Akahige / Red Beard

Akira Kurosawa: 赤ひげ / Akahige / Red Beard (JP 1965). Yuzo Kayama (Dr. Noboru Yasumoto) and Toshiro Mifune (Dr. Kyojo Niide, "Red Beard"). 

赤ひげ / Punaparta / Rödskägg. JP 1965. PC: Toho / Kurosawa Productions. P: Tomoyuki Tanaka, Ryuzo Kikushima. 

    D: Akira Kurosawa. SC: Masato Ide, Hideo Oguni, Ryuzo Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa – based on the short story collection Akahige shinryotan (1958) by Shugoro Yamamoto. DP: Asakazu Nakai, Takao Saito – b&w – Tohoscope 2,35:1 – lab: Toho Developing Co. AD: Yoshiro Muraki. M: Masaru Sato. S: 4-Track Stereo. 

    C: Toshiro Mifune (Dr. Kyojo Niide, "Red Beard"), Yuzo Kayama (Dr. Noboru Yasumoto), Yoshio Tsuchiya (Dr. Handayu Mori), Tatsuyoshi Ehara (Genzo Tsugawa), Reiko Dan (Osugi), Kyoko Kagawa ("the Mantis", the madwoman), Kamatari Fujiwara (Rokusuke), Akemi Negishi (Okuni), Tsutomu Yamasaki (Sahachi), Miyuki Kuwano (Onaka), Eijiro Tono (Goheiji), Takashi Shimura (Tokubei Izumiya), Terumi Niki (Otoyo), Haruko Sugimura (Kin, the brothel madame), Yoko Naito (Masae), Ken Mitsuda (her father), Kinuyo Tanaka (Noboru's mother), Chishu Ryu (Noboru's father), Yoshitaka Zushi (Choji). 

    Helsinki premiere: 2.2.1979 Diana, released by Dianafilmi Oy, Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Satu Laaksonen / Maya Vanni – telecast: 24.5.1994 MTV3, 11.7.1999 YLE TV1 – VET 86643 – K16 – 5095 / 185 min (a 5 min music intermission is included in the duration; no need for a longer intermission) 
    A 35 mm KAVI print of the 1979 release deposited by Dianafilmi viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (50 Years Ago: Films Made in 1965), 17 May 2015

Red Beard was the finale of Akira Kurosawa's long, great and fruitful creative period of 1943–1965 when he directed on the average one film every year. After the revelation of Toshiro Mifune in Drunken Angel, Mifune starred in all of Kurosawa's films until Akahige save one (Ikiru).

There is in retrospect a sense of a farewell to an entire period of Japanese cinema here for instance in the final wedding ceremony where we see side by side in a single shot Chishu Ryu (Ozu), Kinuyo Tanaka (Mizoguchi), and Toshiro Mifune (Akira Kurosawa) as the father, the mother and the spiritual godfather of the bridegroom. Among the cast is also Haruko Sugimura (Mikio Naruse).

Akira Kurosawa and Donald Richie point out the influence of Dostoevsky in Red Beard - the key character of Otoyo is inspired by Dostoevsky - but for me the most profound affinity is with Tolstoy.

Richie in his excellent remarks on Red Beard in his Kurosawa book states that the film's theme of "good begets good" is exceptional (whereas "evil begets evil" is common). But there is a tale by Tolstoy which unites both themes: The False Coupon which has been filmed many times, and indeed, invariably only the first part of the tale has been filmed, where evil begets evil, a forgery of a banknote leading gradually to a massacre. Red Beard can be seen as a rare attempt to express in a film adaptation the second part of Tolstoy's The False Coupon where good begets good.

Richie compares Kurosawa here with Dickens and Griffith. The problem of showing goodness in action is in danger of getting sentimental or didactic. Kurosawa remains tough and harsh but in Richie's opinion does not completely avoid didacticism.

Red Beard is the Bildungsroman of an arrogant young doctor, Dr. Yasumoto, who wishes to land a plum position at the court but finds himself instead at the bottom of the barrel, taking care of slum people at a county hospital. This has been planned for him as a learning experience, but during the story the young doctor undergoes a spiritual transformation and decides to dedicate himself to the calling of helping people, disregarding fame and fortune. Yasumoto is almost killed by a murderous patient, witnesses death for the first time and faints at the first operation he gets to observe, but the greatest transforming experiences are even deeper.

Based on a collection of short stories, Red Beard consists of episodes: - the story of "The Praying Mantis", the murderous madwoman, - the story of the evil old man who dies in agony and his daughter who has led a very hard life - the story of the other dying old man, a kind heart whose wife had committed suicide - the story of the 12-year-old Otoyo rescued from the brothel - and the story of the little boy who steals rice from the hospital. They cover all sorts of backgrounds for illness, from the psychopathological to the social: "If poverty did not exist, half of them would not be ill" states Red Beard. Red Beard is not just interested in the clinical side of the patients but always tries to have an insight into an entire life story.

There are sequences here that belong to the most beautiful that Kurosawa ever created: - The love story of Sahachi and Onaka: "we lived together, it was like a dream, then came an earthquake, and I never saw her again"... except that she survived, and when they met again, they were like different people. - And most hauntingly the encounter of Dr. Yasumoto with the first patient of his own, the 12-year-old Otoyo. First Dr. Yasumoto cures Otoyo, and then, Otoyo saves Yasumoto. There is a transference of love which Dr. Yasumoto knows how to resist.

Most of all I like in Red Beard its moral gravity.

The black and white Tohoscope cinematography by Asakazu Nakai and Takao Saito is wonderful. Donald Richie calls Red Beard Kurosawa's most realistic film, but it is still strongly and beautifully stylized.

The basic health of the visual quality of the 1979 print is overwhelming. It has been heavily used and there is the expected patina but most memorable are the many passages of fine soft sophistication; I would not be surprised if it would turn out that part of the print were struck directly from the original negative. For instance the daring and unique sequence of the mutual healing between Yasumoto and Otoyo looks breathtakingly beautiful. Also the remarkable sequence of calling the dying little boy's spirit back from the other side via crying into a deep well looks startling and unforgettable.

OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BY SAKARI TOIVIAINEN

Spotkanie w Bajce / Café from the Past

Spotkanie w ”Bajce” / Menneisyyden kahvila / Möte på café. PL 1962. Studio Filmowe Kadr. PC: Zespół Realizatorów Filmowych Rytm. P: Włodzimierz Śliwiński. D: Jan Rybkowski. SC: Michał Tonecki and Jan Rybkowski – based on the radioplay O siódmej w ”Bajce” by Michał Tonecki. DP: Mieczysław Jahoda. Camera operator: Jan Janczewski - b&w - 1,37:1 - lab: Wytwórnia Filmów Fabularnych (Łódź). AD: Wojciech Krysztofiak. Cost: Alicja Waltoś. Makeup: Tadeusz Schossler. M: Wojciech Kilar. Frédéric Chopin: Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 31. ED: Krystyna Rutkowska. S: Bohdan Jankowski. C: Aleksandra Śląska (Teresa), Gustaw Holoubek (Paweł, doctor), Andrzej Łapicki (Wiktor, pianist), Teresa Iżewska (Ewa, singer), Maria Wachowiak (waitress), Barbara Kościeszanka (clerk), Witold Elektorowicz (café pianist), Beata Barszczewska (Krysia, Teresa's daughter), Mieczysław Pawlikowski (przewodniczący = President of the MRN), Aleksander Fogiel Kowalec (pracownik Rady Narodowej = an employee of the National Council), Rudolf Gołębiowski (pracownik Rady Narodowej, organizator koncertu = an employee of the National Council, concert organizator), Magdalena Zawadzka (córka przewodniczącego MRN = daughter of the President of the MRN, n.c.). Loc: Sandomierz. Studio: Wytwórnia Filmów Dokumentalnych (Warsaw). Helsinki premiere: 2.2.1968 Regia, distributor: Suomi-Filmi, with Finnish / Swedish subtitles (n.c.) – VET 70001 – K12 – 77 min
    A vintage 35 mm KAVI print deposited by Suomi-Filmi viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Pawlikowski's Poland), 17 May 2015
    MRN = Miejskiej Rady Narodowej = City Council.

A charming intimate contemporary (1962) triangle story, strong on atmosphere and character, a film I look forward to revisiting.

It is set in Sandomierz, one of the oldest towns in Poland, built on a site inhabited since Stone Age, a popular tourist attraction thanks to its well-preserved Old Town. Shot on location, the film itself has a travelogue (and tourist propaganda!) dimension in an attractive way. The genius loci is strong. The two male leads are visitors who return 15 years after the war, and there is an official sight-seeing for the pianist and the singer in a jeep. Besides, the daughter of the president of the city council takes the pianist to a private tour, including to the Opatow Gate and Tower.

Sandomierz appears also in the title of a Franz Grillparzer tale which has been filmed thrice, most famously by Victor Sjöström as Klostret i Sendomir which was entirely studio-bound, shot at Svenska Biografteaterns ateljé in Lidingö.

The classical unities of time, place, and action are obeyed in the story originally written by Michał Tonecki as a radioplay. It all takes place within one afternoon. It is a national holiday (not 3 May in that period of history). A statue of the war hero Kania is unveiled, and there is a big celebration with song, dance, and music by Chopin. Everybody is invited into the outdoors event on a beautiful sunny day.

