En salaa sinulta mitään / Not Withholding Anything from You (in the presence of Veikko Aaltonen)

 

Veikko Aaltonen: En salaa sinulta mitään / Not Withholding Anything from You (FI 2024) with the painter Jarmo Mäkilä.

FI 2024

Director: Veikko Aaltonen

Languages: Finnish

Subtitles: English

83 min

Distributor: Oy Bufo Ab

In collaboration: Yle

Festival premiere: 7 March 2024

Telecast: 31 Oct 2024 Yle Teema, online 28 Oct 2024 Yle Areena.

Love & Anarchy 37th Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF) 2024: Power of Art

In the presence of Veikko Aaltonen

Viewed at Maxim 1, Helsinki, Monday 23 Sep 2024

Featuring: Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Esa Vuorinen, Pekka Strang, Esko Salminen, Anne-Mari Forss, PK Keränen, Ralf Gothóni, Saara Turunen, Timo Valjakka, Asko Keränen, Espe Haverinen, Joonas Laakso, Anna Eriksson, Riina Tanskanen, Pirkko Hämäläinen, Heta Aho, Jarmo Mäkilä, Elisa Rovamo, Jessica Piasecki, Matilda Seppälä, Marjatta Levanto, Kimmo Nokkonen, Veli Seppä, Kari Cavén, Jaana Saario and Viktor Toikkanen.

HIFF 2024: "Creativity flourishes in this documentary about making art, where artists such as Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Anna Eriksson and Saara Turunen discuss their artistic works and processes."

Production notes quoted by HIFF 2024: "How do artists view their own work? How does the actor Esko Salminen immerse himself in his roles, how does the writer/director Saara Turunen create a whole new world for the stage, and why does the band 22-Pistepirkko’s frontman PK Keränen end up picking up his guitar time and time again? Is creativity a conscious or subconscious process, a pleasure or a compulsion?"

"Filmmaker Veikko Aaltonen’s documentary takes us straight into the heart of creativity in the company of artists from different fields and generations. From singer-turned-filmmaker Anna Eriksson to cinematographer Esa Vuorinen and from painter/sculptor Jarmo Mäkilä to actor Hannu-Pekka Björkman, these artists allow the audience to follow their work as they reveal what intuition, inspiration, and love and hate mean for their art. Celebrating the various forms of passion and creative work, the film presents a compelling case for the significance of art." Production notes

HIFF 2024: "Luovuus kukkii taiteen tekemisestä kertovassa dokumentissa, jossa omaa työtään puivat muun muassa Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Anna Eriksson ja Saara Turunen."

Mikko-Oskari Koski (HIFF 2024): "Jos jokin elokuva on juuri tässä maailman ajassa ja Suomen talouskriisin painaessa leikkauksineen kaikkien päälle ajankohtainen, niin se on tämä: taidetta sen miltei kaikilta mahdollisilta ilmenemisen suunnilta lähestyvä dokumentti En salaa sinulta mitään. Taide kun tarkoittaa aika paljon muutakin kuin kuvia, musiikkia, esityksiä tai jotain niiden yhdistelmiä. Tämän totuuden kanssa elävät ihmiset avaavat elokuvassa sisintään mukaansatempaavalla tavalla."

"Kokeneen dokumentaristi Veikko Aaltosen ohjaama elokuva on aihepiirinsä laajuudesta huolimatta hyvin napakka kokonaisuus. Kerronta jakautuu laajalle sektorille, niin kuvataiteen luomisprosessien kuin esittävien taiteilijoiden hetken impressioiden sekä pitkän harkinnan myötä kehittyneiden juttujenkin pariin. Mukana on sopivassa suhteessa niin Suomen mittapuulla isoja nimiä kuin vähemmän tunnettuja tekijöitäkin, muiden muassa Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Anna Eriksson ja Saara Turunen."

