who had been stupid. The wisdom of the heart, "sydämen sivistys", was to be found in the authentic experiences of the people whose untold stories he had the privilege to convey.

Karpo remembers the poverty of his childhood: life during wartime, the shortage of everything after the war. His father was Russian, but he always taught his children that it was Finland who gave them a home.

Karpo is stern about alcohol politics but understanding about the homeless alcoholists that were often war veterans who were never able to adjust to peacetime. Still in the 1970 the Hakaniemi Square was like a battlefield with all the alcoholics lying around.

Karpo hated the bureaucracy and rampant alcoholism at the public television company Finnish Broadcasting Corporation (Yle), and at the Seura Magazine where he was editor-in-chief for a brief period, but he loved the commercial television company Mainos-Televisio for its great work ethics and inspiring atmosphere.

My colleague at KAVI, Sami Hantula, curated brilliant compilations of Hannu Karpo's Finland for Tampere Film Festival in 2017. We promptly screened the compilations also at Cinema Orion in the presence of the maestro. A topic that was highlighted in the selections I saw was traffic, an extremely important and central theme for Karpo. Finland has changed tremendously since those excellent programs, and undoubtedly partly thanks to them.

In the traffic specials I paid also attention to Karpo as a film-maker and his dynamic sense of the mise-en-scène.

Matikainen directs his film as a road movie, Hannu Karpo driving his own car while clips and flashbacks cover his life and work, without hiding mistakes. "The Flying Liquor Seller of Malmi" commits the error of giving a candid interview while drunk, and unable to face publicity, commits suicide. It's wrong to film people who are not of sound mind.

The worst insult took place when Karpo was voluntarily working at the Yle editing room to finish a series of traffic programs while having already resigned from the company. An offensive order to clear out at once made him cry. We don't see him cry, but Matikainen cuts to Karpo driving his car while rain flows down the windscreen. The association is similar in a famous shot in In Cold Blood.

Sampo Karpo, the reporter's son, states that while Hannu was charming with strangers, he was difficult with his family. Hannu Karpo kept in touch with the lonely and marginalized for decades, remembering them with Christmas presents.

In Finland, Hannu Karpo is one of a kind. It would be interesting to learn about comparable journalistic crusaders in other countries. Inevitably, all would be tough and idiosyncratic.

In the history of journalism, Karpo could be located somewhere near the noble tradition of "muckraking" investigative journalism*: reporting that is not afraid to challenge authorities, with a commitment to correct injustice.

Because Karpo always worked for the money, there is also the lingering question of courting yellow journalism. The expression "social porn" appears jokingly in the historical clips, but it is not elaborated. Questions of sensationalism and rubbernecking are unavoidable. But Karpo is not an exploiter.

A thought-worthy reference point is also Studs Terkel: his American oral history projects such as The Good War, Hard Times and Working. I quote Wikipedia on Studs Terkel: "For Studs, there was not a voice that should not be heard, a story that could not be told," said Gary T. Johnson, President of the Chicago History Museum. "He believed that everyone had the right to be heard and had something important to say. He was there to listen, to chronicle, and to make sure their stories are remembered." Unlike Karpo, Terkel let his interlocutors speak at length and allowed listeners to draw their own conclusions.

In the cinema, there is also an affinity with Michael Moore because both Karpo and Moore are protagonists in their shows. In contrast to Moore and Terkel, Karpo, however, always distanced himself from politics.

Night falls as the saga comes to an end. How does Karpo feel now? "Vituttaa" is his untranslatable reply. It means roughly: "I'm fuckin' pissed off". "I am nothing anymore". The car heads towards darkness.

* Muckraking journalism was established in the 19th century in the USA. Its early heroes included Julie Chambers, Nellie Bly, Helen Hunt Jackson, Henry Demarest Lloyd, Ida B. Wells, Ambrose Bierce, B. O. Flower, Ida M. Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Upton Sinclair, Jacob Riis, Louis D. Brandeis and Ray Stannard Baker.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM THE PRESSBOOK:

Lost Boys

 

Joonas Neuvonen, Sadri Cetinkaya: Lost Boys (2020).

FI 2020. PC: Helsinki-filmi Oy / Tekele Productions Oy. P: Miia Haavisto.
    Non-fiction.
    D: Joonas Neuvonen, Sadri Cetinkaya. SC: Joonas Neuvonen, Venla Varha, Sadri Cetinkaya. Cin: Joonas Neuvonen, Sadri Cetinkaya, Arttu Nieminen, Arsen Sarkisiants. M: Ilmari Jyskä. S: Arttu Hokkanen. ED: Sadri Cetinkaya, Venla Varha. Script editor: Jan Forsström.
    End credit title song: Maustetytöt: "Tein kai lottorivini väärin", comp., lyr., arr., perf. Maustetytöt [Anna Karjalainen, Kaisa Karjalainen] (2019).
    Featuring: Joonas Neuvonen, Jani Raappana, Antti, Cindy, Leelee, Thee.
    Voiceover: Pekka Strang.
    Languages: English, Khmer, Finnish, Thai.
    99 min
    Rated 18
    Finnish premiere 25 Sep 2020, distributed by SF Studios with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Frej Grönholm, hard-of-hearing Finnish subtitles by Anna-Maija Ihander, "La Marseillaise" translated by Valter Juva.
    Viewed at Tennispalatsi 2 (only Finnish subtitles for the hard-of-hearing), Helsinki, 25 Sep 2020

Sadri Cetinkaya (co-director of Lost Boys): "Three friends embark on a voyage to Southeast Asia, but only one of them returns. Something has happened, but the record of the events is a motley assortment of videos and jumbled stories. Lost Boys follows the protagonist's quest to find his lost friends and answers to what happened to them in Cambodia."

"Lost Boys is a document about a state of mind in which memories and lies converge into a narrative for the storyteller himself. The narrative moves around in circles like its teller. The events run inevitably towards a dead end. The quest of the narrator is an escape attempt and a fabrication made of distorted memories to hide an uncomfortable truth both about himself and his relationships with his friends."

"Love, money, sex and drugs are glittering dreams pursued both by the voyagers and the women they meet in Southeast Asia. When things go wrong, the paradise turns into a paranoid nightmare in which the protagonist drifts lost in a maze with no way out." (Sadri Cetinkaya, my translation)

AA: On the same day, two films premiere in Helsinki with titles derived from Peter Pan: Lost Boys and Wendy.

Lost Boys is a non-fiction film, ten years in the making, a follow-up to the popular, award-winning and controversial Reindeerspotting – Escape from Santaland (2010). Joonas Neuvonen has director credit in both. Sadri Cetinkaya, co-screenwriter of Reindeerspotting, is now also the co-director in Lost Boys.

Reindeerspotting premiered on 9 April 2010, and its protagonist Jani Raappana was found dead three months later in Phnom Penh on 7 July. Lost Boys, launched as a bonus material project for the dvd release for Reindeerspotting, has grown into a film of independent value, more harrowing and profound than its predecessor.