Jan Rybkowski opens his movie with a long tracking shot. We hear the inspired Chopin scherzo and see a piece of a meadow during the opening credits. Then a part of the audience is revealed as the camera tracks from right to left and rises to catch the player at his grand piano on a scaffold, with the magnificent Vistula (Wisła / Weichsel) River in the background. The tracking goes on slowly to reveal a folk dance troupe and the majority of the audience enjoying the summer festival.

The pianist Wiktor has returned to Sandomierz, and now he sees Teresa, a schoolteacher, whom he has not met in fifteen years, either. They agree on a date at Café Bajca. Too late (he is known for being always too late) for the celebration arrives a comrade-in-arms of the late Kania, the surgeon Paweł, who lived in Sandomierz before the end of the war. The private triangle between Teresa, Wiktor, and Paweł provides the manifest plot of the movie.

There is also a deeper narrative about the painful process of reconstruction and coming to terms with the traumatic history of 15 years ago. There are obvious signs such as the prosthetic hand of one of the political bosses. There are intriguing hints such as the lingering question why the war hero Kania has received a statue first now. There is a clue that "he had finally joined the Holy Ones". The year everyone is referring to is 1947, the period of the civil war before the final establishment of Stalinist rule. In the opening sequence it takes a long time until we see the pedestal of the statue. The statue itself we never get to see. (The statue motif brings to mind Man of Marble whose screenplay Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski originally wrote in 1962, in the very year of Café from the Past, as an outright attack against hollow hero monumentalism in the name of "socialist realism").

The pianist Wiktor is a restless soul who has a hard time in focusing on anything. He is aware of the fact that as an artist he is no Rubinstein. In Warsaw he has a jealous wife. His current lover, the singer Ewa, wonders whether any woman can sustain his interest longer than two months. During the afternoon he is surrounded by Teresa, Ewa, and even a young local beauty who turns out to be the mayor's daughter. Wiktor himself is puzzled about what is it in piano playing that attracts women.

Wiktor and Teresa fail to meet at Café Bajca. Instead, it is the surgeon Paweł whom Teresa sees there. They had married during the war, but Teresa had left with the touring pianist Wiktor. "It was reported that you had been killed". "Shells crushed our car, and my leg was riddled with bullets". "You never had time for me. War was your world". Even if Teresa had known that Wiktor had survived their marriage would have ended.

Now everything is different. Ewa has a daughter, Krysia - not hers; it is her sister's who is dead. Krysia is playing hopscotch on Sunshine Street when Paweł arrives in the conclusion. He did not take the evening train to Warsaw.

The performances are perfect. The music by Wojciech Kilar is completely different from Milczenie that I saw two days ago: here it is mostly quasi-diegetic - Chopin, the café pianist, and a single horn out of tune being played at Opatow Gate. It is the final sound of the movie.

Mieczysław Jahoda's cinematography is very pleasurable to watch. The drowsy, sunny holiday atmosphere is absorbing. Jahoda is another of those Polish cinematographer aces, with credits such as Knights of the Teutonic Order and The Saragossa Manuscript under his belt.

Jan Rybkowski was the director who made more films than anyone else in Poland during his career in 1949-1984 (but Andrzej Wajda's career is longer and he has directed more). Besides cinema films he made epic television series. He was very versatile; Café from the Past represents his quiet and introspective side. Rybkowski was a professional theatre designer before the war, and his film debut was as a production supervisor to The Last Stage / Ostatni etap. Himself an eyewitness to the bombing of Dresden, he made his most famous film on it: Tonight a City Will Die / Dzis w nocy umrze miasto, a year before the Café from the Past. This is the first Rybkowski film I have seen, and I look forward for more. I admire Rybkowski's sense of duration. Café from the Past is a relatively short film but it conveys a lot yet never feels hurried.

The visual quality of the vintage print is good to perfect with hardly any signs of wear.

Thanks to Susanna Välimäki for identifying the Chopin scherzo.

The movie is legally online on YouTube, courtesy Film Polski, in low definition, failing to convey the visual quality of the cinematography.

OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BY PETTERI KALLIOMÄKI

Election

Vaalit. US © 1999 Paramount Pictures. PC: MTV Productions. In association with Bona Fide Productions. P: Albert Berger, David Gale, Keith Samples, Ron Yerxa. D: Alexander Payne. SC: Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor – based on the novel (1998) by Tom Perrotta. DP: James Glennon – Super 35 – Panavision Cameras and Lenses – Eastman Kodak – colour by DeLuxe – 2,35:1. PD: Jane Ann Stewart. AD: T. K. Kirkpatrick. Set dec: Renee Davenport. Cost: Wendy Chuck. Makeup: James Ryder. Hair: Denise Fischer, Kyra Panchenko. M: Rolfe Kent. "Three Times a Lady" perf. The Commodores; "Navajo Joe Main Title" perf. Ennio Morricone; "Jennifer Juniper" perf. Donovan; "If You'll Be the Teacher" perf. Mandy Barnett. S: Frank Gaeta, Scott Wolf. ED: Kevin Tent. Casting: Lisa Beach. C: Matthew Broderick (Jim McAllister), Reese Witherspoon (Tracy Flick), Chris Klein (Paul Metzler), Jessica Campbell (Tammy Metzler), Mark Harelik (Dave Novotny), Phil Reeves (Walt Hendricks), Molly Hagan (Diane McAllister), Delaney Driscoll (Linda Novotny), Colleen Camp (Judith R. Flick), Frankie Ingrassia (Lisa Flanagan), Matt Malloy (vararehtori Ron Bell). Loc: Omaha, New York, Washington D.C. Not theatrically released in Finland – vhs: 1999 Finnkino – telecast: 24.9.2004, 28.12.2005, 15.6.2008 Nelonen – VET V-04339 – 103 min
    A Park Circus (BBFC logo / UIP / Paramount / Viacom) 35 mm print viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Alexander Payne), 16 May 2015

Revisited Alexander Payne's brilliant satire, his second with an affinity with Preston Sturges, but entirely modern and original. Election was also one of the key films in the remarkable phenomenon of "the class of 1999" in American cinema. I knew Election previously only from dvd as it was not theatrically released in Finland.

This time I paid attention to the class difference between Paul Metzler, the jovial, popular and clumsy sportsman and gentleman from a rich family, and Tracy Flick, the single mother's daughter who is single-minded in her quest for success. Tracy has a will of steel and a look that could kill. "The weak always try to sabotage the strong" is among her mottoes.

In this film Alexander Payne puts to use a wide repertory of means such as inner monologues of the leading characters, rapid montages, extremely high and low angles, split screen, fantasy close-up inserts of alternative women in lovemaking scenes, and a simulation of warm 8 mm footage in Tammy's love affair at the Immaculate Heart. Election was made by MTV Productions, and Payne here turns MTV clichés into expressive satiric means of his own.

Reese Witherspoon's dynamic and compelling satiric performance has been justifiedly celebrated. Matthew Broderick and Mark Harelik play the teachers who fail to meet basic standards of ethical conduct in their profession and perish utterly. At this viewing I discovered Jessica Campbell's performance as Tammy Metzler. She is the adopted sister of Paul Metzler, a loner like all the protagonists except Paul, and a Lesbian just starting to discover her sexual identity, a rebel who takes the blame of the torn election campaign posters and is expelled from school (although it was Tracy who did it). "When I'm sad I watch the power station".

Tracy Flick and Dave Novotny's love affair is wrong and illegal, yet it is a true and profound affair. For the first time someone has seen Tracy's real me, and for the first time someone has wanted to read Dave's novel (which has not even been written yet).

Satirical highlights of the movie include: - the campaign speeches of the three candidates; Tammy the third candidate urges all not to vote and gets a thunderous applause and a standing ovation (and is suspended from school) - the prayers on the eve of the election of the three candidates - Tracy's victory dance in the corridor when she learns of the first count via sign language - and the quick montage of close-ups in the sequence where Jim McAllister's fraud is exposed.

The print is clean and complete and has the regular slightly duped or speedprinted look.

OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BASED ON MANOHLA DARGIS BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK

Milczenie / Silence (Kazimierz Kutz)

Hiljaisuus / Tystnad. PL 1963. PC: Zespół Filmowy Kadr. P: Jerzy Rutowicz. D: Kazimierz Kutz. SC: Kazimierz Kutz and Jerzy Szczygieł – based on the novel (1962) by Jerzy Szczygieł. DP: Wiesław Zdort. Camera operator: Maciej Kijowski. AD: Ryszard Potocki. Cost: Marian Kołodziej. Makeup: Teresa Tomaszewska. M: Wojciech Kilar. Orkiestra Filharmonii Narodowej. ED: Irena Choryńska. S: Jósef Bartczak. C: Kazimierz Fabisiak (proboszcz = a vicar), Mirosław Kobierzycki (Stach), Elżbieta Czyżewska (Kazia, pielęgniarka = a nurse), Maria Zbyszewska (Stefa, pielęgniarka = a nurse), Zbigniew Cybulski (Roman, chłopak Kazi = Kazia's boyfriend), Tadeusz Kalinowski (Wójcik, woźnica = a coachman), Edward Rączkowski (Firganek), Stefan Wroncki (kościelny = verger Grzegorz Aleksandrowicz), Zygmunt Zintel (Sitnik), Zygmunt Listkiewicz (lekarz = a doctor). WFF Łodz. Helsinki premiere: 6.10.1963 Kino-Palatsi, released by Suomi-Filmi with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Marjatta Kaija [Swedish subtitles n.c.] – VET 66682 – K16 – 100 min
    A vintage KAVI 35 mm print deposited by Suomi-Filmi viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Pawlikowski's Poland), 14 May 2015

A stark vision of Poland in 1945, after WWII, contrasting a senile old vicar with a young orphan boy blinded in a mortar projectile accident.