"Dokumentti muistuttaa taiteen monimuotoisuudesta, joka kannattaisi aina muistaa yritettäessä puhua siitä ikään kuin ”kokonaisvaltaisena” käsitteenä. Eikä mikään luova ala ole toista arvokkaampi." Mikko-Oskari Koski

AA: Veikko Aaltonen's new documentary film En salaa sinulta mitään is rewarding to see in tandem with his previous movie The Dinosaur (FI 2021), a portrait documentary on the director Rauni Mollberg, a Finnish monstre sacré who made other Me Too offenders look tame. It was an unforgettable study of excess in the life of an artist. Without any Bohemian glorification, it revealed the horror side of the creator.

En salaa sinulta mitään [literally: "I won't hide anything from you"] is purely about art itself. The movie is rich and meandering like a wild garden. It is not tidy and organized, as Aaltonen lets a hundred flowers blossom. We meet actors, cinematographers, musicians, art curators and connoisseurs.

The genesis of the project was in art forgery, the books Vilpitön mieli: miten myin Suomen täyteen väärennettyä taidetta [A Sincere Mind: How I Sold Finland Full of Forged Art] and Mieletön vilppi [Mindless Insincerity] by Marko Erola and the tv series based on them. They are based on the true story of the welder Veli Seppä (1947-2022), the greatest forger in Finnish art history. He was the Finnish Elmyr de Hory, the protagonist of Orson Welles's F for Fake. Veli Seppä was able to create new works in styles of great artists, authenticated by experts in catalogues raisonnés. But he was unable to create anything in a personal, original style. This is a genuine mystery, a parallel of which is the existence of bottegas and factories in which a great artist employs assistants who can produce works in his signature style.

From this starting point Aaltonen gathered background interviews so fascinating that they formed this documentary about "What Is Art", in the lineage of Leo Tolstoy, among others. (Tolstoy's book is completely mad... and a work of complete genius. You will laugh and you will cry. But you won't forget).

Themes include: "When I direct I am wiser than myself". "Cézanne did not need to sign his works". "All new is a rediscovery of the old". "A hold on the other self". "Art must bite the hand that feeds it". "Art is a lie that helps us see the truth" (Picasso). "It took me decades to learn to paint like a child" (Picasso again).

Finnish fine art history: in the 19th century there was a general style based on Romanticism.  The image of Finland in the age of the national awakening was based on the ideals of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. At the end of the century emerged the first painters with individual styles: Helene Schjerfbeck and Hugo Simberg.

This movie is a smörgåsbord, but there are compelling fundamental themes and undercurrents that make sense as a whole. Most importantly the inner drive in art. There is art as skill, and there is real art that is a unique personal expression, irrefutable, unavoidable, unforgettable. What is it? There is no answer except art itself, and continuous practice in new art. In my opinion, it is a fusion of the conscious (skill), the unconscious (unknown sources in our memory and imagination, inner conflicts, agonies, traumata, secret guilts) and something even deeper inside, the secret of our existence, the life force and the death drive.

...

À propos: I was left pondering the so-called AI (not discussed in the movie). I don't believe that the Turing test will ever be passed. We are mysteries to each other and to ourselves, and art is our most powerful means of trying to make sense of those mysteries. No machine or computer program can even approach that.

Alan Turing wrote about the imitation game. Forgers like Elmyr de Hory and Veli Seppä were able to make forgeries in imitation styles that fooled even artists themselves. Maybe computers can achieve that. But machine-made art is mere imitation, decoration and illustration.

...

À propos II: Also beyond the topics discussed in En salaa sinulta mitään but relevant to The Dinosaur: I have been thinking recently about the classic Contre Sainte-Beuve debate between Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve and Marcel Proust. Sainte-Beuve thought that for an art critic, art and the artist are inseparable. We can tell the artwork by the artist. For Proust, they are separate. A shallow person circulating in salons can be capable of great art while an exemplary, responsible model citizen can create indifferent art. We don't celebrate artists for wrecking other people's lives. We condemn them, but it has no impact on the value of their work.