Shot with small, portable and handheld digital cameras, the result is visually consistent. Mostly the footage is sober; the fisheye lens is at times in use. The rough edge of the source material is sustained in the colour grading and the editing. The soundtrack and the soundscape with their trance, ambient and electro dimensions serve the visionary and hallucinatory approach seamlessly.

During the end credits, one of the biggest recent Finnish pop hits, "Tein kai lottorivini väärin" ["I must have picked my Lotto numbers wrong"] by the female duo Maustetytöt is heard, channelling harsh observations into pop dream idioms. The subtext is actually that some have been dealt a poor hand.

The drug saga in Lost Boys gets more dangerous than in Reindeerspotting. The main drug is "the mad drug" ya ba (Thai: ยาบ้า, Lao: ຢາບ້າ, formerly known as yama). A mixture of metamphetamine and caffeine, it has been traditionally used as horse drug but also by soldiers and sex workers.

We follow Jani, Joonas and Antti on their trip to hell, in a spiral of sex, addiction and debt. Drug traffic is controlled by organized crime, disciplining the milieu with death squads. The sex workers (the go go girls) are part of the milieu. Jani dies, Antti gets mad, and Joonas ends up in jail.

The film belongs to the "descent to Hades" lineage of storytelling and its special Southeast Asian current, films including The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now and Bullet in the Head. It has also affinities with the "rise and fall" scenario of pop biopics (about pop stars perishing with addictions).

Although essentially a saga of a private hell, Lost Boys offers intriguing glimpses of the Cambodian experience: the nationwide post-traumatic stress syndrome after the Khmer Rouge reign of terror that radiates over generations; visiting Angkor Vat; a flood of the Mekong River; sex tourism including child sex.

A concise montage of historical newsreels takes us to the declaration of independence from France while "La Marseillaise" is playing. There is a subterranean connection in the ya ba euphoria of the Finnish ex-convict from Rovaniemi that was burned to the ground by the Nazis and the sex worker from Cambodia, a country raped by colonialists and sex tourists.

...

The ethical dimension must have been exceptionally difficult. It's wrong to exploit a defenseless person (underaged, mentally imbalanced, drunk, addicted, debt-slaved, etc.). "Between consenting adults",  "compos mentis" ("of sound mind") and "fair play" are basic rules in film-making, including pornography. I trust that all has been cleared and fairly compensated and the families of the tragic, unfortunate young men and women alerted. But I confess I felt very bad. As a rule, I prefer fiction in themes like this, films like the original Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream.

Lost Boys includes explicit scenes of sex and drugtaking, and it is rated 18. For the first time in my life I was asked to show ID papers in a cinema. I was a bit proud because I'm not a teenager anymore. 24 years ago I served for two years as the director of the Finnish Board of Film Classification in the mission of ending film censorship in our country.

...

Lost Boys is a detective story with a sujet (the story of the investigation) and a fabula (the story of the crime). But because it is a drug-hallucinating film, made under the influence of drugs, the sujet and the fabula make less and less sense.

Maybe Jani's death was a suicide, maybe it was a murder, maybe the girlfriend Leelee betrayed him, maybe the film director Joonas Neuvonen betrayed him. The film is a first person narrative by the drugdealer-director-detective-convict Joonas Neuvonen (voiced by Pekka Strang). His last words: "I wanted him to vanish. I wanted him to die". A case like Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (preceded by Anton Chekhov's The Shooting Party)?

These currents are compelling, but even deeper currents run through the movie. Scenes of drug euphoria are essential, as well as the primitive abandon in hard core sex inserts. They are not for exploitation. They convey a desperate élan vital, but most fundamentally Lost Boys is a poetic vision of something even stronger: the death wish. Bridges have been burned, and all that is left is an irresistible call to die.

P.S. 30 Sep 2020. Keywords: Instant gratification. Demoralization. Dehumanization. Moral hazard. Self-destructiveness. Criminal negligence. Crime. Aggravated narcotics offence. Homicide.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: MORE INFO:

Beethoven 250: Piano Sonatas Numbers 19 and 20 "Leichte Sonaten" (Stephen Kovacevich, 1999)

 

Sviatoslav Richter (1915–1997) recorded almost all of Beethoven's piano sonatas and struck gold even with the "leichte Sonaten" Opus 49.

Beethoven: The Complete Works (80 CD). Warner Classics / © 2019 Parlophone Records Limited. Also available on Spotify etc. I bought my box set from Fuga at Helsinki Music Centre.
    Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827.
    Beethoven 250 / corona lockdown listening.

From: CD 21/80  Piano Sonatas Nos. 16–20
Stephen Kovacevich, 1994 (Nos. 16–18) and 1999 (Nos. 19–20)

Opus 49 Nr. 1: Klaviersonate Nr. 19 in g-Moll (composed in 1792–1798), published in 1805
    1. Satz: Andante, 2/4
    2. Satz: Rondo, Allegro, 6/8
Opus 49 Nr. 2: Klaviersonate Nr. 20 in G-Dur (composed in 1792–1796), published in 1805
    1. Satz: Allegro, ma non troppo, Allabreve
    2. Satz: Tempo di Minuetto, 3/4
    "Leichte Sonaten", easy ones for students, friends and their children. In Anton Kuerti's opinion, these sonatas were composed earlier than Beethoven's first published piano sonatas and should not be included in the opus. For some, they should be called "sonatinas".

AA: The two short sonatas of Opus 49 are uncomplicated and delightful exercise pieces, refreshing and relaxing after the three pathbreaking sonatas of Opus 31. Composed around 1795, Ludwig van Beethoven had set them aside, but his brother Kaspar sent them to the publisher without his permission. For Charles Rosen, however, Sonata No. 19 was "deeply affecting and distinguished". No. 20 is considered the easiest of Beethoven's piano sonatas.

"From the heart... to the heart" is the motto of the Ludwig van Beethoven, The Magnificent Master site, with an introduction by Dr. Jose Antonio Abreu titled "Classical Music – Pastime for the Elite or Vital Source of Strength for All?". The site was kept in 1998–2015 by Raptus Association for Music Appreciation and can now be accessed via the Wayback Machine.

From that site I quote: "When Joachim Kaiser, in his description of these Sonatas, points out that pianists, in their playing these "easy sonatas" might compare themselves to Einstein being faced with the task of performing simple multiplications, then he might be referring to the fact that, perhaps, also these sonatas would deserve careful attention."

András Schiff in his Guardian Lectures (Nr. 19, Nr. 20) emphasizes the pedagogical purpose and introduces these sonatas as wonderful piano lessons, comparing them with Bach's inventions, Mozart's compositions of childhood and Schumann's album for the young. He champions the view that one must teach immediately very good music, just the very best music.

