Tapsa – viiltoja reissumiehen elämästä / Tapsa

Peter von Bagh: Tapsa – viiltoja reissumiehen elämästä (FI 1980), a portrait documentary of Tapio Rautavaara (1915–1979), singer, songwriter, actor, athlete. In javelin throw, an Olympic gold medal in 1948 in London. In archery, a team gold medal in the 1958 World Championships in Brussels.

FI 1980. PC: Yleisradio / TV 1 / Viihdetoimitus. D+SC : Peter von Bagh. ED: Paavo Eskelinen. Featuring: Tapio Rautavaara. Telecasts: 20.3.1980 and 16.12.1982 YLE TV1, 16.6.2007, 17.6.2007 and 2.8.2008 YleTeema – vhs release: 1985 YLE Tallennepalvelu – VET A-25267 – S – 74 min – Orion 2013: digibeta / Yle Export. Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (How My Films Were Made), 15 Feb 2013.

In the presence of Peter von Bagh. In the conclusion to his preceding lecture and in the introduction to this screening he commented that Tapsa was the incredible culmination of his career in the sense that there were 2,5 million viewers, half of the entire population. See my entry on Bagh's lecture for further comments.

A documentary film on Tapio Rautavaara (8 March 1915, Pirkkala - 25 September 1979, Helsinki), a wanderer and an artist. "The purpose of the film Tapsa was to reflect Rautavaara's personality. He himself as a character gave the keys. It has been tinged accordingly. From the material any kind of movie could have been made. It could have been in a deadly earnest register or entirely consisting of wisecracks. But as it is it is perhaps true to Rautavaara" (Peter von Bagh, 1980).

"For television Peter von Bagh launched in 1972 his huge project to cover Finnish popular culture, traditional and modern (in Olavi Virta, 1972, Paavo Nurmi, 1978, Tauno Palo, 1981, and in Suomi-pop – suomalaisen iskelmän historia [Suomi Pop - the History of the Finnish Hit Songs], 1-5, 1984–1985)."

"Inspired by Siegfried Kracauer Bagh coined into the Finnish vocabulary the expression about hit songs being 'a secret history of the nation'. Sinitaivas ([The Blue Sky], 1978) Repe (1979), and Tapsa (1980) were visionary works, and Vuosi 1952 ([The Year 1952] ,1980) was an early culmination of Bagh's collage approach. The high and the low, the sublime and the ridiculous were mixed like in John Ford's films. Along with the portraits of established stars of the Finnish popular music Bagh produced a remarkable series about the topical personalities of 'Suomi rock'. In the 19 episodes of the Lähikuvassa [In Close-Up] series in 1983-1992 the modern stars included Tuomari Nurmio, Remu Aaltonen, Pelle Miljoona, Juice Leskinen, Hassisen Kone, Eppu Normaali, Dave "Isokynä" Lindholm, and Rauli "Badding" Somerjoki." (Antti Alanen: Elokuvantekijät [Encyclopedia of Film-Makers], Helsinki: Otava, 2012).

Olaf Möller: "Tapio Rautavaara (1915-79) had it all: He was an Olympic Gold Medallist (javelin, London 1948) and master archer (world champion with the Finnish team, 1958), one of Finland's few chansonniers, as well as a mighty popular movie star. Tapsa, as he was called, is an honest-to-God Finnish pop-legend whose sheer appearance in a film still can make an audience go wild with joy. Difficult to imagine that this rugged-looking, unpretentious guy who ever so candidly shares his memories here with the audience was a man able to keep a nation spell-bound – yet what a wonderful certainty. Tapsa – viiltoja reissumiehen elämästä is driven by Peter von Bagh's admiration, nay: love for this axiom of post-war Finland, the nation's aspirations made flesh. Some of the material he had shot with Tapsa already found a place in Repe – sirpaleita Reino Helismaan elämästä. Not only for this, these two works should be considered as parts of the same project: Tapsa – viiltoja reissumiehen elämästä remembers the times, Repe – sirpaleita Reino Helismaan elämästä reconstructs them." (Olaf Möller: The Finland Inside, the Rotterdam 2012 essay expanded in 2013)

A documentary portrait on Tapio Rautavaara largely shot during his last months, shortly before he died in an accident. The foundation of the movie is a powerful and deeply felt interview, following in the same profound mood as the Tapio Rautavaara interviews for the preceding film Repe, on Rautavaara's close colleague and fellow wanderer Reijo Helismaa.

Intercut is Rautavaara's contemporary tour footage and excerpts from his appearances in newsreels, film performances and recordings.

Tapio Rautavaara is a born storyteller, and the movie is a chronological journey into his life and his times. The magic of this film is how it catches the spirit of Tapsa, his way and at the same time the entire stretch of the history of the independent Finland he covered and experienced: what it meant to be fatherless, how it was in the 1930s, during the wars, stardom after the war...

The essence of this movie is that is a documentary of a dream and of the spirit of a modern bard, Tapio Rautavaara, who was like a Woody Guthrie or a Johnny Cash of Finland, but entirely original.

Faaraoiden maa / The Land of the Pharaohs (1988) (in person: Peter von Bagh)

Mika Waltari: Sinuhe egyptiläinen / The Egyptian (FI 1945). A historical novel, a Bildungsroman, a picaresque novel, subtitled: "Fifteen Books from the Life of Physician Sinuhe, ca 1390–1335 BCE. Book cover art to the 11th Finnish edition (1974): Björn Landström.

FI 1988. PC: Yleisradio. D+SC: Peter von Bagh – excerpts from the novel The Egyptian (1945) by Mika Waltari – a compilation film made for television – based on Finnish fiction and non-fiction films from the years 1945–1946. ED: Pentti Kauranen, Risto Salo. 29 min – Orion 2013: digibeta / Yle Export. – Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (How My Films Were Made), 15 Feb 2013.

In the presence of Peter von Bagh. In the conclusion of his preceding lecture and in his introduction to the screening he commented: The Land of the Pharaohs is a film about the year 1945, about Finland which had lost the war. It is my nearly most unknown film. It has never been telecast again.

"Excerpts from Mika Waltari's classic of popular historical fiction, Sinuhe, egyptilainen (1945), considered as comments on postwar Finland. A lean work, clear in its conception, straight-forward in its execution, muscular in its movement, and deep in its thoughts. Splendid." (Olaf Möller, Rotterdam Film Festival, 2012)

A poetic, multi-perspective essay on the devastating year 1945 seen through two kinds of reflections. The first reflection is Mika Waltari's novel The Egyptian, one of the biggest bestsellers of all times in Finland, and a bestseller even abroad, including the United States, where it was the basis for one of the first CinemaScope films, unfortunately miscast. The second set of reflections is provided by the fictional and non-fictional films of the time. The images of the refugees (from Stalin's Eastern Karelia) and the devastation of Lapland (by Nazi German soldiers) are among the most poignant in Finnish history. Yet there is in the imagery a confidence of perseverance, survival, and a new start via reconstruction and a new political landscape.

Peter von Bagh: How My Films Were Made (a lecture)

Peter von Bagh: Miten elokuvani ovat syntyneet? Lecture in the series organized by the HYY:n Elokuvaryhmä / The Film Society of The Student Union of the University of Helsinki. Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 15 Feb 2013.

As a film-maker Peter von Bagh is a master of the collage, the compilation film, the essay film, the art of the interview, and giant surveys of Finnish history, cultural history and film history, including series of major production companies and film artists. He has been highly acclaimed in Finland since the 1960s, but his international breakthrough is a recent phenomenon. It started with the warm welcome of Helsinki Forever (2008) in festivals, and recently his retrospectives have been circulating internationally, especially prominently since the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2012).

Peter started by defining himself as belonging to the category of "from critic to film-maker", like it was customary in the 1960s, although such a road to film-making had, in fact, existed already for a long time, examples including Michelangelo Antonioni and Marcel Carné.

My elämänlanka ["life thread": thread, clue, central concept] has been the collage, pointing the camera towards the past. A turning-point of mine in fine-tuning this and finding the right balance was Vuosi 1952 [1980].

The cinema is a marvellous art. From a mediocre film one can find a moment which conveys in a flash for what Proust needed twenty pages. This has been my lifelong conviction.

When I recently viewed again my early short Pockpicket (made in 1967-1968, and starring Sulevi Peltola in his first film role) I discovered that my ohjelmanjulistus (manifesto, programme declaration) is already expressed in its first words, which are something like "the past is with us all the time, and figures of the past turn into history". ["Menneisyys on osa meitä... ja me olemme matkalla kohti menneisyyttä" = "The past is a part of us... and we are on our way towards the past".]

As a film-maker I promptly ajoin itseni seinään [hit the brick wall] with a movie called Kreivi / The Count, backed by Risto Jarva, which Jörn Donner urged me to do.

My first portrait film was a short of 30 minutes about Olavi Virta [the Finnish tango king] [1972]. Then there was a hiatus of seven-eight years. None of my proposals were accepted by Yle [The Finnish Broadcasting Company].

Suddenly everything changed, and I started to do films at full speed, in a fury, with an almost unnatural force, in fear that it may come to an end. Somehow I still feel that way. Paavo Nurmi [1978] and Sinitaivas [Blue Sky, 1978] were made simultaneously.

While I made them Risto Jarva died suddenly and shockingly [in a car accident in a taxi, on 16 December, 1977], which is why Sinitaivas is dedicated to him, and which explains a certain haikeus [wistfulness], a taivas putoaa atmosphere [an atmosphere of heavens falling - a reference to the movie Kun taivas putoaa / When the Heavens Fall, directed by Jarva, with Bagh as a co-screenwriter].

Sinitaivas was a declaration of a programme, a declaration of materials: Finnish entertainment, with a motto that became rather well-known: "the iskelmä [der Schlager = a hit song] is the secret memory of the nation".

In all what I have done there is a Utopian element: life as it could be (not as what it is). Elements that I tied together in Sinitaivas were essential for my entire oeuvre: - wartime Finland, and - certain key characters.

EXCERPT: SINITAIVAS. The ruins of an old outdoor dance hall. "It feels like the nature is crying." "This is the meeting-place of lost dreams, of a nation that experienced a big move from the countryside to the city." "Newsreels of the heart were heard here." ♪ "Sinitaivas", ♪ "Väliaikainen". "Hit songs are the secret history of a nation's emotions, its hidden memory."

