Finland

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Young photography model Susanna and her alienated teenage brother Veli spend the summer of 1969 travelling around Finland, mostly with another girl and her boyfriend. Sporting the latest fashions and trendy hairdos, they naïvely observe and criticise the modern consumer society, advertising, fancy boats and summer cottages, country dances, barbecues, and any other phenomena that were supposed to bother angry young intellectuals in those days. The plot and the political agenda are delivered with a cheerful, tongue-in-cheek mixture of documentary observations, fake TV commercials, fake interviews, philosophical voiceovers and titles, and a jazzy soundtrack by the progressive rock group Wigwam.Read More »

The first true Finnish movie musical, released in 1940 by Suomen Filmiteollisuus (“SF” for short, hence the title), though some would grant this honor to Suomi-Filmi’s Meidän poikamme merellä (“Our Boys at Sea”, 1933), a film showcasing the Finnish navy as well as the singing talents of composer Georg Malmstén. The songs for SF Parade were also composed by Malmstén, who appears in a small role, but the true stars of the film are Tauno Palo and Ansa Ikonen, already well-known from romantic comedies of the ’30s such as Everybody’s Love and Substitute Wife. They would go on to star in the studio’s next musical and one of the most popular Finnish films of all time, The Vagabond’s Waltz of 1941.Read More »

Synopsis:
Mikko Niskanen’s famous new wave film about the ’60s urban intellectuals who get faced in the Finnish countryside with loads of beer.Read More »

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Mikko Niskanen’s 1962 adaptation of Paavo Rintala’s novel Pojat (The Boys, 1958) deals with the experiences of young boys during wartime and, more specifically, with the difficult subject of Finnish cooperation with the Nazis during the Continuation War leading up to the Lapland War.

The Raksila Boys are a gang of school boys who are growing up in Oulu. Finland has agreed to ally itself with Hitler’s Germany in order to stand any chance of resisting total defeat against the Soviet Union. Read More »

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After a divorce a father raises his son on his own, while his ex-wife has custody over his daughter. When the mother dies, the brother and sister finally meet again.Read More »

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky wrote:
A mix of sexploitation, Lappish folk dress, and soap opera that still finds room for Nazis and reindeer castration – a movie so inept and bizarre that I have to limit any mention of it to this one sentence, lest I get too carried away.Read More »

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The Doll Merchant (1955), a fairy tale for adults directed by Jack Witikka, is based on a radio play by Walentin Chorell. The titular doll merchant, played by Martti Katajisto, refuses to conform to the norms of an anonymous totalitarian state. The dictator of the state (Tauno Palo) thinks the merchant is a rebel and has him arrested. However, the dictator’s lover Lilith (Hillevi Lagerstam) is very fond of dolls, as is the little girl (Leena Kaprio), who is helped by an anarchist (Heikki Savolainen) in her search for the doll merchant. The many dolls seen in the film were made by Mona Leo.Read More »

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The enigmatically titled Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana [Pidä huivista kiinni, Tatjana] is Kaurismäki’s take on the road movie. It represents something of a contradiction for non-Finnish viewers, being one of the director’s most accessible films but also one whose subtleties are unlikely to be fully understood by a foreign audience, and I’m including myself in that sweeping suggestion.Read More »

from cinematik
Saimaa-ilmiö is probably the first properly made rock film made in Finland. Such basics as including the songs in their entirety, shooting with multiple cameras, reducing interviews to a minimum and using them to express the atmosphere, not as compulsory fillers-in, were unheard of in Finland at the time. Concentrating on the music, not everything around it, Saimaa-ilmiö captures much of the leisurely feel of the lake tour.Read More »