I have been aware of the talent of Kazimierz Kutz since I saw The Salt of the Black Earth / Sól ziemi czarnej and Pearl on the Crown / Perła w koronie on Finnish tv in 1974, but Silence I had not seen before.

The shock of WWII was exceptionally harsh for Poland, and it is inevitable that artists have discussed the harrowing experience in their works for decades since. Silence is a distinguished exercise in coming to terms with the past. Its protagonists are all cripples in one way or the other.

The old vicar is at times almost catatonic. The silence is his, and there is an affinity with Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, although interestingly this film shares its title with another Bergman film made in the same year. The vicar is silent when he should help Stach, but the church rituals are beautiful and life-affirming, and there is nothing ironic about them.

The young teenager Stach is an orphan who lives in a rat-infested cellar with his sick little brother or friend. They have nothing to eat. Stach is becoming wild and brutalized, and when with a friend of his they explore an abandoned battery on a hill high above the village he is horribly injured by a mortar projectile (the fault is his), is blinded, and gets to spend the winter in a hospital.

On a previous night Stach had threatened the vicar with a "hands up!" shout before realizing who he is, and there is now in the village a lynch mob mentality against him because of a false rumour that Stach was injured in an attempt to kill the vicar. The lynch mob attitude spreads even to the hospital ward.

At the hospital nurses are kind to Stach, especially Kazia, herself an orphan who has had to suffer unspeakable offenses in the hands of Gestapo officers. She is being rehabilitated by the love of her boyfriend Roman, and Kazia's tenderness is crucial for the rehumanization of Stach. Other friends of Stach include the coachman Wójcik and his little brother / friend who brings him new clothes via UNRRA.

This film is character-driven, not strong on narrative but with powerful cinematography and soundscape. Not only the main performances are gripping, but even faces in crowd scenes are expressive. For instance the wedding sequence has an almost ethnographic fascination.

Silence was one of the first feature films of Wiesław Zdort as a director of photography, and here already he belongs to the masters of the Polish school of cinematography. The visual range is both reduced and imaginative. There are extreme close-ups (Stach's ear is a recurrent visual motif) and extreme long shots (the final shot where the blind Stach is walking alone through the snowscape) and everything in between. Crane shots and extreme high angles are exciting to watch for instance in the scene where the blind Stach discovers a familiar pole in the middle of the snow and hits it.

Silence was also one of the early works of Wojciech Kilar as a film composer, and he is at his best here. The score is powerful and efficient from the start to the end. There is also diegetic music, beautiful in the church sequences. After the blinding of Stach the entire soundscape gains special emphasis.

Silence belongs to a distinguished series of films about children coming to terms with the war, to be compared with Pojat / The Boys, Somewhere in Europe, The Search, Forbidden Games, Germania anno zero, Unszere Kinder, and films about wartime bombs causing threats after the war has ended, like in Tarkovsky's Today the Furlough Has Been Cancelled, and Laszlo Ranody's A tettes ismeretlen / The Murderer Unknown.

The vintage print is clean and complete and has been little used. The visual quality is good. There was at times some buzz on the soundtrack.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BY PETTERI KALLIOMÄKI

Taksikuski / [Taxi Driver] (1969)

Aitiopaikka: Taksikuski.
    FI 1969. PC: Oy Mainos-TV-Reklam Ab.
    D+SC: Veikko Kerttula – based on the novel Peiliin piirretty nainen ([A Woman Drawn On a Mirror], 1963) – and the radioplay (1967, D: Väinö Vainio, C: Antti Litja) by Veijo Meri. DP: Raimo Leskinen, Reijo Hassinen – b&w – 16 mm – 1,37:1 – sepmag. AD: Marianne Soisalo. S: Veikko Partanen. ED: Sirpa Häkämies.
    C: Antti Litja (Eino), Martti Pennanen (engineer), Harri Nikkonen (writer), Ville Salminen (Otto Kukkakoski), Kirsti Kemppainen (Eila), Esko Pesonen (father), Sylva Rossi (mother), Ritva Ahonen (Kaisa), Sirppa Sivori-Asp (Maija), Ossi Ahlapuro (Kosonen), Seppo Lehtonen (Pena), Matti Ruohola (unknown), Matti Miikkulainen (Jööran), Mirjam Salminen (a wife), Asta Backman (senior nurse), Anita Sohlberg (nurse), Eriikka Magnusson (assistant nurse), Uolevi Vahteristo (talonmies / janitor), Erkki Uotila (nimismies / sheriff), Eeva-Maija Haukinen (sales clerk), Pauli Virtanen (drunkard), Eero Soininen, Erkki Saarela ja Matti Vehniäinen (punks on the street), Matti Nurminen (policeman), Hannes Veivo (taxi driver).
    Telecast (Aitiopaikka): 22.9.1969 Mainos-TV, 1976, 8.10.1985 MTV2, 27.12.1985 MTV2 – 110 min (1969) – 92 min (1985)
    Hollywood Festival of World Television: Best New Drama Award (1969).
    The music selections are not credited. All music is diegetic, mostly supposedly from the taxi radio. The main music is free jazz (fine, I cannot identify it). "Muistoja Pohjolasta" is the march played on the phonograph during Eino and Eila's love scene. "Savoy Truffle" (The Beatles White Album) [my memory from the long version is that also "Honey Pie", the previous track on that album, was played]. "Let's Twist Again" (or another twist, instr., tbc). Beethoven (familiar, symphonic, not Eroica).
    KAVI RTVA 2K DCP (2015) of the 92 min version viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Antti Litja), 6 May 2015
    The original long version has not survived.

AA: Revisited a distinguished tv drama, an existential road movie based on a novel of a key Finnish modernist writer.

Veijo Meri (born in 1928) wrote modernist stories and novels of high quality in the 1950s and the 1960s (he later turned to poetry, essays, and non-fiction). His favourites include Gogol and Kafka, but he has his own unique sense of the absurd, an original approach to existential alienation, and also a fundamental sense of an irresistible life force.

Veikko Kerttula (born in 1940) is one of the finest Finnish tv directors. I first encountered him as a director of popular tv series, among them a delicious adaptation of Jaroslav Hašek's The Good Soldier Švejk (starring Matti Varjo and Matti Ranin), close to Veijo Meri territory - with Meri himself as screenwriter. Kerttula has dramatized several of the best contemporary Finnish novels for television, and starting with Taksikuski he became the trusted man for Veijo Meri film adaptations for MTV; Veli-Matti Saikkonen was the main Meri director for Yleisradio.

I had not seen Taksikuski since 1969 but it then left a lasting impression, and now the film felt even stronger. Taksikuski has affinities with Federico Fellini (La strada, La dolce vita), Ermanno Olmi, contemporary Czech and Polish films, and the French new wave. I was thinking about Satyajit Ray's Days and Nights in the Forest but also about Monte Hellman (Two-Lane Blacktop), Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider), and Wim Wenders (Im Lauf der Zeit / Kings of the Road). Yet, despite such affinities Taksikuski is fully original.

The merits of Taksikuski were recognized at once with awards, but there were also critical remarks of unevenness and longueurs. Today the presumed weaknesses did not bother me. Veijo Meri is a creator of anti-drama; his works are compositions of relativity with no beginning and no end. He is an artist of the anti-climax. He favours a slight narrative which provides a fertile ground for digressions, war memories, comic incidents, and new time dimensions. But the dynamic composition is careful between forces such as urbanity and nature, the big and the small, the past and the present, male and female, the young and the old. There is true insight into the communication gap between generations. I think Veikko Kerttula's film metamorphoses Veijo Meri's literature successfully into cinema.

Antti Litja (born in 1938) had been acting since the late 1950s, and the leading role in Taksikuski was his breakthrough to national consciousness. His is a mature performance, an understated but deeply felt interpretation of a process of growing up within one tragic weekend. In its own peculiar way Taksikuski is a modernistic Bildungsroman and an Odyssey, and Antti Litja, one of our original New Wave actors, an anti-heroic contemporary of Dustin Hoffman and Jack Nicholson, rose to the challenge.

The tragic lead is played by Ville Salminen, a heavyweight veteran of the Finnish cinema both as a director and an actor, most familiar in comic or villainous roles. He is very moving here as the bitter artist who is believed to have stomach cancer but who is actually just sick of life; he commits suicide with his Parabellum. It seems that his supposedly bad health is a cover story. We hear that his creativity as an artist was at its strongest in the 1920s. Now he has lost his life force, as well. After an unhappy love affair during the war he has turned into a woman hater. The war (1939-1945) again provides a grim backstory to many of the characters as is usual in Veijo Meri's fiction.