Sometimes one can learn more from adversity than from success. We were requested to do a ten minutes preview of Helsinki Forever. That long film itself is my most complicated work, yet we did it with dream-like assurance. But in the ten minutes cut everything went wrong.

SCREENED: A DAY IN HELSINKI, a digest of ten minutes of Helsinki Forever. AA: It is a job of work, sur commande. There is nothing wrong, yet the magic is missing.

In Helsinki Forever, itself, I was after the pitkät kaaret = the big picture, covering long stretches of time, a century or a half-century. Such a big picture has always been lucrative for me. In the Sininen laulu [The Blue Song] series I was able to mobilize the ilmaisuvoima = expressive qualities of all the arts.

Chris Marker, who was there, has said that the Helsinki Olympics of 1952 were the last true Olympics. In the following excerpts there are homages to three artists: Armand Lohikoski, Jörn Donner, and Aki Kaurismäki. Jörn Donner has made the best Helsinki film, Yhdeksän tapaa lähestyä Helsinkiä [Nine Ways to Approach Helsinki]. From Aki Kaurismäki there is an excerpt from the conclusion of Ariel with music sung by Olavi Virta, a song the cost of whose music rights had meanwhile jumped into ten thousand Euro, but we found a substitute which Aki accepted.

EXCERPT: HELSINKI FOREVER. The Olavi Virta selection in the Ariel excerpt is "Estrellita". Jörn Donner's voice is heard as a narrator in his excerpt. Sacy Sand: "Hippaa ja hoppaa" in Pekka ja Pätkä sammakkomiehinä [Pekka and Pätkä as Scuba Divers].

The cast of the protagonists of my oeuvre includes figures such as Olavi Virta, Tapio Rautavaara, Tauno Palo, Mikko Niskanen, and Edvin Laine. Of Rauli "Badding" Somerjoki I managed to record the practically sole good interview on film. The starting point was often a commissioned film.

At the Yle they had for a year attempted to put together a film on Reino Helismaa (Repe). When they mentioned it to me I found the concept immediately. Repe is one of the few of my protagonists whom I did not get to interview. He was absent, having died fifteen years earlier. We had his records, his thousands of lyrics for songs, his circa fifteen film appearances. We had his contemporaries. I have never used experts. But we had Toivo Kärki, Esa Pakarinen, and Tapio Rautavaara.

All my life I have regretted that I did not contact Eemeli. He started the stand-up comedy in Finland, he was the only one. In Repe I was approaching the Lähikuvassa [In Close-Up] territory.

In Repe there is not a word about his childhood or youth.

Many quotes from Repe have become winged words. Timo Koivusalo took dozens of lines of dialogue from Repe to his film Kulkuri ja Joutsen [The Vagabond and the Swan] [a reference to a Tapio Rautavaara song, also a reference to Repe and Tapsa]. 

In this film I developed my interview technique. I have come to realize that in such an interview technique there is an affinity with the direction of actors. It is about creating the proper conditions. The questions need to be good. One has to be humble, and with a not too knowledgeable appearance.

I met Rautavaara only ten times. As a consequence of our work together Tapsa called me: "Haluan kiittää, että teit minusta jälleen ihmisen" ["I want to thank you that you have made a man out of me again"].

They warned me that Tapsa is a burnt-out case.

For me Tapsa is comparable to F.E. Sillanpää: who else can speak so eloquently to the Finnish people.

EXCERPT: REPE. Tapio Rautavaara's account about Repe's last year. The doctor's advice to Repe: eat, drink, make love, there is one year more to go. I kept meeting him: ten months to go... seven months to go... four months to go. Before Christmas Repe called me: could you please replace me, there is a harjannostajaiset = a topping out ceremony at a construction site. I feel so damn tired. Then there was a call from the Töölö Hospital, the internal medicine ward. It was three o'clock in the morning. I went every night between one and three o'clock. At times he was drowsy, at times he gained strength. He asked me to talk with him while he was preparing a radiohupailu = a radio comedy show called "Olihan joulu Jooniassa" [It Was Quite a Christmas in Ionia]. He had a sheet of paper beside him. I was asking myself whether Christmas was coming any closer. Not a single line emerged on that paper. That sheet of paper remained blank. - Excerpt from Hei rillumarei!: going to Lapland, away from culture and civilization. "Scarecrows like that are born in culture". ♪ "Lapin jenkka". With Repe, Esa Pakarinen, and Jorma Ikävalko. - ♪ "Rumarillumarei". - ♪ "Kulkuri ja joutsen".

Whenever a portrait film of mine is extended there needs to be a theme. In Repe the theme is friendship.

In my film about Edvin Laine the theme, the key was that whatever he did was autobiographical, and it had the dimension of a confession. I was making my portrait twenty years after the death of Edvin Laine. But in 1987 I had been making a film about the civil war and interviewed also Edvin Laine about the years 1917-1918. Thus I had filmed Edvin, but the material was not used at the time.

Then I was commissioned to make a film about Edvin, and his family were the ones who commissioned it. - The film on Tauno Palo I had made as three of his closest family members visited me and asked me to do it. - Edvin Laine had seen it, and in a way he commissioned me to do the film about him, via his heirs.

Edvin's films are uneven, but almost always there is more in them. As a person everybody testified that he was adorable, cordial, and supportive. - Once Edvin even called me out of the blue and asked me to become his assistant director on a film about Sibelius.

EXCERPT: EDVIN LAINE. - Home movie footage. - I: Veikko Sinisalo. - I: Helge Herala. - Excerpt: Seitsemän veljestä [Seven Brothers]. - I: Edvin Laine (1987). - I: Kaija Upton. - I: Jarna Laine. - I: Ensio Suominen. - Footage from the Pyynikki Summer Theatre performance of The Unknown Soldier. - Excerpt: Niskavuoren Heta [Heta from Niskavuori]. - Excerpt: Kirkastuva sävel [The Tune That Gets Brighter]. - Three sources: the play, the realism, and the imagination. - Excerpt: Sleeping Beauty. - Everybody in the cast and the crew was well fed. That came from Edvin's heritage in the 1918 war.

Those excerpts give an idealized view about Edvin Laine as a director. The film was a compilation of existing footage except the interviews with his two daughters. - Gradually I had created a personal bank of images of key people.

Sininen laulu [The Blue Song] was launched in 2000, and it took three to four years to make. It was a series the kind of which could no more be done. It consists of a thousand little bits, and the challenge with the copyrights to all of them was huge. It was thanks to Astrid Gartz that it could be made without big problems. It is based on the todistusvoima = cogency, the power of testimony of all the arts.

For it I returned to commentary. Before it, Sinitaivas was my only film with commentary, and for 25 years I had managed without. It is much more difficult to manage without commentary. In Sininen laulu commentary is important. After forty years I went after the elements of all the arts in order to study them with the means of television. The first interviewees, Juice Leskinen, Veikko Sinisalo, and Jouko Tyyri, were all gone after a few years.

EXCERPT: SININEN LAULU.

What I never became was a maker of fiction films. Kreivi [The Count] is the most terribly battered film in the history of Finnish film criticism. What I did was to take a subject appropriate to the scandal press. Kreivi and Kun taivas putoaa, in both of which I was involved, were shunned by Yle at a time when television saw itself as a cultural institution.

Kreivi is like a work from the primitive period of the cinema, it is ärsykkeiden elokuvaa = it belongs to the cinema of attractions. It is non-linear. It is about a man who was 76 times engaged to women and sat in prison for embezzling them. The bait came from Donner, and the project was almost frozen when I tried to figure out who could play the leading role. Until I discovered he could only be played by The Count, Pertti Ylermi Lindgren, himself.

It is a rarity in its mix of documentary and fiction. The excerpt we are about to see was shot in half a day. The reels in the camera of Lasse Naukkarinen were four minutes, and there was only that one single reel left.

The direction of actors was planned so that they would surprise each other constantly. This scene between Elina Salo and the count is all provocation. It is a rather documentary account about the relationship of a man and a woman.

EXCERPT: KREIVI. ♪ "Elämää juoksuhaudoissa" [Life in the Trenches]. - The count, posing as an archeologist, has planted bones in the landscape in order to impress the woman with his discoveries. - ♪ "Liljankukka" [Lily Flower] as a duet. - The woman confesses that she has not believed a word of the count's tales, but she wants to have some fun with the situation.

The shooting of this scene was perilous even to the sound engineer Paul Jyrälä.

Kooste-elokuva on henkilökohtaisinta. = Compilation film is the most personal way of film-making for me.

In the shadow of Sininen laulu remained my eight part documentary series on the history of Finland, Oi kallis Suomenmaa [the name of the series is taken from the title a patriotic wartime song, the name in translation is roughly My Beloved Finland], edited by Elina Katainen. It was never reviewed in the leading newspaper.

EXCERPT: OI KALLIS SUOMENMAA. The events in Kemi in 1948.

Although I'm a conscientious objector, in many of my films I have discussed the war, and many are entirely dedicated to it, like The Year 1939. Suomi-pop was my first extended series, made in the early 1980s. Five years later none of the key interviewees were alive.

EXCERPT: SUOMI-POP - the war. I: Ragni Malmsten. The original masters that were destroyed in the war, the records that survived in the sturdy desk in the house that was demolished in the bombing. - ♪ "ethän armaani konsanaan". - Veikko Lavi: the unity of emotion was unique. - Esa Pakarinen: aikansa kutakin [there's a time for everything]. - ♪ Harmony Sisters: "Kodin kynttilät" ("When It's Lamp Lighting Time In The Valley").

Q: INFLUENCES? A: Emile de Antonio was a good friend, and from him I got the model of not using commentary. - Humphrey Jennings: how a great wave of emotion can rise from old pieces of film. Listen to Britain is the film I have seen the most often.

My Chekhov Project: Reading Eino Kalima

Eino Kalima in 1965 rehearsing with Rauha Rentola (in the role of Masha) his 1961 production of The Seagull / Чайка / Chaika / Lokki by Anton Chekhov (1896). My screenshot from Yle Areena: Eino Kalima ohjaa Lokkia (1965).

Eino Kalima: Sattumaa ja johdatusta. Muistelmia [Coincidence and Providence. Memoirs]
. Helsinki: WSOY, 1962

Eino Kalima: Kansallisteatterin ohjissa. Muistelmia 2 [In the Reins of The National Theatre. Memoirs 2]. Helsinki: WSOY, 1968

Eino Kalima: Leo Tolstoi. Helsinki: Kansanvalistusseura, 1908.