In Number 19, he compares Beethoven with Haydn and creates a dialogue by alternating Beethoven with Haydn's keyboard sonata in G minor. Striking in Beethoven is his cantabile approach, and also, in contrast to Mozart and Haydn, "a more horizontal style" with long legato phrases. Mozart and Haydn are pragmatic composers, but Beethoven is not pragmatic at all, always striving for the impossible.

Schiff praises the sonata form, the narrative construction principle of coming home. "Sonata form is one of the great inventions of mankind"; it expresses so much in so little time. "All human beings need a sense of coming home, something I very sadly miss in today's music. I don't feel any sense of coming home. There is no tonal system, and to me, it is like a foreign language".

"In a light sonata Beethoven takes very daring chromatic steps". Beethoven does not prepare dynamics. From crescendo, he likes to move to subito piano. Number 19 may be difficult for children, unless they have played a lot of Bach. "And they should".

To Schiff, Number 20 is even more modest, but in comparison with the "silly sonatinas of Clementi or Haslinger, this is pure gold". Because of the missing instructions about dynamics or articulation, each performer can become a second composer. A clue concerning Beethoven's decision not to publish Number 20 is that he recycled a theme in the third movement of the Septet in E-flat major, Opus 20. For Schiff, the approach is that of a village band, rustic and lively. Schiff does not hesitate to add ornaments to the Minuetto. He would refuse to add ornaments to any late Beethoven piece but not in an occasional piece such as this. Improvisation was a very important part of Beethoven's playing. (End of my resume of the Schiff lectures of Op. 49)

Listening to Number 19, I sense an immediate connection with a Bachian point of serenity, an opening to eternity and infinity. These works are like a playful journey through Bach, Haydn and Mozart towards selfhood. There might be at least a poetic truth in Anton Kuerti's argument that the compositions of Opus 49 might precede all other piano sonatas. Listening to them after Piano Sonata Number 18 is like a return to the sources.

Perhaps we might remember here what Artur Schnabel said: “The sonatas of Mozart are unique; they are too easy for children, and too difficult for artists.”

Besides Stephen Kovacevich, I listened to Igor Levit, András Schiff, Daniel Barenboim, and a special favourite, Sviatoslav Richter. I love all these interpretations, but the subtle nobility of Richter pleases me most.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: ONLINE SOURCES:

Beethoven 250: Piano Sonata No. 18 "La Chasse" (Stephen Kovacevich, 1994)

 

Beethoven: The Complete Works (80 CD). Warner Classics / © 2019 Parlophone Records Limited. Also available on Spotify etc. I bought my box set from Fuga at Helsinki Music Centre.
    Ludwig van Beethoven 1770–1827.
    Beethoven 250 / corona lockdown listening.

From: CD 21/80  Piano Sonatas Nos. 16–20
Stephen Kovacevich, 1994 (Nos. 16–18) and 1999 (Nos. 19–20)

Opus 31 Nr. 3: Klaviersonate Nr. 18 in Es-Dur „La Chasse“ (1802)
    Erster Satz: Allegro
    Zweiter Satz: Scherzo. Allegretto vivace
    Dritter Satz: Menuetto. Moderato e grazioso.
    Vierter Satz: Presto con fuoco

AA: The piano is a string instrument, a keyboard instrument and a percussion instrument, and during Beethoven's lifetime it was evolving from the fortepiano (Hammerklavier) to the pianoforte. Beethoven's early works were written for the fortepiano and his late works for the pianoforte that was in progress of being developed towards the modern grand concert piano.

Probably compositions such as those by Haydn and Beethoven in the first decade of the 19th century inspired, encouraged and accelerated the development at piano factories such as Broadwood.

Beethoven's piano sonata Opus 31 Number 3 in E-flat major seems to celebrate the piano evolution itself and the piano's expanding expressive capabilities. Beethoven "plays the piano" in all senses: there is an extraordinary Spielfreude, joy of playing. It's a virtuoso piece in melody, harmony and rhythm. It's witty, spicy, inventive and surprising.

After the disturbing undercurrents of Piano Sonata No. 17 "The Tempest", this sonata is different in its tender and humoristic jocularity. It is a love letter in four movements. Perhaps a love letter to the piano. In his Guardian Lecture, András Schiff emphasizes the cantabile quality of the first movement and sings along: "Liebst Du mich?" ("Do you love me?"). An answer is not coming.

This sonata is Beethoven's last in four movements, and there is no slow movement, but instead both a scherzo and a menuetto in the middle. The menuetto is the profound movement, the one that inspired Saint-Saëns to compose a set of variations. It's also the movement in which a deep Beethovenian humanity is at its most compelling. Dark currents under the merry flow.

The last movement, Presto con fuoco, is the one that inspired Frenchmen to call this sonata "La Chasse" ("The Hunt", or, why not: "The Chase"), a title not approved by Beethoven, but it has stuck, and I find it apt. This hunt or chase is also playful. The focus is not on killing prey but the joy of the chase. One can imagine horses riding and hounds leaping merrily to and fro in the woods. In literature, I think about the hunting party in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace that is essential in Natasha Rostova's Bildungsroman.

There has been a month's break in my blogging about Beethoven because there was so much to blog about Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. I did not want to proceed in my listening programme before blogging, and as a result I have listened to this sonata for a month almost daily, in many interpretations, and all seem good.

But most of all I have been listening to Stephen Kovacevich who seems particularly inspired in the three sonatas of Opus 31. I never tired of listening to him.

Jenseits des Sichtbaren – Hilma af Klint / Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint

 

Halina Dyrschka: Jenseits des Sichtbaren – Hilma af Klint / Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint (2019).

Halina Dyrschka: Jenseits des Sichtbaren – Hilma af Klint / Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint (2019). Reenactment of the artist channeling spiritual visions with gouache on paper.

Hilma af Klint: Självporträtt, n.d. From: Oh Nena com.

Hilma af Klint – ilmeisen tuolla puolen / Bortom det synliga – filmen om Hilma af Klint.
    Non-fiction.
    DE/SE/CH/GB 2019 © 2018 Ambrosia Film. Year of release: 2019. P: Eva Illmer, Halina Dyrschka. EX: Alex Dewart.
    D+SC: Halina Dyrschka. Cin: Alicja Pahl, Luana Knipfer – HD – colour – 16:9 – release: DCP. Colour grading: Natalie Maximova. Kamera-Bühne: Florian Al Salk. AD: Susanne Dieringer. M: Damian Scholl. S: Niklas Kammertöns, Clemens Nürnberger. ED: Antje Lass, Mario Orias, Halina Dyrschka.
    Featuring: Johan af Klint (The Hilma af Klint Foundation), Julia Voss, Ulla af Klint, Josiah McEhleny, Iris Müller-Westermann, Valeria Napoleone, Ernst Peter Fischer.
    Sprecher: Petra van de Voort.
    Loc: Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Estonia, Switzerland, Austria.
    Languages: Swedish, German, English.
    94 min
    Festival premiere: 27 Jan 2019 Göteborg Film Festival
    Swedish premiere: 4 Oct 2019
    German premiere: 5 March 2020
    Verleih: DE and World Sales: mindjazz pictures, SE: Folkets Bio, US: Zeitgeist Films.
    Finnish premiere: 14 Aug 2020, distributor: Oy Cinema Mondo Ltd, with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Anitra Paukkula / Joanna Erkkilä
    Viewed at Kinopalatsi 4, Helsinki, 19 Sep 2020.