Taksikuski is divided between the city (Helsinki) and the countryside (Lohja). It has documentary value as a portrait of contemporary Helsinki in 1969. It is also an artistic vision of the highways of the land in a period of a rapid growth of motor traffic (but in the countryside the two ageing sisters have never seen a Mercedes Benz before). There is also a fine sense of nature in the excursion to the painter's home by the lake. The visual climax is the men's boat trip to the painter's sauna island, rowing through the mist. Visually the film is rewarding and full of interesting observations.

The cinematographers Raimo Leskinen and Reijo Hassinen have a fine sense of realistic composition and filming in what looks like available light. Reijo Hassinen had a lot of documentary experience, Raimo Leskinen was a new kid on the block.

The DCP has been created with care, preserving a pleasant sense of the grain of the original 16 mm cinematography. Certainly Taksikuski looks much better in this way than it originally did on a 1969 television set.

OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK

Ill Met by Moonlight

Night Ambush / Kenraali katoaa / Generalen kidnappad. GB 1957. PC: The Rank Organisation [J.  Arthur Rank n.c.]. P+D+SC: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger [The Archers n.c.] – based on the book of memoirs by W. Stanley Moss (1950, in Finnish by Tapio Hiisivaara / Tammi, 1951). DP: Christopher Challis – b&w – VistaVision – 1,85:1 (IMDb) – even better in 1,66:1. AD: Alex Vetchinsky. FX: Bill Warrington. Cost: Nandi Routh. Makeup: Paul Rabiger. M: Mikis Theodorakis. S: Charles Knott, Gordon K. McCallum (sound recordists), Archie Ludski (sound editor). ED: Arthur Stevens. C: Dirk Bogarde (Major Patrick Leigh-Fermor or ΦΙΛΕΔΕΜ), Marius Goring (Major General Heinrich Kreipe), David Oxley (Captain W. Stanley Moss), Dimitri Andreas / Demetri Andreas (Niko), Cyril Cusack (Sandy), Laurence Payne (Manoli), Wolfe Morris (George), Michael Gough (Andoni Zoidakis), John Cairney (Elias), Brian Worth (Stratis Saviolkis), Christopher Lee (a German officer at the dentist's). Helsinki premiere: 24.5.1957 Metropol, distributed by: Parvisfilmi Oy, Finnish/Swedish subtitles by Liisa Ahti – VET 46730 – K12 – 104 min
    A vintage KAVI 35 mm print viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Powell and Pressburger), 23 April 2015.
    The title is from Shakespeare: Oberon: "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania." (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 2, Scene 1).

The last film of the Archers belongs to the double set of war movies made by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger for J. Arthur Rank. The first was in Technicolor, this one is in black and white.

Ill Met by Moonlight is a film about gentlemen's war, in continuation to The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. The expression "a nightmare of horror" is heard at the start to describe the Nazi occupation of Crete, but nothing we see confirms this.

It is a true story about the kidnapping of General Kreipe, the commander of the German occupation forces at Crete. There has even been a non-fiction reconstruction of that adventure with Kreipe himself among the participants.

Shot on Mediterranean locations on the Riviera the film impresses with the black and white outdoors cinematography by Christopher Challis. The landscape is magnificent, and protective of its native inhabitants, including the resistance fighters hiding in the mountains. In the philosophy of the landscape, in the sense of the sublime, there is a continuity with Powell's films starting with The Edge of the World and including A Canterbury Tale and I Know Where I'm Going by Powell and Pressburger. Ill Met by Moonlight belongs to the realistic current of the duo.

The phases of the Moon are a visual refrain in the film.

There is also a sense of the fairytale and myth, starting with the title from A Midsummer Night's Dream and the motto from Ulysses. On Crete we stay on Mount Ida, home of the Cave of Zeus. Minos and Ariadne are evoked.

Ill Met by Moonlight is a well made war adventure film full of suspenseful moments but directed with a laid back, relaxed approach. The actors are all good but a sense of urgency is missing from this cinematic reconstruction.

The last film of the Archers was the first film of Mikis Theodorakis, already providing a warm and exhilarating score.

The vintage print shows proudly the patina of age and gives a good impression of the original VistaVision cinematography.  IMDb claims the aspect ratio is 1,85:1 but it looks much better in 1,66:1. Both would be correct within the VistaVision projection practice.

OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt / Hannah Arendt. DE / LU / FR / IL 2012. PC: Heimatfilm GmbH + Co KG (Köln). P: Bettina Brokemper, Johannes Rexin. D: Margarethe von Trotta. SC: Pamela Katz, Margarethe von Trotta. DP: Caroline Champetier – camera: Red Epic – release format: 2K DCP, 16:9. Vintage footage: original videotape from the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (1961). PD: Volker Schäfer (Szenenbild). AD: Anja Fromm. SD: Barbara Hartwich, Oliver Koch. Drawings: Petra Maria Wirth. Cost: Frauke Firl (Kostüme), Sarah Wüthrich (Garderobe). Makeup: Astrid Weber, Nadia Homri, Antje Bockeloh. M: André Mergenthaler. S: Greg Vittore – Dolby SRD. ED: Bettina Böhler. Casting: Susanne Ritter. C: Barbara Sukowa (Hannah Arendt), Axel Milberg (Heinrich Blücher), Janet McTeer (Mary McCarthy), Julia Jentsch (Lotte Köhler), Ulrich Noethen (Hans Jonas), Michael Degen (Kurt Blumenfeld), Nicholas Woodeson (William Shawn), Victoria Trauttmansdorff (Charlotte Beradt), Klaus Pohl (Martin Heidegger), Friederike Becht (young Hannah Arendt), Fridolin Meinl (young Hans Jonas), Harvey Friedman (Thomas Miller), Megan Gay (Frances Wells), Joel Kirby (Lionel Abel), Sascha Ley (Lore Jonas). Dreharbeiten: 16.10.–17.12.2011 Cologne and its surroundings, Luxemburg, Israel, New York. Original in German (and English and Hebrew). Telecast in Finland: 22.10.2014 Yle Teema – S – 113 min
    A Goethe Institut 35 mm print with English subtitles viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Margarethe von Trotta, student screening), 8 April 2015

    The book to the film:
    Hannah Arendt. Ihr Denken veränderte die Welt. Das Buch zum Film von Margarethe von Trotta. Hrsg. Martin Wiebel. München, Zürich: Piper, 2013, 252 pages.
    Texts by Franziska Augstein, Martin Wiebel, Margarethe von Trotta, Pam Katz, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Ernst Vollrath, Bettina Brokemper, Hannah Arendt interviewed by Joachim Fest, Barbara Sukowa, Klaus Pohl, Volker Schaefer, Jerome Kohn, Rainer Schimpf, and Bettina Stangneth. Excerpts from the screenplay. 

I watched Hannah Arendt at our morning student screening before Margarethe von Trotta's afternoon lecture and Q&A on Rosa Luxemburg, Hildegard von Bingen, and Hannah Arendt. In the evening there was a regular screening of Hannah Arendt and a subsequent Q&A.

The film was an even better opening to our Margarethe von Trotta retrospective than we had realized, representative of so many of her key concerns and characteristics.

A major continuity in her oeuvre has been an honest confrontation with the German history of the past century. To this quest Hannah Arendt brings a new contribution of an aching and disturbing complexity.

Intellectual biography is popular in today's cinema, as in the high profile Academy Award nominated films on Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing. They are commendable attempts to present difficult ideas to a general audience. Hannah Arendt is also a thrilling film, with the difference that the determination to focus on the ideas of the protagonist is on a completely different level than in the Hawking and Turing biopics. Hannah Arendt is a drama of standing up to one's convictions. It is a film that not only popularizes but also contributes on a profound level to the discussion of Arendt's still alarming insights in the Eichmann trial.

Margarethe von Trotta prefers a protagonist who is a woman of courage, controversial, even a rebel.

There are several important relationships in the film: Hannah and Heinrich (husband), Hannah and Lotte Köhler (assistant), Hannah and Hans Jonas (a long-term friendship broken after the Eichmann articles), Hannah and Kurt Blumenfeld (in Israel), and Hannah and William Shawn (The New Yorker). But the deepest relationship, the true core, is that of Hannah and Mary McCarthy.

A focus on a female bond - sisterhood, friendship - is a characteristic for von Trotta. (She has even filmed Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters as Amore e paura with Fanny Ardant, Greta Scacchi, and Valeria Golino). The most memorable performances here are those by Barbara Sukowa and Janet McTeer. There is a sense of urgency in them.

A further von Trotta hallmark is a formidable presence of an architecture of power. Here the most relevant architecture of power (Auschwitz) remains invisible. Major settings are the Jerusalem courthouse of Eichmann's trial and the university lecture hall of the final voluntary "trial" of Hannah Arendt herself as she gives her remarkable defense speech against her critics.

Forceful and characteristic is here also von Trotta's mise-en-scène and composition. I had happened to visit a Vilhelm Hammershøi exhibition at the Amos Anderson Art Museum and felt an affinity between certain von Trotta images and Hammershøi's compelling compositions of dark clad women with their backs turned to us.

Von Trotta has talent with the documentary insert. In Die bleierne Zeit the two sisters as schoolgirls get to see Night and Fog. Here the documentary inserts are the televised records of the Adolf Eichmann trials. Von Trotta's major casting decision was that all other characters are conveyed by actors but Adolf Eichmann is seen in actual documented footage only.