Timo Tiusanen: Teatterimme hahmottuu. Näyttämötaiteemme kehitystie kansanrunoudesta itsenäisyyden ajan alkuun [Our Theater Finds Its Shape. The Development of Our Scenic Art from Folk Poetry until the Beginning of Independence]. Helsinki: Kirjayhtymä, 1969.

Irmeli Niemi: Nykydraaman ihmiskuva. Analyyseja 1900-luvun eurooppalaisista näytelmistä [Modern Drama and Its View of Humanity. Analyses of European Plays of the 20th Century]. Helsinki: Tammi, 1969. - The Chapters on Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.

Last year I was bitten by an Anton Chekhov bug, and I realize that two thirds of his work I have yet to read, including some of his great stories which have never been translated into Finnish. I also have yet to read different translations of the plays and to read for the first time plays which do not belong to his "big four", such as Ivanov. And perhaps I should actually venture to the theatre and see those plays where they belong... !

I love modern performing arts but the situation with performing the classics has been weird during the last decades. Sometime in the 1950s and the 1960s it started to become de rigueur to interpret classics in estranged, customized ways, or in modern dress, or at least in sets and dresses other than that of the period of the story.

There seems to be a curse around the classics, a ban to perform them straight. For if a classic play is performed straight, the production, if it is any good, is always inevitably a contemporary one, with fresh insight in every detail. It is always a reflection of the present. And paradoxically, if you focus on modernizing it superficially, it may be remain less modern internally. Of course, nobody needs museum pieces without a fresh spirit and inspiration.

My first acquaintance with the phenomenon of modernizing classics was as a schoolboy when I saw The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1967 at the National Theatre in Helsinki. Tauno Palo was Falstaff, and I had the feeling that there was a wink in his eye: "we have been asked to wear these modern dresses, please bear with us". After the intermission I was hoping that they would stop fooling and start to wear to natural dresses. In a way I'm still waiting.

My first encounter with the work of Anton Chekhov took place in a performance of Uncle Vanya in 1966, which I know now was the last production of Eino Kalima (1882-1972) as a theater director. I had no point of reference, but now I read from Timo Tiusanen's history of the Finnish stage (he is referring to a study by Auli Wuorenrinne) that Kalima's Chekhov productions had an impact in the entire Finnish stage art in its development towards a less grandiloquent way and towards a deeper sense of interiority. This influence started in 1914 with Kalima's first production of Uncle Vanya, but according to our theater histories his late interpretations were the most masterful, symphonic, and definitive.

Having seen Joe Wright's whimsical film adaptation of Anna Karenina, interpreted in a musical style with a target audience of teenage girls, but yet with a strong screenplay by Tom Stoppard, I read Eino Kalima's short biography of Leo Tolstoy, written when the great author was still alive. It's a good compact overview about the writer whose influence in Finnish culture was great and who had personal friends in Finland. The only version of the novel Anna Karenina I have read is the Finnish translation by Eino Kalima from 1910-1911, a labour of love to which he devoted two years.

For fun I started to read Kalima's memoirs, too, about his happy childhood in the countryside around Lake Saimaa, school years in Savonlinna and Helsinki (Helsingin normaalilyseo) and university studies in Helsinki, and in 1904-1908 in Saint Petersburg and Moscow (Finland was then an autonomous duchy in the Russian Empire). Anton Chekhov died in 1904, and Kalima never got to meet him. The Russian performing arts impressed him tremendously: The Cherry Orchard, Woe from Wit, the art of Kachalov, Lower Depths, Nordic plays in Russia, Andreyev, Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird, Goldoni's La locandiera, Chaliapin in Eugene Onegin, Rimsky-Korsakov conducting Scheherazade, the unforgettable prima ballerina Mathilde Kschessinskaya he saw in Helsinki, and the art direction of Benoît and Korovin in the Alexandrinsky Theatre of Saint Petersburg.

Most of all Kalima was impressed by the Moscow Art Theatre. Kalima met Konstantin Stanislavski and the agreement was for him to start in his masterclass in the autumn of 1917... But then came the revolution.

In the same year Kalima was elected to be the theater director of the National Theater of Finland, to annual and much later to three year contracts which were extended for 33 years. Reading his memoirs from such a long career is a way to study the entire history of the theater in Europe and a bit also in the U.S.A.

There are film-relevant connections in every chapter although the cinema is never mentioned. Yet almost all of Kalima's colleagues worked for the cinema, starting with the first Finnish fiction film, Salaviinanpolttajat / The Moonshiners, made in 1907: its cast and crew were composed of talent from the Finnish National Theater. It is fascinating that one can imagine vividly the casting of Kalima's stage production of Marcel Pagnol's Marius (April 1931) because all Kalima's actors appeared frequently in films and are still well-known to lovers of the Finnish cinema. (The French premiere of the film adaptation of Marius was in October 1931. In Finnish cinemas Marius was seen in the Swedish-language version Längtan till havet, co-directed by John W. Brunius and Alexander Korda, in January 1932; its Finnish release title was Marius).

Following the Chekhov thread I also read Irmeli Niemi's superb interpretations about Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. Like Sophie Laffitte, Irmeli Niemi is puzzled by Chekhov's underestimating view of women.

My Chekhov project: Eino Kalima and Uncle Vanya

Eino Kalima started his career as a theater director with Uncle Vanya in 1914. Source: Timo Tiusanen: Teatterimme hahmottuu (1969)

Eino Kalima ended his career as a theater director with Uncle Vanya in 1966. Source: Otavan Suuri Ensyklopedia 7, 1979

Django Unchained

Quentin Tarantino: Django Unchained (US 2012) with Jamie Foxx as Django.

Django Unchained / Django Unchained.
    US © 2012 Visiona Romantica. PC: A Band Apart. Distributed by The Weinstein Company (USA) / Columbia Pictures (international). P: Stacey Sher, Reginald Hudlin, Pilar Savone.
    D+SC: Quentin Tarantino. DP: Robert Richardson. PD: J. Michael Riva. AD: David F. Klassen. Set dec: Leslie A. Pope. Cost: Sharen Davis. Makeup: Heba Thorisdottir. Hair: Camille Friend. Special makeup FX: Gregory Nicotero - KNB EFX Group. SFX: John McLeod. VFX: Greg Steele - Rhythm & Hues Studios. Stunt team: very big. M editor: Robb Boyd. M supervisor: Mary Ramos. S: Wylie Stateman. ED: Fred Raskin. Casting: Victoria Thomas.
    Loc: Louisiana, Wyoming, California.
    165 min.
    Released by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Finland with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Timo Porri / Saliven Gustavsson.
    4K DCP screened at 2K at Kinopalatsi 10, Helsinki, 9 Feb 2013.

The cast as edited in Wikipedia:

Jamie Foxx as Django Freeman
Christoph Waltz as Dr. King Schultz
Leonardo DiCaprio as Calvin J. Candie
Kerry Washington as Broomhilda von Shaft
Samuel L. Jackson as Stephen
Don Johnson as Spencer 'Big Daddy' Bennett
Walton Goggins as Billy Crash
Dennis Christopher as Leonide Moguy
James Remar as Ace Speck/Butch Pooch
David Steen as Mr. Stonecipher
Dana Michelle Gourrier as Cora
Nichole Galicia as Sheba
Laura Cayouette as Lara Lee Candie-Fitzwilly
Ato Essandoh as D'Artagnan
Sammi Rotibi as Rodney
Clay Donahue Fontenot
Escalante Lundy as Big Fred
Miriam F. Glover as Betina
Franco Nero

Other roles include James Russo as Dicky Speck, Tom Wopat as U.S. Marshall Gill Tatum, Don Stroud as Sheriff Bill Sharp, Russ Tamblyn as Son of a Gunfighter, Amber Tamblyn as Daughter of a Son of a Gunfighter, Bruce Dern as Old Man Carrucan, M. C. Gainey as Big John Brittle, Cooper Huckabee as Lil Raj Brittle, Doc Duhame as Ellis Brittle, Jonah Hill as Bag Head #2, and Lee Horsley as Sheriff Gus (Snowy Snow). Zoë Bell, Michael Bowen, Robert Carradine, Jake Garber, Ted Neeley, James Parks, and Tom Savini play Candyland trackers, while Michael Parks, John Jarratt, and Quentin Tarantino play The LeQuint Dickey Mining Co. Employees.

Technical specs from the IMDb: Camera: Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2, Panavision Primo, E-Series, ATZ and AWZ2 Lenses - Laboratory: DeLuxe, Hollywood (CA), USA, EFILM Digital Laboratories, Hollywood (CA), USA (digital intermediate) - Film length (metres): 4532 m (9 reels) - Film negative format: 35 mm (Kodak Vision3 200T 5213, Vision3 500T 5219, Ektachrome 100D 5285) - Cinematographic process: Digital Intermediate (4K) (master format), Panavision (anamorphic) (source format) - Printed film format: 35 mm (Kodak Vision 2383), D-Cinema - Aspect ratio: 2.35:1.

The action takes place in 1858 in Texas, Wyoming, and Mississippi.

Rough notes:

1. A saga about racism and slavery and the transformation of a slave to a fighter.

2. Another grand revenge fantasy by Quentin Tarantino, a Western set in the South before the Civil War. Tarantino calls it "a Southern".

3. A post-post-Western, a reinvention of the meta-Western mainly inspired by Italian Westerns of the 1960s and the 1970s.

4. The compilation score (with four original tracks) is magnificent. Luis Bacalov's "Django" anthem from Django (1966) strikes a note of bravado. The Italian flavour of the score (Bacalov, Morricone, Ortolani) brings an operatic feeling to the movie. Very often the feeling is sincere, also in Bacalov's "His Name Was King", and at its most powerful in Elayna Boynton's singing of "Freedom" (by Hamilton & Boynton) (one of the original tracks). Also Richie Havens's "Freedom (Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child)" is strong here. There is passion in the film.

5. I like the assured homage aspect in the credit titles and the intertitles (as in the MISSISSIPPI title referring to the Gone with the Wind title design). Also the whip zooms and the intentionally abrupt changes to a duped look in some process shots and flashbacks are nice, not too obtrusive. The nicest coup d'œil is the two-shot of Jamie Foxx and Franco Nero. "Andiamo".

6. Might this cut be slightly different from the U.S. first run version, for instance in the masked hoods sequence? In this version the sequence is linear and chronological.