Filmportal: "Dokumentarfilm über die schwedische Künstlerin Hilma af Klint, die – wie sich erst in den 1980er Jahren herausstellte – schon 1906 abstrakte Gemälde schuf und somit den bis dahin angenommenen Begründern der Abstrakten Kunst (z.B. Kandinsky, Mondrian und Malewitsch) zuvorkam. Im Laufe ihrer unbekannten Karriere malte Hilma af Klingt rund 1.200 Bilder. In ihrem Testament verfügte sie jedoch, dass diese frühestens 20 Jahre nach ihrem Tod veröffentlicht werden dürften. Der Dokumentarfilm spürt dem Leben und Wirken der Künstlerin nach und beleuchtet, warum sie so lange verkannt blieb." (Filmportal)

Ambrosia Film: Die Entdeckung der Abstraktion: "Die Kunstwelt macht eine sensationelle Entdeckung – nur 100 Jahre zu spät. 1906 malte Hilma af Klint ihr erstes abstraktes Bild, lange vor Kandinsky, Mondrian oder Malewitsch. Wie kann es sein, daß eine Frau Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts die abstrakte Malerei begründet und niemand nimmt Notiz?"

"Heute begeistert die Künstlerin Millionen mit ihrem schrankenlosen Denken, das in einem überwältigenden Werk gipfelt und damit die Geschichte verändert. Die filmische Annäherung an eine Pionierin, deren sinnliches Oeuvre nicht nur künstlerisch fasziniert, zeigt zudem eine lebenslange Sinnsuche, die das Leben jenseits des Sichtbaren erfassen will. Die außergewöhnliche Gedankenwelt der Hilma af Klint reicht über Biologie, Astronomie, Theosophie bis hin zur Relativitätstheorie und spannt so einen faszinierender Kosmos aus einzigartigen Bildern und Aufzeichnungen bis hin zu unserem ureigensten Empfinden." (Ambrosia Film)

AA: I like in Halina Dyrschka's film Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint the courage to think big.

Even literally the legacy is big. Many of af Klint's artworks are over three meters long and wide (see the illustrations above). The legacy is big also in terms of tally: 1200 paintings and 26 000 manuscript pages (meticulously written, not far from calligraphy). On the cinema screen we can experience the size, and in montage sequences we can grasp the multitude of variations.

As an artist, Hilma af Klint led a double life. She was a perfect professional painter and illustrator in the established trends of her day. But she had also a secret life as an abstract painter, not following trends but creating them. Halina Dyrschka crystallizes them in montages of connections between Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, et al. In each case, af Klint was the predecessor, but she could have no influence, because her works were never exhibited in galleries or auctions. To those connections I would add surrealism (automatic writing) and abstract expressionism (certain paintings of af Klint have affinities with Mark Rothko).

Like other abstract painters, af Klint was seriously involved in the spiritualist movements of the day, and most of all she was committed to theosophy, the only spiritual movement that accepted women as equals including the possibility of becoming a priestess.

Into af Klint's official achievements belonged beautiful academic series of illustrations of Swedish flowers. The organic form is also a fertile background to af Klint's abstractions. Mussels, snails, flowers, mushrooms, trees and animals seem to have inspired them, as well as phenomena of the inorganic nature, such as streams shining in the sun. In her academic illustrations I am reminded of the von Wright brothers, "the Audubon of Finland", hardly an inspiration. Instead, af Klint is known to have been an admirer of Leonardo da Vinci.

Halina Dyrschka thinks big also in terms of science, evoking the scientific revolutions in the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, concerning cell biology, electricity, electromagnetism, radioactivity, atomic theory and quantum physics – all connected by the insight that the defining structures are invisible. Seen that way, Hilma af Klint's art can be understood, besides theosophic epiphanies, as poetic visions of unseen dimensions of the natural world.

Dyrschka invites us to af Klint's homes and favourite trysts including Konstakademin, Blanch's Café, Adelsö, Gierda and Ösby. We know little of her private life and relationships. She was a single woman born into an aristocratic family. She supported herself with the official part of her art. Her private life was private.

Af Klint belonged to a circle of spiritualists called "The Five", and she wanted to establish a Theosophic temple in Sweden, displaying her art, but Rudolf Steiner discouraged her, also as an artist. However, Steiner photographed her works and showed them to Kandinsky before he launched his own line of abstract art. This is a subject for further research. Perhaps even an art historical detective story.

Af Klint's abstract art was meant to exist outside the marketplace. It was a spiritual saga and a history of a soul. Hilma af Klint had no interest in fame and recognition. Her name is even missing from the family grave. There are no memorials in Sweden to one of the country's greatest artists.

...

Susan Tallman in her essay "Painting the Beyond" in The New York Review of Books (4 April 2019) questions Hilma af Klint's status as the pioneer of abstract art. Af Klint did not see herself as a creator but a mediator. "Bilderna målades genom mig med stor kraft": "The images were painted through me with great force". But I would argue that a similar sense connects many great artists since classical Antiquity to this day.

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story, of that man skilled in all ways of contending, the wanderer, harried for years on end” (Homer: The Odyssey).

Meditation and worship has always been inseparable from major trends of art. "Soli Deo Gloria" was the motto of J. S. Bach. "Primitive artworks" in Western museums are neither primitive nor meant as art. They are sacred objects repurposed by colonialism, as exposed by Alain Resnais and Chris Marker in Les Statues meurent aussi.

Tallman catalogues traditions of abstraction in art including diagrams, prints, mandalas, yin and yang symbols and I Ching hexagrams. Her list could be vastly expanded to the dawn of art and mankind. Visual art was born in the dual inspiration of the realistic and the formative, the animistic and the geometric and the profane and the sacred. That is documented on the walls of the oldest cave paintings.

Even they were hardly thought as art, they had not the function of art. They mean art for us, but we don't know what they signified at the time. Only one thing is certain: they were not meant to be seen but only to exist, like Hilma af Klint's abstract art that was created to established a connection beyond the visible.

Developments towards abstraction were everywhere in 19th century art, for instance in certain paintings by J. W. M. Turner. As soon as photography became widespread, painting was liberated from its calling to accurate reproduction. Even abstract cinema emerged within a few years from the revelations of Malevich and Kandinsky.