Margarethe von Trotta was in great form in her lecture and the Q&A sessions. There was not enough time for all the questions. One remark I wanted to make but had no time to is: In your films women are strong and men not so strong. This is not a piece of criticism. There is more than a fair share of strong roles for men in the cinema, even entire genres are male-dominated. You have made an engrossing contribution to correct the balance.

On Adolf Eichmann there is an excellent documentary film by Erwin Leiser which would deserve to be better known: Eichmann und das dritte Reich.

OUR PROGRAMME NOTE BASED ON A. O. SCOTT'S REVIEW BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK

Octavio Paz: Apariencia desnuda / Marcel Duchamp, Appearance Stripped Bare (two essays)

Marcel Duchamp: La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (Le Grand Verre) (inachevée, work-in-progress). 1915-23. Oil, varnish, lead foil, lead wire, and dust on two glass panels. 277.5 cm × 175.9 cm (109.25 in × 69.25 in). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. Image: Wikipedia.

Octavio Paz: Marcel Duchamp - Apariencia desnuda. Ciudad de México: Ediciones Era, 1976. Incorporating two previously published extended essays, here revised and enlarged:
- Marcel Duchamp o El castillo de la pureza. Ciudad de México: Ediciones Era, 1968.
- Marcel Duchamp - Apariencia desnuda. Ciudad de México: Ediciones Era, 1973.
    In English: 
    Appearance Stripped Bare. Translated by Rachel Phillips and Donald Gardner. New York: Viking Press, 1978.
    Read in Finnish:
    Suuri lasi [direct translation: The Large Glass]. Translated by Anita Mikkonen. Edited by Jyrki Lappi-Seppälä. Graphic design: Kari Puikkonen. Printed: Hämeenlinna: Karisto Oy Kirjapaino. Publisher: Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö Taide, 1991. 168 p. Illustrated.

Octavio Paz (1914-1998) was a great Mexican poet and a Nobel laureate. We film lovers know him also from his essays on Luis Buñuel which are among the most rewarding written about the Surrealist.

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) was a French artist, often seen as one of the handful, or even one of the two most significant artists of the 20th century (for Octavio Paz those two are Picasso and Duchamp). Academically trained, Duchamp soon mastered Impressionism, Cubism, and Futurism. His movement studies such as Nu descendant un escalier n:o 2 are among the key works of art in the film age. He was the inventor of the objet trouvé / Readymade (Bicycle Wheel, 1913, Bottle Rack, 1914) and came close to Dadaism (Fountain). He was also close to Surrealism and created kinetic works (in 1931 Duchamp coined the word "mobiles" at Alexander Calder's studio) and a short avantgarde film (Anémic cinémA). The mathematically talented Duchamp was influenced by Henri Poincaré. He was also a passionate chess player (we see him playing chess in René Clair's Entr'acte). Duchamp was also a composer, perhaps the first one to create aleatoric music already in 1912-1915, and he later collaborated with John Cage. Duchamp loved disguises and pseudonyms; he created a female side persona called Rrose Sélavy; he may himself be the model of his moustached Mona Lisa.

Duchamp's last major work in his lifetime was the unfinished La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (Le Grand Verre), 1915-1923. Duchamp had made preliminary paintings for it already in Munich in 1912. In 1923 it was left "terminally unfinished". After Duchamp's death, Philadelphia Museum of Art exhibited his mixed media installation Étant donnés: 1° la chute d'eau / 2° le gaz d'éclairage, a work in progress which had been in the making in 1946-1966 and was permanently put on display in 1969. Also for conceptual art, minimalist art, installation art, and body art Duchamp is a key pioneer. Duchamp was against "retinal art" and a champion for the art for the mind. He participated also in performance art, perhaps dramatizing the conflict between the pleasure of the eye and the pleasure of the mind in his chess performance with the beautiful young nude Eve Babitz (later an artist and writer, herself).

Duchamp, who settled in New York's Greenwich Village in 1942, changed the way we see art.

Perhaps Duchamp's strongest statement as an artist was his silence.

Duchamp stopped to be an active artist in 1923. He was a chess master, and he now dedicated his life to chess instead, and also to chess theory. Samuel Beckett was inspired by Duchamp's theme of the endgame.

These years we remember the centenary of the First World War (1914-1918). Duchamp is relevant for me here because WWI meant the end of art - the end of art in the traditional sense. Received notions of the beautiful and the sublime became obsolete - obsolete in great art creating something truly innovative. (Old great art never becomes obsolete. Most new art is always conventional or recycled.) There was a rupture in art, the greatest in history, and Duchamp was a key incarnation of it.

The traditional concepts of aesthetics of the beautiful and the sublime are irrelevant for an artwork such as La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (Le Grand Verre).

In Apariencia desnuda a great poet, Octavio Paz, writes a great book on Duchamp. I'm grateful having stumbled upon it intrigued by a recommendation by a good friend. Duchamp was a poet, too, inspired by Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, and Jules Laforgue (fascinatingly discussed by Paz), and his poet friends Guillaume Apollinaire, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara and André Breton.

Octavio Paz focuses on La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même (Le Grand Verre). The original is in Philadelphia Museum of Art, and there are three official replicas (at Moderna Museet, at Tate Gallery, and at Komaba Museum at the University of Tokyo). La mariée... is an unclassifiable construction which actually also requires studying Duchamp's explanatory remarks called From The Green Box (1957). But it has also been said that Duchamp's explanations only serve to make the work even more hard to understand. The same goes for Duchamp's The White Box / À l'infinitif (1966) and Entretiens (1967).

Based on an intimate understanding of Duchamp and following carefully all the clues Octavio Paz in his essays creates a parallel poetic world with a rich array of fascinating associations.

One of those associations is about La Mariée... as anti-art, about the silence of art, even about the destruction of art (the accidentally shattered glass not replaced by Duchamp), and also about the impossibility of interpretation. La Mariée... is also a parody of modern art, and its explanations a parody of modern art criticism. Also in his position of neutrality and acceptance of any interpretation or none Duchamp was ahead of his time.

P.S. 15 April 2015: I have stumbled upon Massimo Lanzaro's interesting reflections on Marcel Duchamp: http://psicologiadelarte.com/2012/09/reflections-on-duchamp-quantum-physics-and-mysterium-coniunctionis-por-dr-massimo-lanzaro-department-of-psychiatry-royal-free-londres/

Tadeusz Konwicki: Sennik współczesny / A Dreambook for Our Time (a novel)

Good reading at the Ylläs-Äkäslompolo ski paradise. Click to enlarge.

Tadeusz Konwicki: Sennik współczesny. Warszawa: Iskry, 1964.
    Read in Finnish:
    Puolalainen unikirja. Finnish translation and introduction by Taisto Veikko. Porvoo / Helsinki: WSOY, 1966. Aikamme kertojia. 402 pages.

Tadeusz Konwicki (1926–2015) died two months ago and we'll honour his memory in our summer season by screening Zaduszki / All Souls' Day and Salto / Somersault. The screenings are also a part of our tribute to Paweł Pawlikowski's Ida: we will celebrate the Polish New Wave of the late 1950s and the liberal part of the 1960s. Pawlikowski has been, though, influenced rather by Bresson, the young Godard, and the Czech New Wave. But interestingly the first work in Pawlikowski's filmography is Palace Life (1988), a television documentary on Konwicki.

Tadeusz Konwicki was a first class writer. Two of his books were translated into Finnish in the distinguished Keltainen kirjasto series of the Tammi publishing house: Mała apokalipsa / Pieni ilmestyskirja / A Minor Apocalypse (1979), and Bohiń / Isoäitini tarina / Bohin Manor (1987). The first Finnish Konwicki translation was Sennik współczesny / A Dreambook for Our Time by WSOY.

I saw Zaduszki when it was telecast in Finland in 1970 under the title Taru rakkaudesta [A Saga of Love]. It is a strong Modernistic piece perhaps a little reminiscent of Hiroshima, mon amour, but completely original. Having read Konwicki obituaries I know now a little about the shattering first hand experiences that brought a sense of urgency to Konwicki's books and films. Konwicki was a film director and also an important screenwriter and an inspiring background figure who provided ideas to key films of the Polish New Wave.

A Dreambook for Our Time (its Finnish title in direct translation: A Polish Dreambook) is the first Konwicki book I have read. It is a compelling nightmarish account of Paweł, a Resistance activist coming to terms with his experiences seventeen years after WWII. He returns to the terrain of the guerrilla warfare in the village that is about to be flooded as a huge dam is being built. The partisans had first fought Nazis and then the Soviets. Some of them are rumoured still to hide in the forest, and, indeed, still are.

This is not a heroic adventure story. Paweł (known as a Resistance fighter as Stary = the Old-Timer) had risked everyone with his derring-do against a Nazi train. Seventeen years later he is still tormented to the point of attempting suicide because he had been assigned to execute a traitor among the partisans. (He shot but did not kill). For a long time the sensual Paweł has been living a shadow life, yet he experiences significant but frustrating relationships with women, Regina and Justyna. (He fails to act with Regina who would be interested. He acts with Justyna who finally, however, decides not to board the train with Paweł).