7. The film has two parts, and in earlier times it might have been two movies: Django Unchained, and Mississippi. The first is about the apprenticeship of Django, his evolution from slave to bounty hunter. (It has the "Odyssey" format). The second is about the liberation of Broomhilda from Candyland. (It has the "Iliad" format).

8. The first part is brisk, and the second part is needlessly prolonged. The arrival at Candyland and the dinner sequence could have been shortened. Critics have remarked that this is Quentin Tarantino's first film without his ace editor Sally Menke (1953-2010).

9. Christoph Waltz had his international breakthrough as the Jew hunter in Inglourious Basterds. Here he has a parallel role as the bounty hunter. Waltz: what a representative name for an Austrian, but in this story he is a German from Düsseldorf. His Viennese accent and style again lend a totally misleading appearance to a callous assassin.

10. The operatic sense leads also indirectly to Wagner although his name and music are not present. The backstory is about Siegfried and Brünnhilde: Siegfried enters the ring of fire and liberates Brünnhilde from her rock in the German legend, and Django liberates Broomhilda from Candyland in this tale. (Wagner composed Der Ring des Nibelungen in 1848-1874). There is an indirect Wagner association also in the masked hoods sequence, parodying The Birth of a Nation. The music in Griffith's KKK sequence was Wagner's The Ride of the Valkyries.

11. The violence involved in the account of slavery is repellent and dehumanizing, for instance in the whipping scenes and the most brutal scene in the story: the one where Candie orders his henchmen to let their bloodhounds tear the escaped Mandingo fighter D'Artagnan apart.

12. In Hegel's philosophy of the master and the slave nobody is free in the circumstances of slavery. Django Unchained is another demonstration of this.

13. Also the brutalization is ubiquitous. In the conclusion Django first emulates King Schultz's formula of blatant scam, and finally, in the bloodbath, Candie's brutal and callous smirk.

14. The Tarantino way of storytelling is paradoxical, sophisticated and layered with metanarrative. Yet there are lingering questions of sadism, glorification of violence and vigilante "justice" in this picture. All audiences are not as sophisticated as Tarantino.

15. The casting and the performances are perfect down to the smallest parts. Finally, this is a character-driven movie.

16. The final words in the diegesis are (Django to Broomhilda): "Let's get out of here". The last words of the movie, in the quick scene after the final credits: "Who was that nigger?"

17. The cinematography is rich and magnificent with both epic landscapes and extreme close-ups. Django Unchained is a powerful visual experience.

18. There are intentional changes in the quality of the image, but the dominant quality is excellent. The 4K digital intermediate from the photochemical 35 mm negative has been performed very well. The warm quality of the photochemical cinematography has been sustained. I'd like to see Django Unchained in 4K.

How My Films Were Made: Canned Dreams (a lecture: Joonas Berghäll, Heikki Färm, Timo Peltoja)

Katja Gauriloff: Säilöttyjä unelmia / Canned Dreams (FI/DK/PT 2012).

Miten elokuvani ovat syntyneet? Lecture series organized by the HYY:n Elokuvaryhmä / The Film Society of The Student Union of the University of Helsinki. Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 8 Feb 2013.

The director of Säilöttyjä unelmia / Canned Dreams, Katja Gauriloff, was unable to attend, and four men were needed to replace her: the producer Joonas Berghäll, the cinematographer Heikki Färm, and the editor Timo Peltoja, all interviewed by Jari Sedergren.

The documentary film Canned Dreams is one of the most acclaimed Finnish films of 2012.

Joonas Berghäll, the producer told how the idea was found as a can of conserved food was opened at the office of the production company, and the question arose how such an amount of food can be sold at such a low price. There must be something wrong. It took two years to find out.

The detective work was very complicated. Canadian grain in a French harbour becomes French grain, and so on. But it was Katja Gauriloff's concept that the film would be about people's dreams. She had been working in a sausage factory. Once every hour there was a break of seven minutes, and those were the finest moments because they were the opportunity to listen to the stories of older women.

The film was shot in ten countries, which is more than for any other Finnish film.

We called it "the mammoth". It was our burden for four years, and it was a special challenge for Katja Gauriloff as her first feature film. She had a tremendous pressure to succeed.

After Canned Dreams making a film in Finland is a visit to the sauna.

There was no pressure from the financers.

We needed pre-production in ten countries. We became sensitive to hoodwinking attempts, and one co-producer was fired. Our adviser in Brazil was Mika Kaurismäki, and his preparations were so good that the experience in Brazil was the best.

The film was an international co-production. The composer and the sound designer came from Denmark.

International co-production was also strived at. The subject is international, since the original products stem from different countries. The tomatoes are from Portugal, and the Portuguese were interested in participation.

Canned Dreams has been shown at 22 festivals, and the number would have been doubled if the director had been available more often. [She has had a baby recently.] Festival visibility is essential for distribution.

Heikki Färm, the cinematographer, told that the difference between shooting fiction and documentary is great. The cinematographer pays attention to lighting continuities, but in a documentary you have to go with the moment. The impact of the coincidence is big. There are happy surprises.

Canned Dreams was shot on 16 mm.

Shooting digitally costs in a way nothing. I keep the camera switched on as much as possible.

Katja has a very precise visual concept. She banned panning and favoured shots from a fixed position.

Models we did have, such as Glawogger's Our Daily Bread, but our film is different. It is not a film about the production process but the people.

There are strong images such as the focus on the dead animal. Slaughterhouses are beautiful and visually interesting.

We kept meeting people who are proud of their work. The crew and the people we record were on the same level.

We spent about a week for every target location. Katja had spent a week or two in every location in advance.

The people were not shy for the camera. There are ways to do it. Pirjo Honkasalo always keep the camera on her shoulder in order to make the people get used to it.

Timo Peltoja, the editor, told that his career started early by doing demo reels. Jouko Aaltonen says that a documentary film is born in the editing room. I don't think that the camera should be running incessantly. In Canned Dreams it was a blessing that so little had been shot.

You do not need a three hour rough cut. Here the first rough cut was maybe two hours.

With Katja we shared a way of thinking, a common approach.

A screenplay I don't think I saw. A screenplay in documentary film production is something with which you apply for money.

How the rhythm is selected? I am a composer, myself. In this case it was a struggle, and it did not help that the composer was in Denmark.

What about the style of the music? It is difficult to verbalize music. The possibility of using local music we soon dismissed. It would have been just repeating in music what we see on screen.

What about the digital transition? There is no big change, I edit like I have been editing before.

The effect of shooting on film is that the image is more thought out, it has been conceived during a long period of time. Digital cinematography is often just räiskimistä, blasting about. The camera is on all the time, which gives more possibilities. The rec button is always on.

The subject dictates the style.

With Arto Halonen the work process is quite different.

JS: Some documentarists shoot 20 kilometers of film and spend a year watching it.

TP: With me, the worst case was that I had 300 tapes, or, actually we were two editors to work with them. It was really heavy.

An editor does not learn all shots by heart. After the film is finished I forget all. Maybe it is a defensive mechanism. It is painful to watch any film. In each case I always think what I should have done differently.

The size of the crew was usually four in this film. There were Katja Gauriloff, the cinematographer, the sound recorder, and sometimes Joonas Berghäll, and local people, such as the camera assistant, a soundman, and a local arranger.

We spent some 40-50 days on location.

The lighting equipment? Usually we shot with available light, but in factories and butcheries we had also lamps.

The Jussi Awards 2012 Gala

Organized by Filmiaura. Kaapelitehdas, Merikaapelihalli, Tammasaarenlaituri 2, Helsinki, 3 February, 2013.

The Jussi Awards have been given since 1944 for achievements in Finnish cinema. The Jussi statue is based on the figure of Jussi, the symbol of the irrepressible spirit of pride and liberty in the popular play Pohjalaisia which has been filmed twice, in the 1920s and in the 1930s. The gala event was telecast live on MTV3. The host was Mikko Leppilampi.

The lifetime achievement award (the Concrete Jussi) was given to Anneli Sauli who had her debut in the cinema 60 years ago and is still active.

The audience award was given by the Minister of Culture Paavo Arhinmäki. The winner was Nightmare - painajainen merellä based on a daily soap opera. There was a sense of disbelief in the audience when the winner was announced. How did they rig the poll?

Suomen Elokuvakontakti and YLE gave the short film award, Kettu Elokuvapalkinto, to Hiljainen viikko, directed by Jussi Hiltunen. 

Favex gave the Hulda Export award to Iron Sky.

Filmiaura and Nordisk Film gave the Vuoden uroteko (The Derring-Do of the Year) award to 3 Simoa.

Laura Närhi sung live "Hetken tie on kevyt" in the adaptation heard in Vuosaari.

Many of the Jussi awards had the sense of voting against the expected winners which were Vuosaari and Puhdistus. I belong to Filmiaura and to the voters, and usually my favourite films are not even nominated. Such was the case also this year. Sinivalkoinen valhe was my favourite Finnish film of 2012, but it was not nominated even in the best documentary category. Instead, it got the award for the best poster.

The most memorable moments of the gala were the speeches by Ismo Kallio (as presenter), Liisi Tandefelt, and Anneli Sauli. It was nice to hear in Anneli Sauli's words the story of how she was discovered 60 years ago. Two days before I had heard Matti Kassila's version.
 