All this does not diminish Hilma af Klint's achievement, on the contrary. She was the first artist to build a consistent, huge oeuvre in abstract painting, exploring many of its possibilities.

Hilma af Klint (1862–1944), the great Swedish painter, was almost an exact contemporary of Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946), the most highly regarded Finnish painter. The international esteem of both has peaked in recent years, and both have now also been honoured by distinguished films (the latter by Helene, 2020, by Antti J. Jokinen).

My own relationship with Hilma af Klint keeps evolving slowly. I happened to visit (repeatedly, I think) the very first Hilma af Klint solo exhibition in the world, "Hilma af Klint's Secret Images", at Nordiskt Konstcentrum on the Suomenlinna sea fortress island, in 1988, but I was not aware of the full meaning of what I saw. (I was a regular Suomenlinna visitor at the time. It was my favourite place for walks, and while waiting for the ferry I frequented the Nordiskt Konstcentrum.) A bigger revelation was the "Hilma af Klint – A Pioneer of Abstraction" exhibition that I caught at Kunsthalle Helsinki during the Helsinki Festival in 2014. The eponymous wonderful catalogue by Moderna Museet I have cherished ever since. Halina Dyrschka's movie adds indispensably to the Hilma af Klint experience. With hindsight, I am not sure whether the Hilma af Klint hangings at the Nordiskt Konstcentrum and Kunsthalle Helsinki were ideal. I seem to be getting a stronger experience from the combination of the movie and the book.

Hilma af Klint: Serie Parsifal, Grupp II, nr 69, 1916 Akvarell och blyerts på papper 26,8 × 24,8 cm HAK279 © Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk.

Metsäjätti / Forest Giant

 

Ville Jankeri: Metsäjätti (2020). Hannes Suominen (Janne), Anu Sinisalo (Katariina), Jussi Vatanen (Pasi).

FI © 2020 Solar Films Inc. Oy. P: Rimbo Salomaa, Jukka Helle, Markus Selin.
    D: Ville Jankeri. SC: Ville Jankeri, Timo Turunen – based on the novel (2011) by Miika Nousiainen. DP: Aarne Tapola. Drone cinematography: BongoBongo, Skymotion Pictures. PD: Sattva-Hanna Toiviainen. Cost: Tiina Kaukanen. Makeup: Kaisa Pätilä. VFX: Tuomo Hintikka. M: Marko Nyberg. S: Janne JAnkeri. ED: Harri Ylönen.
    C: Jussi Vatanen (Pasi), Sara Soulié (Linda), Hannes Suominen (Janne), Anu Sinisalo (Katariina), Jari Virman (Antti), Rami Rusinen (Jonne), Tommi Korpela (factory director Virtasalmi), Iikka Forss (chief shop steward Kuisma), Anna-Riikka Rajanen (Tiina), Tomi Alatalo (Mauno), Matti Laine (Janne's father), Marjo Lahti (Janne's mother), Jarkko Pajunen (Raninen), Jalmari Honka (Pasi at 15), Samuli Hokkanen (Vesa), Jeremy Leskinen (Jonne at 15), Kuura Rossi (Pasi at 11), Eemeli Hölttä (Janne at 11), Reeta Vestman (Vesa's mother Sirpa), Jaana Saarinen (mayor), Matti Onnismaa (Järvinen), Philip Zandén (the new CEO), Aku Sipola (real estate agent), Terhi Suorlahti (consultant Sarita), Seppo Paajanen (Pellikka), Mikko Kaukolampi (Matti), Bruno Cacciatore (doctor), Tara Terno (Sofia). Voiceover: Santeri Kinnunen.
    Metallica Hämeenlinna 2019 concert at Kantola Event Park, 16 July 2019: James Hetfield (voc, gtr), Lars Ulrich (dr), Kirk Hammett (solo gtr), Robert Trujillo (bs). "For Whom The Bell Tolls" (Cliff Burton, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich). There was an audience of 55 000 at the concert.
    Theme song (during the final credits): "Meidän murusia" (comp. Lauri Tähkä, lyr. Timo Kiiskinen), perf. Tommi Läntinen.
    88 min
    Swedish subtitles: Frej Grönholm. English subtitles: Aretta Vähälä.
    Premiere: 11 Sep 2020 (120 venues), distributed by Nordisk Film.
    Viewed at Kinopalatsi 1, Helsinki, 11 Sep 2020 (Finnish subtitles for the hard-of-hearing).
    The title is a name of a fictional forest industry company.

AA: Everything is perfect in the life of Pasi (Jussi Vatanen). He has a great job as a business development manager at a huge forest industry company. A promotion is forthcoming. Pasi has a wonderful and beautiful wife, Linda (Sara Soulié), who is expecting a baby. They are about to move to the tallest building in Finland, the Majakka Tornitalo / "The Lighthouse".

There is a test before the promotion. Pasi must visit a plywood factory at the (fictional) municipality of Törmälä and fire a lot of people. The factory is very profitable but not enough for the company. The humiliation of the test lies in the fact that Törmälä is Pasi's home village. He must fire people whom he has known since childhood.

That is just for starters. After Pasi has dutifully executed the layoffs, he proceeds to put into action an initiative of the factory stalwarts to develop a railway to make the logistics more profitable. The Left Alliance appears as "the No Party" that opposes all initiatives favourable to business. With the Social Democrats compromise is possible, and they win the election. On the same day, the company announces that the factory will be closed. The company has been trimmed down to become more valuable in a transnational merger.

The most memorable chapter in the movie is Pasi's media training. Communication agencies may seem a phenomenon of our times, but they are reminiscent of the schools of rhetorics and sophists in Classical Greece (against whom Socrates taught, because they had no commitment to truth, only winning the argument).

Having been thoroughly prepped in media training, Pasi is interviewed at the press conference where the closing of the factory is announced. The company bosses are aghast when they watch the tv news. Against the instructions, Pasi tells the truth that the factory has been very profitable, but owners want even bigger profits.

Next day, summoned to the board meeting, Pasi expects to be fired. Instead, he is offered a very big promotion. But he resigns with an offensive farewell hand sign.

I have not read the novel, but the film is reportedly faithful to it, with some changes. As different from the novel, Pasi's immediate superior is a woman, Katariina (Anu Sinisalo). This film seems to imply that women in power can be as terrible as men.

The other major change is the ending: the movie, in contrast to the novel, has a happy ending. Pasi buys the factory and continues production. This ending has been criticized, but I like it like it is. First of all, I am a Kracauerian: I prefer open endings in films, "the final image should show an open road or a window with a view to the sky".

Happy ending is the second best alternative. You don't have to believe in it. Nothing is more devastating than a certain kind of melodrama happy ending. But there is no irony in Metsäjätti's happy ending. We are living in a pandemic year, and terrible things happen. At the same time, everybody knows that change is imminent. Crisis is a new possibility.