The story is set in today (around 1962) with much of the action experienced in wartime flashbacks and in even more distant flashbacks in Paweł's school days. There are many layers in the narrative. One of them is the association of the Twelve Apostles and Maria Magdalena among the partisans.

A Dreambook for Our Time is a harrowing but persuasive story. It is a story of brutalization but also of a triumph of the spirit. It is an account of a nightmare but also of waking up.

I cannot read Polish but it is easy to believe that Taisto Veikko (also a translator of Andrzejewski, Gombrowicz, and Kolakowski) has done a fine job of translation here. The Finnish edition has been printed during the golden age of Finnish book publishing (from the 1950s till the 1970s) when they knew the secret of the perfect layout for a book that also as an object is a pleasure to read.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: TADEUSZ KONWICKI AT CULTURE.PL

Tampere Film Festival 2015: National Competition

Matka minuksi / Becoming Me (D: Mina Laamo)

Since some years now at Tampere Film Festival I focus on National Competition. This year I was again happy at this decision, and I blogged on each film (save one, see the end). I could list them all here but here are some of my favourite SHORT FILMS in alphabetic order:
    Baby-Box - another masterful puppet animation by Katariina Lillqvist at her best.
    Karkuri / The Deserter by Kalle Raittila - a devastating factual animation on Syria.
    Kukka-Hauta / Flower-Grave by Malakias - a drolatic animation in juicy colour about our dependence on bees.
    Kuuntele / Listen by Hamy Ramezan and Rungano Nyoni - a taut and intense drama of "lost in translation" as an Arab woman tries to report lethal domestic violence on a Copenhagen police station.
    Naisen nimi / Just a Name by Tiina Lymi - a lovely satire with bite.
    Syntymäpäivä / Birthday by Hanneriina Moisseinen - a charcoal drawn animation about the last days of Finnish Eastern Karelia.
    Teemapuisto / Theme Park by Risto-Pekka Blom - a humoristic monologue of the huge balloon figure by the Koskikeskus Shopping Mall.
    Transit by Lauri Astala - an experimental film about the transformation of space as photographed in nocturnal New York from impossible angles.
    Valvoja / The Guardian by Pietari Bagge, Christer Hongisto, Inka Matilainen, and Elisa Ikonen - a droll animation of a senior woman who has a low tech robot assistant.
    Äiti / Mother by Otto Kylmälä - a psychologically powerful account on a mother's rehabilitation.

THE FEATURE FILMS had mostly already been seen in previous festivals or even in theatrical distribution.
    Between Rings / Estherin kehä / Woman on Hold by Salla Sorri and Jessie Chisi is the engrossing story of Zambia's national heroine Esther Phiri.
    Hulluus ja yhteiskunta / Madness and Civilization by Teemu Mäki is a disturbing audiovideo: a visually dramatized audioplay triptych on Pierre Rivière, on the Norwegian mass murderer of Utøya, and of Michel Foucault who tried to make sense of Rivière.
    Hymyjen maa / The Land of Smiles by Heikki Häkkinen is a story of a team of guys who go to Thailand to rescue their friend who is being killed by his addiction to Lao Khao liquor and other dangerous substances.
    Matka minuksi / Becoming Me by Mina Laamo is a truly original intimate documentary on three young women who are charting their identities via extremely private blogs on fashion, anorexia, and food. With ravishing cinematography as is characteristic for Avanton productions.
    Talvivaaran miehet / Men of the Talvivaara Mine by Markku Heikkinen is a strong documentary on the huge mining debacle that has been in Finnish headlines for years. This kind of a general survey puts things into perspective and dramatizes the issue electrifyingly. Essential viewing for Finns and those interested in Finland.
    Tolonen by Lasse Keso is a high profile rise-and-fall and lost-and-found documentary on the great progressive rock guitarist Jukka Tolonen, with authorized access to the even most embarrassing aspects of his life.
    Who the Devil Can See in the Dark / Kuka piru pimeässä näkee by Mari Soppela is a humoristic account of a bitter topic: the search of a missing grandfather, a German soldier stationed in Lapland during WWII.

I missed one film, the new documentary feature film Äidin toive / Mother's Wish by Joonas Berghäll, screened in the first show in the competition, as I did not realize that it would be the only chance to see it.

Birdhouse

GB 2014. Fiction. PC: National Film and Television School. P: Franziska Lindner, Nik Powell. D: Pekka Saari. SC: Pekka Saari, Islay Bell-Webb. DP: Tristan Chenais. PD: Paul Savulescu. M: Lyndon Holland. S: Márton Kristóf, Simon Gill. ED: Yann Heckmann. M: Lyndon Holland. C: Grace Hogg-Robinson (Hannah), Mark Aiken (Mark), Oliver Kennedy (Elijah), Chandrika Chevli (Sally), Beatrice Curnew (Lisa). 25 min
    Filmed on location in Snowdonia National Park, Wales.
    http://www.pekkasaari.com/birdhouse/
    In English. 
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 11), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "During a lakeside holiday, 14-year old Hannah isn’t best pleased to have been dragged to the middle of nowhere with her step-dad Andreas whom she cannot stand. Hannah is convinced that he is trying to get rid of her. Andreas, on the other hand, is certain that there is something wrong with the girl and is trying to convince Hannah's insecure mother Lisa to send her to a facility. The hostility between the two grows. To get away from it all, Hannah wanders away from the lake house where they’re staying. In the woods behind it, she is befriended by the charismatic but mysterious Elijah – he’s older than her, wild and probably dangerous. And he’s prompting Hannah to stand up against Andreas. As his influence over Hannah grows and her relationship with her step-dad deteriorates, events by the lake take a decidedly sinister turn… "

AA: A sensitive portrait of a shy, awkward teenage girl arriving at a holiday summer place by the lake. Hannah does not fit in at all with her current circumstances with a new threatening stepfather but connects instantly with the stranger Elijah whom she meets in the forest by the lake. Hannah tells Elijah that her stepdad has killed her dog. There is a fine sense of atmosphere and alienation. At night Hannah overhears the stepdad's plans to have her relocated in an institution. Hannah: "I don't like water. I don't like something underneath that I cannot see". But there is a violent and tragic climax on the lake.    There is a  good sense of atmosphere and suspense. The performances are interesting and original. The cinematography and the production are assured and effective.

Onni / The Joy of Everyday Life

FI 2014. Documentary. PC: Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. D+SC+DP+ED: Sanna  Liljander. Black and white. 7 min
    Contact: sanna.liljander@gmail.com
    In Finnish with English subtitles by Sanna Liljander.
Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 11), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "Everyday life. Oh joy?"

AA: The title of this film is ironic. This kitchen sink documentary in one long take is about the endurance test of an exhausted mother as her younger baby (not the one we see) has a crying spell. The all-dominant sound is the incessant cry.

Orchard Road

FI / GB 2015. PC: Lamb Films. P: Larry Cowan. D: Ida-Maria Olva. SC: Leevi Ikonen. DP: Aidan Gault. S: Ilmari Hietala. ED: Otto Laakso. M: Veli-Pekka Pehkonen, Myles McCormack. Songs: "The Lying Devil", "The Number Song". C: Sean Hegarty (dad), James Hegarty (Alex), Larry Cowan (Georgie), Tracy Dempsey (radio persona). Special thanks: Armagh Cider Company. 9 min
    Contact: leevi.ikonen@cult.tamk.fi
    In English with Finnish subtitles.
Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 11), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "An unemployed father cannot afford a birthday present for his son, so he plans something a bit more unorthodox."

"It's Alex's ninth birthday and he's been anticipating a trip to Old Trafford for a present. Instead of Manchester, he finds himself heading towards Country Armagh in a pissing rain. Alex and his dad have started the day with a visit to the dole, making Alex quite pessimistic towards his surprise adventure waiting in Armagh. After a couple of cautionary prep talks it's time for the H hour. Alex's dad explains that he's taken him to nothing less than the best apple tree in the world."

AA: A droll rogue story of a birthday surprise off the beaten track. With good performances, a fine sense of atmosphere, and a sense of a maverick experience.

K.E.R.O.S.I.I.N.I. runoja planeetalta / K.E.R.O.S.E.N.E. Poems from the Planet

FI 2014. Experimental. P+D+SC+AN+ED: Jukka-Pekka Jalovaara. M+S: Samuli Saastamoinen. Black and white / monochrome with footage of fire in colour. 8 min
    Inspired by footage found on the NASA page: Apollo 11 being launched in 1969.
    Contact: jip-pis@hotmail.com
Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 11), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "I need to get to space. Being a cosmonaut is a demanding task. When you are not granted a new launching pad - it is almost impossible."

AA:  "I need to get to space", indeed. A rock music driven visual poem, an associative music video. The music is instrumental but there are text lyrics like in a karaoke video. This is a psychic rocket launch. Negative images, extreme close-ups of faces, high contrast, lizards, action figures, superimpositions, newsreel footage of explosions, a distorted surrealistic eye, a distorted drawing, eggs in a basket, insects on a fallen leaf, a burst of colour: exploding fire from the rocket launch, words and remarks painted on eggs.

THE POEM BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK

Syntymäpäivä / Birthday

FI 2014. Animation. P+D+SC+AN: Hanneriina Moisseinen. S: Tatiana Moshkova, Aga Pokrywka, Amanda Kauranne, Hanneriina Moisseinen. ED: David Eichenberger. Black and white. 3 min
    Contact: cargocollective.com/moisseinen
    No dialogue, just intertitles with English subtitles.
Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 11), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "It is the summer of 1944 and Karelia is being evacuated. Right when they receive the order to leave, one of the cows begins to calve."