PARAS ELOKUVA / BEST PICTURE
* Kohta 18 / Almost 18 –  Maarit Lalli
Miss Farkku-Suomi / Miss Blue Jeans – Outi Rousu, Markku Flink
Niko 2 - lentäjäveljekset / Niko 2 - Little Brother, Big Trouble – Antti Haikala, Petteri Pasanen, Hannu Tuomainen
Puhdistus / The Purge – Maria Avdjuško, Kristian Taska, Jukka Helle, Markus Selin
Vuosaari / Naked Harbour – Pauli Pentti, Liisa Penttilä

OHJAUS
 / DIRECTING
Antti J. Jokinen  – Puhdistus / The Purge
* Maarit Lalli  –  Kohta 18 / Almost 18
Aku Louhimies  –  Vuosaari / Naked Harbour

MIESPÄÄOSA / BEST ACTOR
Samuli Edelmann  –  Tie pohjoiseen / Road North
Vesa-Matti Loiri  –  Tie pohjoiseen / Road North
* Eero Ritala  – Kulman pojat

 / Fanatics

NAISPÄÄOSA
 / BEST ACTRESS
* Laura Birn  –  Puhdistus / The Purge
Pamela Tola  –  Härmä / Once Upon a Time in the North
Pamela Tola  –  Kaksi tarinaa rakkaudesta / Must Have Been Love

MIESSIVUOSA
 / BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Peter Franzén  –  Tie pohjoiseen / Road Noth
* Santtu Karvonen  –  Juoppohullun päiväkirja / Gloriously Wasted
Juha Muje  –  Risto Räppääjä ja viileä Venla

 / Ricky Rapper and Cool Wendy

NAISSIVUOSA
 / BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Laura Birn  –  Vuosaari / Naked Harbour
Niina Nurminen  –  Kohta 18 / Almost 18
* Liisi Tandefelt  –  Puhdistus

 / The Purge

KÄSIKIRJOITUS / BEST SCREENPLAY
Matti Kinnunen –  Miss Farkku-Suomi / Miss Blue Jeans
* Maarit Lalli, Henrik Mäki-Tanila  –  Kohta 18 / Almost 18
Hannu Tuomainen, Marteinn Thorisson  –  Niko 2 - lentäjäveljekset

 / Niko 2 - Little Brother, Big Trouble

KUVAUS
 / CINEMATOGRAPHY
Tuomo Hutri F.S.C. –  Vuosaari / Naked Harbour
* Rauno Ronkainen F.S.C. –  Puhdistus / The Purge
Rauno Ronkainen F.S.C., Harri Räty, Ian Nyman – Kohta 18

 / Almost 18

MUSIIKKI
 / ORIGINAL SCORE
* Karsten Fundal – Säilöttyjä unelmia / Canned Dreams
Pessi Levanto  –  Rakkauden rasvaprosentti / Body Fat Index of Love
Stephen McKeon  –  Niko 2 – lentäjäveljekset / Niko 2 - Little Brother, Big Trouble

ÄÄNISUUNNITTELU / SOUND DESIGN
Ivo Felt, Seppo Vanhatalo – Rat King
Micke Nyström – Kaksi tarinaa rakkaudesta / Must Have Been Love
* Kirka Sainio  –  Puhdistus / The Purge

LEIKKAUS / EDITING
Benjamin Mercer – Vuosaari / Naked Harbour
* Riitta Poikselkä  –  Kovasikajuttu / The Punk Syndrome
Jenny Tervakari, Maarit Lalli – Kohta 18

 / Almost 18

LAVASTUS / PRODUCTION DESIGN
Mikko Pitkänen – Niko 2 - lentäjäveljekset
 / Niko 2 - Little Brother, Big Trouble
Sattva-Hanna Toiviainen – Vuosaari / Naked Harbour
* Ulrika von Vegesack – Iron Sky

PUKUSUUNNITTELU / COSTUME DESIGN
Tiina Kaukanen – Vuosaari
 / Naked Harbour
Anna Vilppunen – Puhdistus
 / The Purge
* Tiina Wilén – Miss Farkku-Suomi / Miss Blue Jeans

MASKEERAUSSUUNNITTELU / MAKEUP
Marjut Samulin – Miss Farkku-Suomi / Miss Blue Jeans
Marjut Samulin – Vuosaari / Naked Harbour
* Riikka Virtanen – Puhdistus / The Purge

DOKUMENTTIELOKUVA
 / DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
* Kovasikajuttu / The Punk Syndrome – ohjaajat Jukka Kärkkäinen, J-P Passi
Säilöttyjä unelmia / Canned Dreams – ohjaaja Katja Gauriloff
Venäjän vapain mies / Russian Libertine – ohjaaja Ari Matikainen



The Master (2012) in 70 mm

Paul Thomas Anderson: The Master (US 2012). Joaquin Phoenix (Freddie Quell), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Lancaster Dodd) and Amy Adams (Peggy Dodd).

Future Film special 70 mm preview together with KAVA (in the context of our Paul Thomas Anderson retrospective) at Bio Rex, Helsinki, 1 February 2013.

Bio Rex, seating 687, was sold out for the special 70 mm preview screening of The Master of which I have blogged already on 14 December when I saw it in 2K DCP.

The Master is a strange subject for 70 mm (the negative is in 65 mm) since it is largely based on close-ups and interiors.

The Master begins with exteriors, to be sure, but shot towards the sun and with a lot of distorting effects, reflecting the deranged state of mind of Freddie (Joaquin Phoenix). Would it be much different if the beginning had been shot in Super 16 mm?

I watched for 15 minutes and have to confess that I did not discover a special advantage in the 70 mm version in comparison with the 2K DCP. (The 2K DCP has been processed very well.) There are, however, scenes with a feeling of grandeur later on in which the 70 mm might come into its own.

My points of reference, genuine 70 mm masterpieces of which I have a clear and present impression, include Playtime and The Agony and the Ecstasy.

Matti Kassila: How My Films Were Made (a lecture)

Matti Kassila: Miten elokuvani ovat syntyneet? The opening lecture of the lecture series organized by the HYY:n Elokuvaryhmä / The Film Society of The Student Union of the University of Helsinki. Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 1 Feb 2013.

Inspired by the lecture and book series legendary in Finland, Miten kirjani ovat syntyneet [How My Books Were Made] (five books in 1969-2012) the Helsinki Students' Film Society launches a lecture series with ten film-makers: Matti Kassila, Katja Gauriloff (who cannot come and is replaced by Joonas Berghäll, Heikki Färm, and Timo Peltola), Peter von Bagh, Anssi Mänttäri, Maunu Kurkvaara, Jari Halonen, Katariina Lillqvist, Jörn Donner, Jukka Virtanen, and Timo Koivusalo.

Matti Kassila (born 12 January 1924) is the only Finnish veteran of the film business who has started in the 1940s and is still active, for instance in making screenplays. He drives his own car and is available for introductions, interviews, and long sessions, as today.

It all goes back to the childhood. I was over-sensitive and timid and had panic attacks, for instance, when I was seven, my school burned to the ground in Haapavesi, which was a railroad junction, and a wailing sound of the engines was the fire alarm. Another bad panic attack I had at the time of a severe thunderstorm.

But I was living in a secure home village, and soon I changed to the opposite direction, and I became hyperactive. I was active in sport and in the boy scout activities. I was also interested in acting and participated in arranging iltamat (soirées).

This hyperactivity is still going on. I was active in many ways, and this became useful in the profession of the film director. In the boy scout activities I was sometimes in charge of three scout patrols (vartio), totalling 30-40, which was about the size of a film crew, and it came naturally that I was boss.

During the war I landed into a hospital due to a heart nerve failure, arrhythmia. By day I served at the drawing office of the tank force, in the evening I acted, and we had theater shows on Saturdays and Sundays.

After the war I spent all my free time in the movies. The range was awesome - American, French, Swedish movies. The entire 1950s were awesome, and I admired the great film-makers.

After the war I had the opportunity to become the continuity supervisor (kuvaussihteeri) for Valentin Vaala in Loviisa at the Suomi-Filmi company, and I also had tasks of a production assistant (järjestäjä). I realized immediately that film-making - this is for me.

I followed through with the editing and with the sound mixing and proceeded to the short film department of Suomi-Filmi. I got acquainted with Ritva Arvelo and the poet Kullervo Rainio and got mixed with radio play arrangements. Edvin Laine believed in me and took me to T.J. Särkkä at the Suomen Filmiteollisuus company: "this boy gets things done". Edvin had a good nose, and Särkkä hired me at once. I was cutting, mixing, selecting music, and reading commentaries for short films, now for Särkkä.

Aaltoska orkaniseeraa was a Särkkä production starring child actors such as Veli-Matti. Edvin launched it, and let me do much of the directing. Särkkä saw that I can manage, and gave me the chance: "you have demonstrated that you can". There was a bound screenplay for the feature film Isäntä soittaa hanuria. "Take it or leave it". We went to Loppi, to the Seppälä house, and the next day we hunted locations. Two days later later we started principal photography. 1 July 1947 wes started to shoot, and 12 August 1947 was the premiere. There was a week's delay since it rained five days. "Not sooner than that", said the cinematographer Osmo Harkimo. "Sittenhän ei ole mitään kiirettä (Oh, then we are in no hurry)".

Professori Masa was a movie starring Tauno Palo and Ansa Ikonen. I found an excellent rhythm.   When I was appointed professor h.c. myself the film was screening on tv that day. [Masa is a nickname for Matti.]

Maija löytää sävelen was a movie based on a screenplay bought in Sweden from a married couple of Austrian Jewish screenwriters who had exiled in the 1930s. First there was the song by Ahti Sonninen, "Unohtumaton ehtoo", then there was an orchestral arrangement. Leena Häkinen and Martti Katajisto starred in a story about amnesia. When the woman hears the song on the radio her memory is recovered. Jouko Tolonen played the piano.

I had made three feature films in a year. Särkkä sent me to Pohjanmaa to make a fourth, Lakeuden lukko. Aku Korhonen was outstanding. Särkkä had finished the script.

There was a famous radio journalist at the Finnish Broadcasting Company, Usko Santavuori, who staged a burglary and used hidden microphones to record the arrival of the policemen. The policemen were not prepared and they actually hit Santavuori. That was the way of the police after the war. Radio tekee murron was my fifth feature film project. Särkkä said "good, that one we'll do". 

Hannes Häyrinen and Ritva Arvelo were fast-talking, modern Helsinki people. Frank Capra, Ernst Lubitsch, and Alfred Hitchcock were among my models.

Särkkä was impulsive and abrasive. It was his way to hide his shyness.

With Aarne Tarkas and Osmo Harkimo we established an independent company called Junior-Filmi. For it we made a sequel, Radio tulee hulluksi, which was even funnier. Its a parody about the journalist who gets into a madhouse. It remained a property of Teuvo Tulio. Tulio became a hermit and he did not sell the rights of the movie. After his death the government inherited the property.

After the downfall of Junior-Filmi I returned to the SF. I had carte blanche, I could do what I wanted. Tyttö kuunsillalta was based on a radioplay by Hella Wuolijoki, the structure was based on five long telephone calls, starring Ansa Ikonen and Joel Rinne. You can make a movie from any material. I would have become mad if I had not discovered the cinema.

Sininen viikko was a summer love tragedy. The female critics Paula Talaskivi, Greta Brotherus, and Valma Kivinen resented it immensely. We made cuts into the swimming sequence. They wanted to make a distinction between swimming and love-making (uinti ja nainti). Jerker A. Eriksson was a critic with more understanding.