Metsäjätti is an entertainment film, and I feel good that it gives a message of hope. Forest industry is an industry of the past but also an industry of the future because there are hundreds of untapped possibilities in biochemical industries based on wood.

Critics have noticed that Metsäjätti has a story "ripped from today's headlines" although the novel is nine years old. When the film came to the premiere the closing of the Kaipola factory by the forest giant UPM was in the headlines, in circumstances similar with the movie.

There is more to the background. The Milton Friedman – Margaret Thatcher gospel of monetarism that became fashionable in the 1970s (both Friedman and Thatcher were personal friends of Augusto Pinochet) is being questioned by an increasing number of adherents of capitalism. The prestigious Business Roundtable decided last year to withdraw from shareholder primacy. The world is changing, and the change does not obey conventional party lines. To me, the ending of Metsäjätti the movie reflects that.

The film director is Ville Jankeri, who impressed me with his debut feature film Pussikaljaelokuva. He managed to make an intriguing, engaging, rolling film from an unfilmable novel. It was a Finnish I vitelloni. It was not story-driven, it was character-driven, and Jankeri is a talented director of actors.

Metsäjätti is story-driven, the story is engrossing, it has been popular both as a novel and in the theatre, and it concerns everybody in Finland. But the movie is not electrifying, it lacks adrenaline. Jankeri is a master of the laid back, but in this movie we should feel a dramatic punch.

Jussi Vatanen gives a performance in extremely laconic mode. He has a poker face, but we can feel the pain inside. In the beginning, he is facing a great future of happiness and success, but we feel an absence.

I was thinking about Robert De Niro as Frank Sheeran in The Irishman. During the long ride from Philadelphia to the airport Sheeran realizes that he is expected to assassinate Jimmy Hoffa, whose closest ally, bodyguard and right hand man he is. During that ride Sheeran dies inside, and he never finds himself again. In the finale he leaves the door open, but nobody is coming, not even hitmen.

I'm also thinking about Vatanen's recent performances. Napapiirin sankarit 3 : Quest: in search for himself. Result: he fails. The latest adaptation of The Unknown Soldier: the most coveted role of the Finnish screen, Koskela; his interpretation the best that I have seen. Vatanen conveys the inferno of the final summer of 1944 at Kannas with laconic dignity. Koskela would know how to maximize the effort to thwart and contain the offensive of the overwhelming Red Army, but the insane orders of our own clueless and panicked commanders are impossible to process. Koskela sacrifices himself for his country and fellow soldiers.

Pasi fails to engage his devoted wife Linda into his existential quandary, but perhaps the happy ending spells well for happiness at home, too. That's how the arch of the drama is written, but the final turn is not overwhelmingly compelling, because conviction is missing from Jankeri and Vatanen.

A performance of quiet strength is given by Tommi Korpela. Miska Rantanen, the critic of Helsingin Sanomat, writes that Korpela "would be impressive even as a traffic sign, but also the role of the factory director trapped between the rock and the hard place he conveys with perfection".

Metsäjätti is a good and rewarding film, but a bit more dramatic panache would be welcome.

Aalto

Virpi Suutari: Aalto (2020). Aino Aalto, Alvar Aalto.

FI © 2020 Euphoria Film Oy. P: Timo Vierimaa. EX: Virpi Suutari, Martti Suosalo.
    Non-fiction.
    D: Virpi Suutari. SC: Virpi Suutari, Jussi Rautaniemi. Cin: Heikki Färm, Jani Kumpulainen – 4K Prores Quicktime – 1:2,39 – released on DCP. Aerial footage: KopterCam Oy. M: Sanna Salmenkallio. S: Olli Huhtanen – 5.1-Mix Ebur128. Foley: Toni Ilo. ED: Jussi Rautaniemi. Archival assistant: Teresa Sadik-Ogli.
   FEATURING:
– Alvar Aalto
– Aino Aalto
– Elissa Aalto
   COMMENTED BY (INCLUDING ARCHIVAL SOURCES):
– David N. Fixler, Architect, lecturer, Harvard University, Cambridge.
– Juhani Pallasmaa, Architect, professor of architecture.
– Nina Stritzler-Levine, Gallery Director/ Director Curatorial Affairs Bard Graduate Center.
– Antonello Alici, Architect, Ph. D., architectural historian.
– Harry Charrington, Professor of Architecture, University of Westminster, London.
– Peter Reed, Senior Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
– Harmon Goldstone, Architect.
– Gail Fenske, Professor of Architecture, Roger Williams University, Bristol, Rhode Island.
– Renja Suominen-Kokkonen, Adjunct Professor, Universities of Helsinki and Turku.
– Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen, Professor of Architecture, University of Yale.
– Mark Lee Architect, Professor of architecture, Harvard University.
– Severi Parko, Professor.
– Esa Laaksonen, Architect.
– Johanna Alanen, Aaltos' daughter.
– Heikki Alanen, Aaltos' grandchild.
– Henrik Aalto, Aaltos' grandchild.
– Kristian Gullichsen, Architect.
– Tommi Lindh, CEO Aalto Foundation.
– Aarno Ruusuvuori, Architect.
– Mariska Harbonn, Guide Maison Carré.
– Federico Marconi, Architect.
– Sofia Singler, Architect, architectural historian.
– Vezio Nava, Architect.
– Mariangela Malpassi, Resident of Riola.
– Ben af Schultén, Designer.
– Marja Paatela-Pöyry, Architect.
– Veli Paatela, Architect.
– Christine Schildt, Personal friend.
– Göran Schildt, Author, personal friend.
– Carola Giedion-Welcker, Art historian, personal friend.
– Karl Fleig, Architect.
– Alfred Roth, Architect.
– Lorenz Moser, Architect.
    VOICE TALENTS:
– Martti Suosalo (Alvar Aalto)
– Pirkko Hämäläinen (Aino Aalto)
    BACKGROUND INTERVIEWS: Toshiko Mori (Architect), Glenn Murcutt (Architect). Dozens of hours of interview tapes made by Göran Schildt for his Alvar Aalto biography.
    Loc: Finland, USA, Italy, France, Australia, Germany, Russia. Aalto architecture is visited in Helsinki, Imatra, Jyväskylä, Rovaniemi, Seinäjoki and Säynätsalo plus the Venice Pavillion, the Vyborg Library and Cambridge, Massachusetts (MIT).
    Filmed in seven languages: English, Finnish, French, German, Russian, Italian, Swedish.
    103 min
    Translations: Saga Vera Oy (Maarit Tulkki, Glyn Welden Banks, Janne Kauppila), Gabriele Schrey-Vasara, Jacqueline Virkamäki, Tiina Madisson, Stefano De Luca.
    Premiere: 4 Sep 2020, distributor: StoryHill, with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Janne Kauppila / Nina Ekholm.
    Viewed at Tennispalatsi 11, Helsinki, 5 Sep 2020.