AA: Charcoal drawn animation. The handcrafted quality is intimate and evocative. The kantele music and the dirge singing are delicate. Story: during the worst catastrophe of the war a calf is born.
    A work of art.

Kuuntele / Listen

[title in Arabic]. FI / DK 2014. Fiction. P: Valeria Richter, Helene Granqvist. D+SC: Hamy Ramezan, Rungano Nyoni. DP: Lars Vestergaard. S: Kristoffer Salting, Hamid Alamizadeh. ED: Rikke Selin Lorentz. M: Kristian Selin Eidnes Andersen. C: Yusuf Kamal El-Ali (son), Zeinab Rahal (mother), Amira Helene Larsen (translator), Nanna Böttcher (policewoman), Alexandre Willaume (policeman). 13 min
    Contact: hamyramezan@icloud.com
    In Arabic with English subtitles.
Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 11), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "A foreign woman in a burqa brings her young son to a Copenhagen police station to file a complaint against her abusive husband, but the translator assigned to her seems unwilling to convey the true meaning of her words. A tense, diamond-hard film about cultural isolation and bureaucratic ignorance."

AA: An intense and urgent drama about "lost in translation" when the female interpreter to the violently abused wife distorts her testimony to the police. The situation escalates to a fatal misunderstanding. The wife finally requests her son Yussef who talks Danish. But even the son fails to translate what the wife is saying. A refined and powerful movie.

In Love with Amelia Earhart

FI 2014. Animation. PC: Animaatiokopla. P+D+SC+ED: Leena Jääskeläinen. AN: Kaisa Penttilä, Jessica Koivistoinen. Paintings: Maria Björklund. Graphic art: Kaisa Penttilä. DP: Jari Uusitalo. S: Janne Laine. M: De Wolfe Music. C: Taina Nyström (grown-up Erja), Rosita Manninen (young Erja), Saana Hyvärinen (Erja's voice), Mary Woolley (voice of Erja). 6 min
    Contact: leena@animaatiokopla.fi
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 11), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "The Middle-aged Erja is reunited with her to lost loves. Amelia Earhart and herself. In love with Amelia Earhart is a light hearted experimental short film. The film deals with the contradiction between youthful enthusiasm and mature disillusionment. The technique of the film is stop motion animation by actors, along with some painted-on archive footage."

AA: Stop motion live action animation with some newsreel footage of Amelia Earhart. A poem based on a montage of associations. Everything is well with mother at the care home.
    A time lapse image of Erja as a young woman artist: I want to fly, I will never fall. Her drawings and paintings on the wall come alive in time lapse animation.
    Erja literally confronts herself as a depressed grown-up cleaning woman, both facing each other in the same shot. "I am doing quite fine. I will fly one day, as well."

Pimeällä polulla / On Dark Paths

Click to enlarge.

FI 2014. Fiction. PC: New Dawn Oy. P+D+SC+M: Paul J. Helin. DP: Jari Iso-Markku. S: Aleksi Tegel. C: Pessi Kivilä (Risto), Oskari Katajisto (father), Minna Hämäläinen (mother), Marjatta Rinne (grandmother), Lasse Piironen (monster). 20 min
    Contact: paul.helin@newdawn.fi, www.newdawn.fi
    In Finnish with English subtitles by Kaisa Cullen.
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 11), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "On Dark Paths tells a story about an eight-year-old boy, Risto, whose mind has created a terrifying monster that creeps in the family’s house during the night. This time, when the monster forces its way into Risto’s room, Risto has no choice but to escape and run to the grandmother’s for safety on the other side of the forest. We then find out that the creature isn’t entirely a product of Risto’s imagination but also real flesh and blood. Risto must now gather the courage to stand up to the monster - and put an end to his nightmare."

AA:  A horror movie set in the countryside based on a trauma of the nuclear family.
    Paul J. Helin creates skillfully a mood of ominous foreboding in this film that has a professional touch. The cinematography and the lighting are fine and effective.
    Grandmother sees through the complacent facade and recommends family therapy. Little Risto sees a monster which, it turns out, is his alcoholic father. In the conclusion the only way to overcome the murderous monster is parricide.

Säälistäjät / Mercy All the Way

FI 2014. Fiction. PC: AV-Arkki The Distribution Centre for Finnish Media Art / Hannaleena Hauru, Jan-Niclas Jansson - and Elokuvatuotantoyhtiö Made Oy / Ulla Simonen. D: Hannaleena Hauru. SC: Hannaleena Hauru, Tanja Heinänen. DP: Jan-Niclas Jansson. S: Cedric Le Doré. ED: Jenny Tervakari. M: Aleksi Wuorio, Lauri Ranta. "Kuka keksi rakkauden" (Markku Impiö, Kaija Kokkola) perf. Tsäps Up. "Doin' Time" (Petri Kallio). C: Tanja Heinänen (Mirja), Mikael Karkkonen (Marko), Misa Palander (Anna), Alina Tomnikov (Angelica), Johannes Mäkinen (Aku-Nuutti), Leena Nuora (Iida), Tiia Honkanen (Pirjo), Kikka Rytkönen (Päivikki), Niina Hosiasluoma (Sossu-Leena), Aapo Puusti (Jarkki), Rainer Kaunisto (Kake), Juha Mäkinen (shop manager). 30 min
    Contact: Elokuvatuotantoyhtiö MADE Oy / Ilona Tolmunen, ilona@made.fi
    In Finnish with English subtitles by Liina Härkönen.
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 10), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "The women working in a Finnish unemployment office have a secret club, where they give sex out of pity to marginalized young men in order to prevent future school killings. Mirja (35) tries to hide that after spending a night with unemployed Marko (19), she has fallen in love. Saving Finland is at stake."

The motto of this film was taken from a film critic.
    "If Auvinen, Saari, or Breivik had had even a little sex and at least for a while someone as a girlfriend, none of them would have become mass murderers."
- Markus Määttänen, Aamulehti, 2011

AA:  A dark satire on an outrageous premise. "I do more field work than anyone. I have prevented three school shootings and two bomb threat this year alone." The movie starts in Western Koivula, Employment Office. The most offensive feature is that office clerks laugh at their clients during the lunch break. Drama starts when jealousy comes into play and all leads to mental breakdown. Ostensibly a film about sex, but the approach is grotesque and anti-erotic. An ambitious film with a big idea and even a visionary final mass sequence, but I fail to relate to this.

Gimme Winter and You Can Keep the Rest

FI 2014. Experimental. P+D+SC+DP+AN+ED: Leena Lehti. 4 min
    Silent.
    Contact: leena.m.lehti@ gmail.com
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 10), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "The film is inspired by a story of polar explorer Knud Rasmussen (born 1879). He was trying to find the fund to his next expedition. When he couldn´t find the money, he got really angry and yelled: ”Give me snow, give me dogs; you can keep the rest!” Gimme Winter and You Can Keep the Rest is shot on Super 8 film. The film has been scratched frame by frame manually."

AA: Abstract handmade animation scratched on home movie footage of a ski trek in the darkness.
    A scratch movie - a dark, blurred image - two men on a ski trek - this is a silent - an abstract mindscreen - the story of a quest - the scratching at times overwhelms the Winterreise.

Career Plans / Urasuunnitelmia

GB/FI 2014. Documentary. PC: National Film and TV School. P+D+SC+DP: Sakari Suuronen. S: Matis Rei. ED: Jojo Erholz. M: Fraya Thomsen. Featuring: Dania Vanessa Hoang and her daughter Yumi Hoang, Paula Pietiläinen, Kirsi Oksaharju. 22 min
    In Finnish with English subtitles.
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 10), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "Where do you see yourself in five years? Everything seems so uncertain for Dania after graduation. Luckily her guidance counselor is with her on the journey."

AA: An intimate and sympathetic documentary film following a decisive moment in a young woman's choice of education and career. "Where do you see yourself in 3 years? 5 years? 7 years?" The intention is not to increase anxiety but to inspire.
    It starts with a young students examining forms with adjectives which might best describe them. Dania, 24, is on a five month home economics course in Jyväskylä, Finland. The course is about to end and she needs to figure out what to do with her future. The hairdressing school in Tampere has invited Dania for an inteview.
    Dania has arrived to Finland from Vietnam in the year 2000. Her mother was violent. She now is a single mother.
    Dania has been depressed since there has been no answer from Tampere. But there has just been a glitch of communication, and she has been accepted for the education to her dream job.
     The visual quality: a basic, plain, low tech documentary record.

Rocky Road

FI 2014. PC: Turku Arts Academy. P: Eija Saarinen. Animation. D+SC+AN+ED: Sirpa Loivarinne. S: Reinhard Zach, Hanna Leppälä. M: Reinhard Zach. 4 min
    Contact: Sirpa Loivarinne, sloivarinne@hotmail.com
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 10), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "A little rock is trying to find his place in the world. During his journey, he has to face his fears and rejection. Finally, just being still he finds his purpose and place."