Hilman päivät: Edvin Laine was fantastic. The role was like Edvin himself. He starred even in Pastori Jussilainen.

Isän vanha ja uusi was a play which I opened up. All the actors were from the Kansanteatteri except Tauno Palo and Ansa Ikonen.

About Särkkä I realized that an old man is unable to change his way to produce.

Edvin Laine helped me in matters of the theatre. There were positions of theater directors opening in Kotka and in Pori. "Let me call". Aino Mantsas, my wife, was expecting a baby, and she did not want to return to Pori. I got out of the frying pan and into the fire. I directed six plays within a year, it's a horrendous amount. I had a summer holiday of one month.

Then Mauno Mäkelä from Fennada Filmi called. Their house director Roland af Hällström had died. "Would you come to us?" I had just read the novel Elokuu by F.E. Sillanpää. I said: "On one condition: if you let make a movie of this". I re-negotiated the salary. I am fast whenever I find the key (juju). I hunted locations in Ruovesi at the Kauttu canal but learned that the Murole canal is in quite a different league. I cast the movie already as I wrote it. We moved into Murole on 15 June. We shot about one month.

Critics liked Elokuu, but it was not successful with the audiences. It was selected for Cannes. There everybody was world famous. William Wyler won the Palme d'Or. Bergman, Fellini, Wajda, and Bresson were there. I got acquainted with Grigory Chukhray who was there with The Forty-First, about the doomed love affair with a Red Army sharpshooter girl and a bourgeois prisoner. When the ship arrives at the shore, the man runs towards it, and it's a ship of the Whites. The girl shoots him. Well, I can say that olin siellä minäkin (I was there, as well).

Another visit to a festival was with Tulipunainen kyyhkynen to Berlin, also there among 30 competitors.  I had also visited Moscow with Punainen viiva. It's a tragedy, and it ends with a bear killing the protagonist. It was pessimistic and had no chance in the competition, but I believe I ended up among the top five. I remember the big palace of the Kremlin. Jarno Pennanen was the interpreter.

Ihmiselon ihanuus ja kurjuus participated in Rouen and won many awards; the leading actor Lasse Pöysti was among the winners. But my child was sick and I had to leave before the awards were given.

In the 1980s I made Niskavuori combining two Niskavuori plays by Hella Wuolijoki, the story of Aarne Niskavuori. Rauni Luoma was magnificent as Loviisa, the old mistress of Niskavuori.

Jäähyväiset presidentille was based on a novel by Väinö Kirstilä. Tarmo Manni who played the president knew Urho Kekkonen, and he succeeded in the role. He was a a born storyteller. And he had come out of the closet a long time ago.

Kaikki pelissä was shot at Haapavesi. The produced was sentenced to pay back 3,9 million marks of the funding. A few years ago he told that it is now 16,5 million.

The screenplay for Ihmiselon ihanuus ja kurjuus was finished early, but I heard that "Kassila - Sillanpää is no longer a relevant combination". Then I got some advice and managed to fit the schedule with Lasse Pöysti. Ensio Suominen was the art director, and he brought his daughter-in-law Minna Santakari as well. Kari Sohlberg was the cinematographer.

There were two women at the board of the Finnish Film Foundation who were my enemies, whom I had insulted. Donner was disqualified and stayed out. Four voted for it, two against it.

It was an all-out period film of the 1930s, and it was spot-on. But there was not a single day to waste since Pöysti had booked a trip to China.

The score by Jukka Linkola was outstanding.

The minister of culture in the Mitterrand government was Jacques Lang, and he sent me a personal letter of congratulations for a big and beautiful film. It only cost 5,5 million marks, which was a regular budget.

Kaikki pelissä was butchered at the starting line. It was a desperate situation in the early 1990s. There was an economic depression. The film was released with four prints only and given only a second rate cinema. I bought the film from the estate after the company went bankrupt. I also possess split rights.

Films of my weaker period include Natalia which was a satire on the Soviet Union. It had an audience of 200.000.

Tea Ista received the Jussi for best actress for Tahdon rakastaa, Peter.

Helsinki is an elegant and active city. Two thirds of my films are set in Helsinki. The Inspector Palmu series takes mostly place south of the Esplanade-Boulevard line since the young Mika Waltari lived there, at Neitsytpolku, and visited the Norssi [Helsingin normaalilyseo]. I did many Mika films.

When I screened Kaasua, komisario Palmu to Mika he was depressed and suffering from a writer's block. I asked whether he would have new stuff about Palmu. He said: "Call me in three weeks". I did, and he said "Now it is finished". He had finished a new novel, Tähdet kertovat, komisario Palmu. The writer's block was gone, and a project in a lighter vein had helped him. Soon he sent me a copy of his new huge historical novel Ihmiskunnan viholliset with his dedication.

With Komisario Palmun erehdys I returned to Särkkä. My independent production Lasisydän had no success. Särkkä gave me the old screenplay for Komisario Palmun erehdys. It was not particularly good. There were a lot of interrogation sequences. But you can make a movie from anything. The art direction was superb.

Last year the news department of the Finnish Broadcasting Company arranged a poll about the best Finnish fiction film, to celebrate the centenary of Finnish fiction cinema. Komisario Palmun erehdys was the overwhelming winner.

At the time, suspense thrillers, detective stories and comedies were not that highly regarded. Yet nothing is as difficult as comedy.

I have also received a Pro Finlandia. And the award from Suomen Dekkariseura. A female inspector guided me to equip the award with my fingerprint.

THE Q & A SESSION

Films of mine that have not been released on dvd before are now being processed to be released on dvd by VL-Musiikki among others.

Mr. Kassila commented on details of the locations in Ihmiselon ihanuus ja kurjuus and how Elina Ylivakeri wanted to see the film on vhs as the last thing she did before she died. Lasse Pöysti was playing King Lear at the time. He sensed the Sillanpää smell in the production.

Mr. Kassila commented on how he took advantage of all the means of the cinema in Komisario Palmun erehdys, and he was very happy with the composer Osmo Lindeman also with his sense of quick music effects. "Here we have four seconds". Lindeman took a coin from his pocket and let it glide on the strings of the grand piano, made a glissando. "I intervened in everything". The auteur is the one who is behind it all. We perused the fashion magazines of the 1930s. Chaplin was an auteur. Even during the studio era there were auteurs such as Hitchcock.

Billy Wilder who made Sunset Boulevard said that 80% is in the script. I agree with him pretty much. It is safe for the actor. With actors I always work privately. An actor is vulnerable. He is exposing his feelings. He needs to trust in the director. They always look at me. I nod and smile.

I have a screenplay for a historical film about the fatal hours of Finland. President Kallio dies in the arms of Mannerheim. It has been regarded too expensive. Olli Soinio is working on a more budget-conscious version with more interiors.

My own film favourites include Vertigo and Citizen Kane. They are mysterious, enigmatic, with multiple layers.

Mannerheim: Ermei Kanninen contacted me and I regarded Renny Harlin as the director who could pull it off. Heikki Vihinen would be the screenwriter, he is a good Mannerheim connoisseur. As are others, such as Veijo Meri.

There was a honorary commmittee with Paavo Lipponen as the chairman. The screenplay grew to 252 pages. Every film professional knows that one page equals one minute of film. And at that point Mannerheim had not arrived in Finland.

I know how it should be done. The old Mannerheim tells the whole story. Also how he committed mistakes, how he was vain, desperate.

Joel Rinne was my Mannerheim in Päämaja, but Jussi Jurkka received the Jussi Award. It was based on a play by Ilmari Turja. Turja and A.F. Airo were pals, they were two of a kind. I met Airo. They were both curt, to the point, drinking buddies.

At first Jussi Jurkka had no grip on the role. Then I told him to act like a master of a farm, how he swaggers about in his boots (kuin maalaistalon isäntä, saapastelee). He respects Mannerheim but wastes no time in standing in attention.

The black Mannerheim is the biggest blunder in the history of the Finnish Broadcasting Company but it is not an insult to Mannerheim. The final wreath on the grave is the ultimate breach of style.

We (with Mikko Sirenius chairman of the HYY:n Elokuvaryhmä, Pietari Kääpä, and Mikko Pihkoluoma) took Matti Kassila to dinner, and he went on for two and a half hours with more fascinating stories. Then some of us had to leave for Bio Rex, for the 70 mm screening of The Master. Otherwise who knows how long we would have gone on.

Mr. Kassila told a lot about his experiences in the theatre. Among the plays he has directed he remembers most fondly The Cherry Orchard, The Iceman Cometh, and Antigone (Anouilh).

Eino Kalima had a special, understated way to direct at the theatre. It was largely about presence, with him playing the piano in the background.

Aku Korhonen was an unforgettable theatre player.

Matti Kassila also told the story about how Anneli Sauli was discovered and how Kassila directed Anneli Sauli's screen test for Särkkä, with Matti Oravisto, during the preparations of Sininen viikko.

The State Hermitage (2013 visit)

Rembrandt: Terugkeer van de Verloren Zoon / Return of the Prodigal Son (NL 1661–1669). Oil on canvas. 262 cm × 205 cm (103 in × 81 in). Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. Photo: Google Art Project, public domain. Please click to expand.
 https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terugkeer_van_de_Verloren_Zoon

Государственный Эрмитаж, The Palace Embankment, Dvortsovaya plochad 2, Saint Petersburg - by the River Neva, near the beginning of Nevsky Prospekt, facing the Alexander Column. Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday from 10.30 till 18.00, Sunday from 10.30 till 17.00. Visited on Thursday, 31 January, 2013.

Wikipedia: "The State Hermitage [gəsʊˈdarstvʲɪnɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ] is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. One of the largest and oldest museums in the world, it was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been open to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise nearly three million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world. The collections occupy a large complex of six historic buildings along Palace Embankment, including the Winter Palace, a former residence of Russian emperors. Apart from them, the Menshikov Palace, Museum of Porcelain, Storage Facility at Staraya Derevnya and the eastern wing of the General Staff Building are also part of the museum. The museum has several exhibition centers abroad. The Hermitage is a federal state property. Since 1990, the director of the museum has been Mikhail Piotrovsky. Of six buildings of the main museum complex, four, named the Winter Palace, Small Hermitage, Old Hermitage and New Hermitage, are partially open to the public. The other two are the Hermitage Theatre and the Reserve House."