Production notes: “Architecture was life for the Aaltos. It was the essence of who they were."
    "Why settle for the ordinary when you can create paradise?" (Alvar Aalto).
    "The scale is always with the people, and they're every bit as much a part of nature as pine trees and birches. We have all the technical skills, but humanizing them is a very difficult task" (Alvar Aalto).
    "Virpi Suutari‘s documentary Aalto is a story about brave global citizens and trailblazers, creative entrepreneurship and passion for architecture and design." (Production notes)

AA: There are hundreds of books and periodicals dedicated to Aalto. One could build a library of them.

But film is the ideal way to convey Aalto. Cityscapes, buildings, public spaces, private spaces and design objects: a mobile camera has privileged access to all dimensions and the play of light captured in time. And most importantly: recording people living in those spaces and moving around in them.

I have seen many Aalto films, all good, but Virpi Suutari's movie is the first that is on the Aalto wavelength / aaltopituus. Based on solid international research, the approach is full of wit, humour, love and a sense of play.

Among films about architecture, Suutari's film ranks with the best, comparable with Eero Saarinen: The Architect Who Saw the Future (2016) co-produced, shot by and starring Eric Saarinen, Eero's son. A point of comparison is also Sydney Pollack's Sketches of Frank Gehry (2006), that includes a beautiful Aalto montage: Gehry tells that Aalto was his greatest inspiration during his student years.

Suutari's film is more beautiful and poetic than the Saarinen and Gehry documentaries. The poetry is not extraneous. It is inspired by the Aalto spirit itself. Alvar Aalto was a very big film buff, an international cinephile, a personal friend of the avant-gardists of the 1920s and the 1930s. I can sense his cinephilic smile during the movie.

...

The definitive Alvar Aalto biography is the authorized one by his lifelong friend Göran Schildt, in three volumes: Det vita bordet / Alvar Aalto: The Early Years (1982), Moderna tider / Alvar Aalto: The Decisive Years (1985) and Den mänskliga faktorn / Alvar Aalto: The Mature Years (1990). It is one of the best Finnish books of all times.

Schildt's biography has, however, a major flaw and bias that is reflected also in the titles of the volumes. They are about Alvar Aalto (1898–1976), and it is true that the Aalto and Artek creations were often promoted and marketed in Alvar Aalto's name only. That was against the wishes of Alvar Aalto, who always insisted that he worked as an equal partner with his wife Aino Aalto (1894–1949). After Aino's death Alvar married Elissa Aalto (1922–1994), another strong, talented and important architect.

The key reassessment in Virpi Suutari's movie is the focus on Aino Aalto and the collaborative nature of the artist couple Alvar and Aino Aalto. In this respect I feel the spirits of both Aino and Alvar Aalto smiling during the movie.

Also about the unconventional private life of Aino and Alvar we learn in this film aspects that have never been discussed before. Perhaps they were ahead of their time, perhaps they were just a bit more open about things that have existed always.

The phenomenon of artist couples was important in Finnish art in general. Riitta Konttinen has written about it in the influential books Artist Couples (1991) and Modernist Couples (2011). The Aaltos' contemporaries included Anna and Werner Holmberg, Antoinette and Ville Vallgren, Hilma and Victor Westerholm, Elin and Raffaello Gambogi, Venny Soldan and Juhani Aho, Eva and Louis Sparre, Hilda Flodin and Juho Rissanen, Eva Bremer and Eemu Myntti, Meri Genetz and Carl Wargh, Lyyli and Yrjö Ollila, Ragni and Alwar Cawén, Eva and Marcus Collin, Signe and Viktor Jansson, and Greta and Sulho Sipilä. The Finnish world of cinema and performing arts is also full of artist couples. (This film has been made by one, Virpi Suutari and Martti Suosalo, one of the country's most beloved actors).

I have just seen in Bologna's Il Cinema Ritrovato a retrospective of early Russian women film-makers. Many of them were launched on their careers in artist couples, and then got on their own wings. Julia Solntseva is only the most famous of them.

...

Aalto is a key name in 20th century Modernism, often perceived as severe and forbidding, something against which it was necessary to react in the 1960 ("From Bauhaus to Our House"). The Aaltos were Modernists totally committed to its ideals and utopias, building a world of tomorrow full of light and beauty, accessible to all, inspired to create places of democracy, culture and learning (universities and libraries), and reconstructing Finland after the devastation of wars.

But the special approach of the Aalto Modernism was its natural quality, expressed already in the very name "Aalto", which means "wave". The wave form was a signature of the Aalto design in buildings and vases. There was an affection and delight in organic forms in general. The curvy, feminine forms have a sensual, pleasurable and even erotic dimension. The mature, human touch emerged from Aino Aalto.

Virpi Suutari's emphasis on Aino Aalto is not only one of crediting but also about the very Weltanschauung of the Aalto design. It is a testimony of a profound and fruitful love affair.

...

The emphasis on light is a key affinity between the Aalto architecture and the cinema. Finland is a country with a short summer and a long winter. In Lapland in mid-winter there is no sun at all during kaamos months. My favourite Aalto spaces include The Electric House by the Kamppi metro station; the address also of the Filmihullu dvd store; the atrium is covered by a glass roof through which the sunlight fills the building. Another favourite is The Book House on the Esplanade, housing the Academic Bookstore, also with a prominent atrium with a glass ceiling and a huge sun window – and Café Aalto, my favourite café.  The light of knowledge. Enlightenment. Houses on Earth filled with the light of Heaven. Houses like this are, like the cinema, about the poetry of light.

...

The original score by Sanna Salmenkallio is imaginative and alluring. The cinematography of Heikki Färm, Jani Kumpulainen, Tuomo Hutri, Marita Hällförs and Jani Häkli is visual art of the highest quality. I am a big fan of drone cinematography, and in movies about architecture, such as the Eero Saarinen film mentioned above, it proves extremely rewarding. In aerial shots we can experience the familiar buildings like never before.

Göran Schildt needed three volumes for his Alvar Aalto biography. I hope Virpi Suutari will create a whole series of films about Aalto.

Anna Eriksson: M – The Rituals of a Lonely Bitch (an exhibition at Rauma Art Museum)

 

Anna Eriksson: M – The Rituals of a Lonely Bitch (an exhibition at Rauma Art Museum, 2020). Photo: Cursum Perficio Ihode Management Oy.

Anna Eriksson: M – The Rituals of a Lonely Bitch
A video art exhibition.
Rauma Art Museum, Kuninkaankatu 37, 26100 Rauma
September 5 – November 22, 2020
Curators: Matti Pyykkö and Heta Kaisto.
    Visited: vernissage, opening speech: Taina Myllyharju (Tampere Art Museum), 4 Sep 2020.