AA: A limited drawn animation about the quest of a little rock, a progress from the countryside to the city and to the seashore. There are a lot of smiling rocks on the pavement. The rock has to be careful with the traffic. It approaches a stone lion which fondles it with its tail. But it falls to the ground, into the sewer and ends up at the beach. Also full of pebbles. A boy lifts it and it turns into the moon. There it yawns during the end credits.

Naisen nimi / Just a Name

Milla (Essi Hellén) and Lotta (Lotta Kaihua) fight over a rape alarm device. Photo: Elina Simonen.

FI 2015. Fiction. PC: TACK Films Oy. P: John Lundsten. 

    D: Tiina Lymi. SC: Melli Maikkula. DP: Jan Nyman. AD: Janne Siltavuori. Cost: Tiina Kaukanen. S: Karri Niinivaara. ED: Harri Ylönen. M: Vesa Mäkinen. Musicians: Marzi Nyman, Verneri Pohjola, Tero Kling, Vesa Mäkinen. 

    C: Iina Kuustonen (Annu), Lotta Kaihua (Lotta), Santtu Karvonen (Janne), Essi Hellén (Milla), Leo Viirret (the man in the gym).

    18 min
    In Finnish with English subtitles by Maarit Tulkki.
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 10), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "Annu, 30, is getting married and tries to decide whether to keep her own name or take that of her fiancé’s. A seemingly small choice gains enormous proportions when Annu’s best friend considers the issue an important question of gender equality, while Annu’s fiancé belittles the matter. A gathering of close friends escalates when traditional and modern worlds collide – and yet, it is just a name that is at stake. Or is it?"

AA: Revisited Tiina Lymi's excellent short film which I loved at first sight in late January. The delicious force of its satire is confirmed when seen again.
    It starts at the gym - the debate on the woman's family name. Naisen nimi is a film full of humoristic observation. It is a well written and directed contemporary satire with an unexpected angle. Janne the fiancé has bought a new leather easy chair. The two girlfriend guests bring gingerbread with pussy patterns (a wordplay on the Finnish double meaning of gingerbread). The dinner turns into a forum for hard core feministic diatribe. "Lotta is one tough broad".
    Do Lesbians get synchronized periods? Yes. Are men's circle jerks just a myth? No. How do Lesbians see penetration? As a patriarchal, destructive act.
   Annu has had enough: who is the penetrator here? Lotta.
   "It's just a name. It's not important". "Then you can take my name. It's not even an option. And it's my father's name anyway." The film is humoristic yet serious. The issue remains unsolved. There is bite in this film.
    What is not to like? This is a performance driven film with a splendid cast. The cinematography is good, and the original music played by a quartet is enjoyable.

Valvoja / The Guardian

The Guardian. Jamais vu. FI 2014. Animation. PC: Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture. ELO Film School Presents. P: Pietari Bagge. D+SC+AN+DP+ED: Pietari Bagge, Christer Hongisto, Inka Matilainen, Elisa Ikonen. S: Tuukka Nikkilä. M: Salla Luhtala. 8 min
    Contact: Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture / Saara Toivanen, saara.toivanen@aalto.fi
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 10), Saturday, 7 March 2015

TFF: "A short animation about an old woman whose assistant robot is trying to remind her about something important."

AA:  A rich, refined puppet animation in full colour.  The grandmother is knitting socks. The coffee is ready. There is a low tech robot reminding her of all such things. I like the warm light and colour world of this movie. The robot is also a cleaning person, and it patrols the ancient washing machine. But even the robot is fragile, needing care and maintenance. The grandmother ascends the attic where the machine room is located and fixes the broken light bulb. The stormy sea is visualized via dark plastic. There is a droll, consistent sense of humour in this animation where every detail counts.

Pauli

FI 2014. Fiction. PC: TAMK. P: Juho Fossi, Valpuri Raappana. D+SC: Jesse Jalonen. DP: Lauri Harju. S: Joni E. Heinonen. ED: Riku Leino. C: Jesse Pihkanen (Pauli), Tommi Raitolehto (Tommi), Riitta Ryhtä (Laura), Marja Pyykkö (Malla), Valtteri Turunen (Pauli's pal), Juha Elomäki (apartment owner), Heikki Kiviniitty (Pulsu on the bus). 23 min
    Contact: jalonen.jesse@gmail.com
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 9), Friday, 6 March 2015

TFF: "When the mother and the stepfather of the 16-year-old Pauli get a divorce, Pauli moves to live with his stepfather."

AA: A story about life in blended families. The awkward approach is both intentional and unintentional. There is an atmosphere of living in temporary circumstances.
    There is a sharp dramatic scene when the stepfather's lady friend and Pauli have a row in the kitchen. The lady friend wonders what Pauli is doing in the apartment, and Pauli replies that at least he is not paying for it with his ass. The wrong thing to say to a pregnant wife-to-be.
    Pauli has now burned his bridges with everybody and stays alone at night in the bitter cold. It is mother who comes to the rescue.
    Visually this borders on home movie quality.

Kukka-Hauta / Flower-Grave

FI 2014. Animation. PC: The Dead Will Rise. P+D+SC+AN+ED: Malakias. S+M: Yrjö Saarinen. Theme song: "Eternal Flame" perf. The Bangles. 5 min
    Contact: malakias10@hotmail.com
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 9), Friday, 6 March 2015

TFF: ""If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left." (Albert Einstein)"

AA:  A drolatic animation with visual fantasy and wit, a hot and delicious colour world and a wild organic imagination. There are plant forms, a hedonistic bee, and a gravestone being carved. Warm colours, organic forms, splatter images, funeral bureau scenes, a bee captured into a casket going towards the crematorium, saved by a monkey. There is a monkey funeral, and now it's the bee's turn to save the little monkey. "If we die we'll die together".

Lišša / The Scythe

Viikate. FI 2014. Documentary. PC: Saamelaisalueen Koulutuskeskus. P: Erkki Feodoroff. D+SC+AN+ED+M: Jonne Järvinen. DP: Miikka Miinala. S: Miikka Miinala, Elmeri Härkönen. Teacher-advisor: Katja Gauriloff. Featuring: Markus Laiti, Piera Guttorm. 13 min
    Contact: erkki.feodoroff@sogsakk.fi
    Location: Finnish Lapland, Sami region: Utsjoki (the northernmost municipality of Finland and EU).
    In Sami language with Finnish subtitles by Unni Länsman.
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 9), Friday, 6 March 2015

TFF: "A short documentary film about the love of work through the eyes of two different generations. An old craftsman acts as a guide to a young apprentice into the traditional knowledge of handicraft. Is there still a place for this expertise in modern society? The young man Markus has spent most of his life in the city. Now he returns to his roots and discovers a passion in handicraft. He dreams of making a living through this passion. At his childhood village there lives an old master craftsman, Piera. The master is eager to share his knowledge, and together they create a scythe."

AA: A nice and tender account about tradition and modernity in Lapland.
    Résumé: the old-timer Piera wields his old-fashioned scythe on the meadow. Two guys negotiate the Outakoski river on a speedboat. The old master teaches the young apprentice Markus how to carve and hew the shaft of a scythe from a piece of solid curved wood (see image above). Splinters fly. The master carpenter is also a boat builder. 
    Visuals: home video quality.

Parametronomicon

FI 2015. Animation. P+D+SC+AN+DP+S+ED+M: Pink Twins. 10 min
    Contact: AV-Arkki - Distribution Centre for Finnish Media Art / Hanna Joensuu - programme@av-arkki.fi
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 9), Friday, 6 March 2015

TFF: "Parametronomicon presents a model of parametric virtual life. A biomechanic organism moves, multiplies and regenerates in an elaborate series of convulsive movements. Its life spans from simple formations to inevitable apocalyptic visions of an over-the-top visual orgy."

AA: An experimental computer animation, a musical and visual experience. A form emerges from the darkness. It is a fantasy machine in garish colour. The colours change. It is a glamour machine. It evokes disco from the 1970s and the 1980s. The music is at times dominant, pushing the visuals. This is a machine of self-destruction. Perhaps it is an image of creative destruction.

Pojat / The Sons

FI 2014. Fiction. PC: Lahden ammattikorkeakoulu. P: Erkki Perkiömäki, Isabella Karhu. D+SC: Isabella Karhu. DP: Tuomas Peltonen. S+M: Juho Tanskanen. ED: Saana Jurmu. C: Henrik Heselius (Riku), Antti Kaarlela (Jarkko), Mikko Pörhölä (Keijo), Jemina Sillanpää (Noora), Inkeri Mertanen (mother). 17 min
    A student film for directing, cinematography, editing and sound design.
    Contact: viivi@karhu.org
    Tampere Film Festival (National Competition 9), Friday, 6 March 2015

TFF: "The Sons tells the story of three quarrelsome brothers, all whom are united one more time under the roof of their childhood home to confront each other and a looming tragedy in their family."

AA:  Three brothers return to their parental home in the countryside. Mother is not well. She hardly wakes up anymore. They take turns in watching over her. One of the brothers is a bit tense and hard to bear for the others. "Wouldn't it be nice to live here?" asks the young wife. "Everything has changed now".
    The brothers start to quarrel while the dying mother connects with her young daughter-in-law whom she has never met before. It is her hand she holds as she dies, smiling at the familiar sound of the quarreling sons.
    There is a languid approach in this movie. Nothing wrong here, but there is a lack of intensity.