I spent a day at the Hermitage - over seven hours, that is, almost for the entire duration of the opening hours. The people at the Finnish Institute had advised me to buy a ticket in advance online to avoid queues, which I did. As I arrived among the first ones the queues were not that long anyway, but it could very well have been otherwise. The ticket offices are efficient.

I smiled when I saw the sign to the "little" garderobe - for 1400! There was three times that much room in the big garderobe. The next time I visit the Hermitage in winter I must remember to take indoor shoes. The rooms are warm, and you spend the whole day walking. Also next time I won't wear a jacket. A single shirt is enough. And perhaps a light backpack. During the day I took two coffee breaks at the Hermitage Café. There are several cafés, and one of them is especially good. There are also many bookstores, and one of them is clearly the best.

I had prepared in advance by studying a good compact guide:

The State Hermitage Guide. Compiled  by Tatyana Mamayenko. Edited by Yelena Dianova and Olga Fesoseyenko. Edited by the Organizing Committee: Mikhail Piotrovsky, Georgy Vilinbakhov, Vladimir Matveyev, and Yevgeny Fiodorov. Texts by 48 experts. Saint Petersburg: The State Hermitage Museum, 2000.

I would have made some purchases at the bookstores, but closing time came too soon. Afterwards, I have been studying the website which has a comprehensive digital collection. ("Welcome to the Digital Collection, the new virtual gallery of high-resolution artwork images from the State Hermitage Museum.") It is good for fact-checking but the images do not convey the aesthetic impact of the originals. Maybe it's intentional, but the visual quality of the artworks on the website is underwhelming.

In the Russian language, the floors are called the first, the second, and the third floor, which is also the way we say it in Finnish. In the English language they are called the ground floor, the first floor, and the second floor, which is confusing at first.

The place is huge but reasonably easy to navigate. The staff is big, knowledgeable and helpful. There are intelligent senior people guarding the treasures in a benign atmosphere.

The key to the navigation is to be aware of the room numbers at all times. Room 100 (Ancient Egypt) is a good starting point on the first floor.  Room 202 (Medieval Italy) is good for starting the exploration of the second floor, and room 325 (French 19th century - room 326 which would normally be the starting point was closed today) on the third floor.

I like the Russian way of celebrating art in the country's finest palaces. There were many school classes and guided tours there all day long. When I entered the Renoir room it was empty. The next moment there were two big groups with guides there, and when I left, it was empty again. The rooms are so vast that they don't feel cramped even when they are full with people.

The sense of history is powerful. When I looked out of the window of the third floor of the Winter Palace towards the magnificent Dvortsovaya Square I was thinking about Eisenstein and how he staged the storming of the Winter Palace in his film October. Now the Winter Palace is being stormed daily by art lovers of the world.

I hadn't visited the Hermitage in 40 years, and then it was just a couple of hours on a conducted tour. It was a bit like Alexander Sokurov's movie The Russian Ark, yet not, however, like the breaking of the record of how fast one can run through the Louvre in Godard's Bande à part.

I managed to scan half of the collections on display, with moments of reflection every now and then. The Hermitage is a place to visit many times.

My complete listing of the rooms which I managed to visit this time is beyond the jump break.

Some of my favourites included: 
1. Matisse: in three rooms, with a fine wit of observation and a bold sense of colour.
2. Three skylight rooms with Spanish and Italian masters (a favourite: Palma: Apostles at the Virgin's Tomb - looks magnificent in this room)
3. The Hermitage is the place to go for those who love the four big R's: Rubens, Rembrandt, Renoir, Rodin. Favourites: Rembrandt: The Return of the Prodigal Son, Renoir: Dans le jardin, and Rodin: Le Poète et la Muse.
4. Much of the art of ancient Greece survives as duplicates made in ancient Rome - the Hermitage provides an epic survey into those centuries. The collection of the coins with images of the emperors is touching, and a reminder of the words of the Christ: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's". There is also literally a coin with the image of Julius Caesar in the collection.
5. Towards the end of the visit I saw The Black Square by Kazimir Malevich. It was like a shot of vodka after a heavy dinner with many courses. We were perfect strangers watching it with a jolt, and we all started to smile and laugh. In the previous room we had seen busts by Bourdelle (Beethoven, etc.).

I also smiled at the hedonistic bias in some of the rooms (245, 331). Tolstoy would have disapproved of such art.

In rooms 323-325 I detected possible roots for some of the historical quality paintings of the Finns Edelfelt and the teenage Schjerfbeck. They had studied the French academic masters closely.

The quality of presentation is world class, of course. From this viewpoint my favourite rooms are the skylight rooms and the halls with reliefs and sculptures. The sum is bigger than the parts even when the parts are as magnificent as this. Some rooms with Dutch masters are dimly lit; perhaps there is a reason for this.

Since the digital transition I have become more sensitive to seeing art, also in museums. Seeing a painting covered with reflecting glass is like making love with an ill-fitting condom. There is not much annoyingly reflecting glass in the Hermitage; the worst instance is Picasso's Two Sisters trapped in a glass booth like Eichmann in Jerusalem. As a rule at the Hermitage one can admire the naked surface or the work protected by non-reflecting glass.

Bullet train to Saint Petersburg

Allegro train at the Helsinki Central Station in 2013. Allegro bullet trains operated between Helsinki and Saint Petersburg between 2010-2022 with stops at Pasila, Tikkurila, Lahti, Kouvola, Vainikkala and Vyborg.

Since December 2010 there has been a high speed train from Helsinki to Saint Petersburg. This TGV (train de grand vitesse) is called Allegro, and it has proven even more hugely popular than was expected. The trip only takes three and a half hours (3:36'), and the scheduling is excellent. The first train leaves at 5.12 am in Helsinki.

In 2011 Russians declared that they have had enough of turning back time and decided to stay in the daylight saving time (DST) all year long. This is understandable, because there are more time zones in Russia than anywhere else - sixteen.

Thus, while there is only a time difference of one hour in principle, the current winter time difference between Helsinki and Saint Petersburg is two hours. Which is why it is already 10.48 local time when the train arrives in St. Petersburg.

On the Allegro train, before crossing the border to Russia, it is possible to change currency to rubles at the best price, better than Forex. There is no wireless network on the train, and an internet widget functions only on the Finnish leg of the journey.

The last train leaves St. Petersburg at 20.25 and arrives in Helsinki 22.01. Very nice: after a full day in St. Petersburg you can still spend a full night in Helsinki.

I have been invited by The Finnish Institute in St. Petersburg to give a lecture to the opening of an exhibition of Finnish silent films called The Fatal Look, beautifully curated and produced by Mr. Kai Vase of KAVA (National Audiovisual Archive / Finland).

I was prepared that there would be an audience of five, maybe one or two of them Russians. But the auditorium was full, and almost all were Russians. There is currently a vivid interest in Finland in Saint Petersburg, and even the popularity of studying the Finnish language is growing. The audience is intelligent and knowledgeable, and there are many questions and interviews. It would have been too late to catch the evening train after the lecture, and the Institute, foreseeing this, has arranged me a hotel in the same block.

We are in the center, at Bolshaya Konyushennaya, within a walking distance of many of the city's attractions. I have a big lunch in the relaxed atmosphere of the Barcelona Tapas Bar (quick, good quality, a lot to eat, good value for money) and dinner at the elegant Arka Restaurant, both on the Bolshaya Konyushennaya. Next morning I have a full Russian style breakfast at my hotel, the Nevsky Hotel Grand. The wireless network at the hotel is perfect.

I dedicate the second day to a visit to the Hermitage. It is quite close, but I manage to do the "flanirovat po Nevskomu" - be a flaneur on the Nevsky Prospekt - on my way there. It's a perfect day for the Hermitage - gray and thawy and slushy outdoors. St. Petersburg drivers are no gentlemen even on the Nevsky Prospekt. It would be a good idea to wear gumshoes on days like this. After the closing time of the Hermitage I have time for a quick salmon salad at the attractive Grand Café Literaturnoe whose emblem is the image of Pushkin. The Pushkin Museum, situated in his final apartment, is nearby on the embankment of the river Moika. I like the music selections in the cafés and restaurants I visited. No junk playlists here.

The taxi takes me to the evening traffic jam and across the Litenyy Most (Litenyy Bridge) to the Finland Station. I'm thinking about Edmund Wilson's classic book To the Finland Station. The station is still there, the name remains the same, and more than 20 years after the fall of the wall there is still a Ploshad Lenina (Lenin Square) around the railway station.

It's 40 years since I last visited the city, then called Leningrad. I participated in a conducted tour, affordable for a poor student. Now, thanks to the Allegro bullet train, the trip to Saint Petersburg is faster than to our summer place at Saimaa. The temptation is great to make a next visit soon.

DocPoint Vanishing Point: Rose Lowder

DocPoint Vanishing Point, Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 26 Jan 2013.
Curators: Mika Taanila, Sami van Ingen. In the presence of Rose Lowder.

Mika Taanila: "Born in 1941, the French filmmaker Rose Lowder travelled the world from an early age after her parents’ work. Later on her studies took her between Lima, London and Paris."

"Educated as a painter and a sculptor, she moved on to filmmaking in 1976 with encouragement from Jean Rouch. She had gathered experience in filmmaking in the 1960’s, when she worked as an assistant editor for the BBC to pay for her studies."

"Lowder’s works have a markedly handcrafted feel to them and her films are loaded with sensitivity. She is considered to be one of the most innovative characters in structural film. She calls her technique, in which she shoots films frame by frame, as “knitting inside a camera”."

"The films in her Bouquets series make up the core of her oeuvre. They are impressionistic 60 second documentaries about places she has particular interest in. These include shots from organic farms and macrobiotic centers in France, Switzerland and Italy."

"Voiliers et coquelicots provides powerful romanticism from Marseille in the form of boats and poppies. In Les Tournesols we see sunflowers wobbling with every frame having a slightly different focus point in a static landscape."

"Jardin du soleil and Sous le soleil reflect in the blinking of solar panels. Jardins du Marais is a tremoring momental lapse from the Loire-Atlantique natural park while  Rien d’ extraordinaire takes us to the garden of a Swiss hotel."