Book:
Anna Eriksson : M : Untitled Films Stills 2014–2019 .
Editors: Anna Eriksson, Matti Pyykkö, Pietari Kaakkomäki. Graphic design: Pietari Kaakkomäki. Texts: Giona A. Nazzaro, Beatrice Fiorentino, Olaf Möller, Juho Typpö, Jussi Parviainen, Tytti Rantanen, Heta Kaisto.
Helsinki : Parvs, 2020. Printed in Latvia : Livonia Print.

Bluray:
M – a Film by Anna Eriksson (2018).
Ihode Cursum Perficio Production, 2020.

Rauma Art Museum: "Artist Anna Eriksson (born in 1977, Rauma) drew attention with her first film M in 2018. The film was nominated at the Venice Film Festival, after which it has won awards in Europe and the United States. Eriksson was responsible for the direction, script and the sound design of the film. She also played the provocative leading role herself."

"M is the protagonist of the film, but also a reflection of Eriksson’s subconsciousness and a challenge that has helped her to slough off her skin. M is a character that hovers between reality and fiction, a tedious bitch that Eriksson channels with visual experimentations, autosuggestion, performance and the iconography of popular culture."

"“M – The Rituals of a Lonely Bitch” is Anna Eriksson’s first exhibition. It continues Eriksson’s artistic work around the themes of sexuality and death and presents Eriksson’s creative process as personal, raw and bare. The movie inspired by Marilyn Monroe has already faded to the background. This is about the woman called M, and her grotesque, self-ironic and tragic world."

"The exhibition consists of five new video artworks and a photograph installation. The other curator of the exhibition is Matti Pyykkö, who works as Eriksson’s cameraman."

"The exhibition contains intense picture and sound material. It is not recommended for sensitive viewers or underage people without adult supervision." (Rauma Art Museum)

The Rauma Art Museum is located in the wooden old town of Rauma, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is home to changing contemporary art exhibitions and the art collections of the City of Rauma.

AA: Anna Eriksson, one of Finland's most beloved singers, caused a stir two years ago by releasing a feature-length experimental film: M – a Film by Anna Eriksson (2018), which had been six years in the making. The high profile film was an independent production, made outside regular film financing structures and theatrical distribution practices. Its festival premiere took place at the Venice International Film Critics' Week at Venice International Film Festival in 2018.

Movie-making is not unusual with pop stars. Madonna, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga are also film-makers. But Eriksson embarked on something different: a ruthless and agonizing journey about the suffering of the flesh. The film, based on compelling inner necessity, has affinities with some of the most daring lineages in experimental and feminist cinema.

When I saw the film, I felt connections with the legacy of female avantgardists including Yoko Ono, Toni Basil, Valie Export and Wiener Aktionismus, the young Chantal Akerman and the young Penelope Spheeris, not to speak about youthful works of Finnish female film-makers from the art world.

The essayists of the exhibition book evoke further soulmates: Maya Deren, Cindy Sherman, Francesca Woodman, Hannah Wilke and Friederike Pezold (mentioned by Olaf Möller), and Barbara Hammer, Carolee Schneeman and Cecelia Condit (quoted by Tytti Rantanen).

The film, the book, and the video art exposition are all different interpretations of the same persona. The exposition is the most powerful and disturbing of them. Fundamentally, all are about Eros and Thanatos, the life force and the death drive. 

In the exhibition, the atavistic forces are extremely charged. Anna Eriksson converts her body to a battleground of the elements. She stages yet another passion play and rosy crucifixion. Watching the videos, I'm hot and bothered. The images are frankly sexual or extremely violent, beyond splatter.

These kinds of extreme images seem to communicate via the manifest surface, but in fact, the true impact takes place in the latent layers of the mind. The images bypass consciousness and reach the unconscious via shortcuts, blending with dreams and nightmares. We are in realms beyond rational analysis, perceivable only via signs, emblems and art.

Disturbing as the videos are, the exhibition is a well balanced complex and the hanging, the lighting and the soundscape are immaculate, honed in every detail. 

...

This year 2020 is the 125th anniversary of the cinema and psychoanalysis, both launched in the same year 1895. Psychoanalysis has always been discredited, and I expect it to keep being discredited for the next 125 years. Nevertheless, its focus on Eros and Thanatos has been taken for granted in world culture, especially in the cinema, and also for instance in advertising.

The world "subliminal" is often misunderstood to mean "hidden images" such as flash frames that we fail to register consciously. In reality, the images are not hidden, they are hiding in plain sight. The subliminal impact occurs in the most obvious images, like when a beautiful man / woman advertises a product. We laugh at such blatant persuasion, but in the supermarket we find ourselves selecting the very product.

One of the most startling discoveries of early psychoanalysis was the importance of incest in psychical disturbances – real incest or incest fantasy. Psychoanalysis was ahead of its time with this emphasis. It was the first school of thought that paid serious attention to child sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, artists were discovering the theme. In Frank Wedekind's plays Earth Spirit and Pandora's Box, Lulu is a victim of child sexual abuse. The plays gained recognition also in the opera adaptation of Alban Berg and several film adaptations, including ones starring Erna Morena and Asta Nielsen.

The most durable film adaptation turned out to be G. W. Pabst's Pandora's Box, made in 1929 but truly discovered only at La Cinémathèque française in the 1940s, starring Louise Brooks as Lulu, one of the most enigmatic and alluring erotic presences of the 20th century.

Not only Lulu but also Louise Brooks herself were victims of child sexual abuse, and such was also the background of the character played by Brooks in her previous masterpiece, Beggars of Life, directed by William A. Wellman.

Let's observe that the previous films called M, by Fritz Lang (1931) and Joseph Losey (1951), are crime dramas around child sexual abuse.

The Marilyn Monroe saga was the original inspiration for Anna Eriksson's M project. Monroe was the first star to discuss child sexual abuse in public, and this emphasis was presumably the reason why she became a lifelong devotee of psychoanalysis.

In Theogony and Work and Days, Hesiod tells how Hephaestus forged the first woman, Pandora, following the instructions of Zeus who wanted to punish mankind after Prometheus had stolen the fire from heaven. When Pandora opens her box, she unleashes all the evils on humanity.

But in the works of Frank Wedekind, Alban Berg, G. W. Pabst, Louise Brooks and Anna Eriksson, ruthless men have broken Pandora's box while she was a little child, bringing calamity to us all. Over the greatest beauty and charm falls the shadow of disgrace and death.

The "disco bus" delegation from Helsinki visiting Anna Eriksson's vernissage at Rauma, 4 Sep 2020. Kirsi, Pia, Katariina, Teijo, Timo Kaukolampi (sitting left), Jarkko Ojanen, Pietari Kaakkomäki, Mikko Rasila, Miko Kivinen, Marianna Uutinen, Antti Vassinen (back row, fourth from left), Sonata Hauta-aho (first row, fourth from right), Anna Eriksson (center), Stefan Bremer (second from right), Jussi Parviainen (third from left), Antti Alanen, bus driver (first from right). Photo: Matti Pyykkö.