"Habitat is simply a film about frogs and Jardin du sel depicts the manufacturing of sea salt. The final episode Sources has an organic farmer’s vegetable paté in the starring role." (Mika Taanila | translation by Juha Nurminen)

Les Tournesols, 1982, 3 min, silent - "En faisant reposer l'image sur des éléments extraits de la réalité filmée, inscrits successivement sur la bande, il est possible d'obtenir une fluidité d'agencement des constituants visuels de l'image. Tout en gardant l'avantage de la mobilité des éléments graphiques, Les Tournesols tente de faire gagner une certaine stabilité à l'ensemble de la représentation spatio-temporelle. Dans ce film, la mise au point est successivement réglée image par image, selon une série de partitions sur des plantes spécifiques situées à différents endroits de plusieurs champs de tournesols contigus. Les petites unités de photogrammes, enregistrées les unes après les autres, apparaissent, simultanément sur l'écran, lors de leur projection, sous forme de diverses configurations induisant des mouvements insolites. La relative stabilité de l'image amena aux recherches qui conduirent à la série des Scènes de la vie française. Les Tournesols et Les Tournesols colorés peuvent être également projetés ensemble, côte à côte en double projection." (Rose Lowder) - The French word says it all: sunflowers turn with the sun. They seem to tremble and dance in time-lapse photography.

Bouquet 1, 1995, 1 min, silent - "Filmed on the Mount Ventoux, Vaucluse, from the peak (1912 m) to the Grozeau spring. Amongst yellow poppies and various mountain flowers, people eat their lunch, scramble or cycle up the slopes leading to the summit where they are greeted by the sale of local products: organic épautre, the local ancient form of wheat, and coloured candies." (Rose Lowder) - Flash edit, superimposition, a richness of images, a richness of colours. The letters of the words identifying the movie appear one by one.

Bouquet 2, 1994, 1 min, silent - "Filmed near the village of Brantes, amongst other things, a school cycling party passing through fields of flowers on the borders of Vauculse and Drome". (Rose Lowder) - A bombardment of shots of gentle pastoral views, the flowers of the meadows, poppies, with a moment of calm, and then flashing on again.

Voiliers et coquelicots, 2001, 2 min, silent - "Little is necessary for everything to appear differently. The date, the hour, the weather, the space's layout, one's glance or presence of mind... can make everything change. The boats sail out of the Vieux port in Marseille to be amongst the poppy fields." (Rose Lowder) - Flash edit and superimpositions of sailboats and poppies, accelerating into flicker, colour changes, thistle.

Bouquets 21–30, 2001–05, 14 min, silent - "Bouquets 21-30 (2001-2005) is a part of the ecological Bouquets series, consisting of one-minute films composed in the camera by weaving the characteristics of different environments with the activities there at the time. The filming basically entails using the film strip as a canvas with the freedom to film frames on any part of the strip in any order, running the film through the camera as many times as needed."
    "Thus each bouquet of flowers is also a unique bouquet of film frames."
    "Bouquet 21 (2001) was filmed in a tiny paradise which took years to create, La Baraque, an organic farm situated 2 kms from Aujac, in the far corner of Gard, sandwiched between Lozère and Ardèche."
    "Bouquet 22 (2001) meanders over the mountain pastures near the summit of the Grand Perron des Encombres, not far from a macrobiotic centre at Bettaix, in the Belleville Valley, Savoie."
    "Bouquet 23 (2001) shows Terre Vivante, a centre focusing on ecological issues, located on a site of fine cultivated, or wild, flower and vegetable gardens strewn over a hillside amongst ponds. Open to the public, it organizes numerous events and publishes excellent books and a magazine."
    "Bouquet 24 (2001) was filmed in a pastoral setting around Beausite, an inn which provides organic meals in its preserved 1912 ambience, in Chemin-dessus, on a mountain slope 7 kms from Martigny, Switzerland."
    "Bouquet 25 (2002) was shot in Cantal, around Le Tahoul, the Falgoux Valley and the Aulac Pass. This reel mingles the few flowers uneaten by the Salers cows with the village residents going about their affairs."
    "Bouquet 26 (2003) was filmed in the middle of the animals of a small farm, La Terra di Mezzo, perched on hillside terraces of Liguria, Italy."
    "Bouquet 27 (2003) moves around a macrobiotic centre in St. Gaudens, Haute-Garonne. Amongst glimpses of the surrounding countryside leading to the village of St. Béat, it shows its residents working on the land, repairing items or making rice biscuits."
    "Bouquet 28 (2005) takes place on a farm, Mas de Cocagne, Aujac, Gard, which has developed from an abandoned coal-mining area into an agricultural-ecological site over twenty-five years. The topics include abundant floral vegetation, the Château d'Aujac on the hillside in the distance, work on the farm, builders erecting a roof, washing being hung up and to end a contented frog amongst the pink water lilies."
    "Bouquet 29 (2005) shows a very isolated 18th c farmhouse, Fra Boyer, on the borders of the Forêt Domaniale de l'Oule, near Montmorin, Hautes-Alpes. The floral vegetation attracts numerous butterflies and other flying insects, the family grow vegetables and collect the cherries while two donkeys help themselves."
    "Bouquet 30 (2005) treats the farm of Le Lanteïrou, Champagne, near Les Vastes, Haute-Loire. One sees the cows, the farmer by the house, a member of the family in the bed he has built, complete with bedside lamp, under a nearby tree, and an elderly neighbour walking between the two white chairs set up at either end of her field amongst the vegetable patches." (Rose Lowder)

Habitat, 2006, 8 min 30 s, silent - "In this film we move away from the notion of a work preconceived to adjust the visual characteristiques of the image in order to allow us to enter the temporal dimension of a pond full of frogs. In front of such creatures that tend to be elusive there arises a question of more general interest as tohow can one record moments that are meanful, how can one render visible,present a moment that is alive and connect the items forming the different recorded moments up together?" (Rose Lowder)

Bouquets 11–20, 2005–09, 14 min, silent - "Bouquets 11-20, filmed in Italy, Switzerland and France, was delayed by the weather and a series of related technical/aesthetics incidents. The ten little films (1 minute or 1440 frames each, with the exception of 23 frames or nearly a second more for n°16), continues the work begun with the series Bouquets 1-10 and 21-30. This consists of weaving in camera visual aspects of the filmed reality in order to bring into existence specific features of the cinematographic image, hopefully placing us on a boundary outside the traditional rôles of description or abstraction."
    "Content-wise the graphic-aesthetic procès is related to social/economical politics and philosophy. Nearly every civilization disappeared due to mayor environmental issues and we are, in heading in that direction, repeating history. R.L."
    10 Bouquets, each one minute long, all filmed at ecological sites.
Bouquet 11 - Oasis de la Roche Bleue, near Plaisans, Drôme
Bouquet 12 - Farm de la Mhotte, Saint Menoux, Allier
Bouquet 13 - Site agroécologique de la Baraque, Aujac, Gard
Bouquet 14 - Le Vieil Eclis, Asserac, Loire-Atlantique
Bouquet 15 - Azienda Agricola Cascina Piola, Serra-Capriglio, Asti,
Nord Monferrato, Piedmonte, Italy
Bouquet 16 - Silvai Confiture (jam), Haute Bléone, Prads, Basses-Alpes
Bouquet 17 - Hôtel –Pension Beau-Site (Label écologique européen), Chemin sur Martigny, Switzerland
Bouquet 18 - Farm de Crozefond, Saint Aubin, Lot et Garonne
Bouquet 19 - Les Jardins du Marais, Parc Naturel Régional de Brière, Hoscas, Loire Atlantique
Bouquet 20 - Site agroécologique de la Baraque, Aujac, Gard." (Rose Lowder)

Jardin du soleil, 2010, 2 min, silent - "Beginning with natural light, an element that played a major role in cinematographic developement, the subject of the film evolves around solar panels in two different places, Cascina Piola, Capriglio, Asti, in Italy, and Le Vieil Eclis, Asserac, in Loire-Atlantique, France. We find ourselves in the middle of sparkling light, exposed to the wind, like the butterflies, the bees and the little clouds." (Rose Lowder)

Jardins du Marais, 2010, 2 min 30 s, silent - "This magnificent garden, in the Parc naturel régional de Brière, in the middle of the presqu’île de Guérande, Loire-Atlantique, in France, covers over a hectare of land. It’s vegetable garden, ornamental garden, small forest and two ponds, make up a continuously evolving space, but also a visual mumble - jumble of wild life that draws one to delve into it in order to explore it cinematographically. In honor of Annick Bertrand-Gillen et Yves Gillen, the creators of this munificent space in the middle of nature." (Rose Lowder)

Rien d’extraordinaire, 2010, 2 min, sound - "Just a glimpse of this beautiful spot around the Hôtel - Pension Beau-Site on the Chemin sur Martigny, Switzerland, situated in a hamlet surrounded by snow-capped mountains." (Rose Lowder) - with the Chilean dancer Pauliva Alemparte

Jardin du sel, 2011, 16 min 11 s, sound - "The production of sea salt flower is a process of concentration-saturation of sea water in order to form crystallization. The agriculture character of the activity is evoked by the term "salt garden". Six poetic pictures, five based on the sun, the wind and the sea, while the last rests on a small park left fallow. Music by François Alexis Degrenier." (Rose Lowder) - The film is like abstract expressionism, accompanied by musique concrète. - The salt crystals are viewed almost as abstractions.

Sous le soleil, 2011, 3 min 28 s, sound - "In the heat of summer solar panel reflections blend with butterflies on flowers and a little bird eating the mulberries." (Rose Lowder)

Sources, 2012, 5 min 22 s, sound - "Sources originated from Thomas the Gardener’s wish to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his making vegetable pâté. Leaving urban life behind him in order to renew a relationship with the land, Thomas started up an organic garden in the beautiful area of hot and cold Springs, lakes and rivers, in the upper Aude Valley." "In the middle of making his pâté, the gardener is surrounded, as the water sources of the Aude river rush by, by one of the sources for his recipies, the flowers and spices from his garden." (Rose Lowder) - The gleaming water.

All from France, 16 mm, from Light Cone, total duration 75 min

Splendid colour, a strong feeling for nature and the presence of the sun. The senses are reawakened by the structural changes of time lapse, fast edit, and superimposition. While the music by François Alexis Degrenier is fine in the four last films of the show, the silent ones are even more intensive; maybe the music distracts slightly from the visual intensity. Most of the movies are ultra rapid, even with flicker, but there are moments of almost still life, like Habitat, about the frogs in the pond.

Fine 16 mm prints with fine colour.