Internet resource(s)
- Finnish Film FoundationThe Finnish Film Foundation supports Finnish film and ensures its vitality, diversity and accessibility.
Introduction
Moving pictures were first seen at a screening of the Lumière Cinématographe in Helsinki on 28 June 1896, and the earliest Finnish-made film is thought to be Salaviinanpolttajat/The Bootleggers (1907), about the problem of alcoholism. In 1919 the Suomi Filmi studio came into existence, co-founded by pioneering director Erkki Karu who, with Eero Leväluoma, made the classic Finlandia (1922), a full-length documentary that was screened in some 40 countries. Until its closure as a production company in 1980, Suomi Filmi produced around 160 feature films and for most of its history was, with Suomen Filmiteollisuus (also founded by Karu in 1934), one of the most prominent film companies in the country. Finland’s first sound feature, a musical called Sano se suomeksi/Say It in Finnish (Yrjö Nyberg, 1931), was made at the Turku-based Lahyn-Filmi studio; but Suomi-Filmi quickly followed suit with Tukkipojan morsian/The Lumberjack’s Bride (Erkki Karu, 1931). Classics of Finland’s later studio era include Kulkurin Valssi/The Vagabond’s Valse (T.J. Särkä, 1941) and a series of films in the Niskavuori family saga. The value of establishing a national film archive was recognized as early as the 1920s, and in the late 1930s a government committee of inquiry proposed that a suitable storage space be created. The National Audiovisual Archive (KAVI), as it is now known, is part of the Ministry of Education and Culture, its remit the rescue and preservation of Finland’s audiovisual heritage. ...
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Finland, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 31 May. 2021
In the library's collections/Searching the online catalog
- motion pictures finlandThe call number range is PN 1993.5 .F5 located on Baker Level 4.
Selected book title(s)
The cinema of Aki Kaurismäki: contrarian stories by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780231165587Aki Kaurismäki is an enigma, an eminent auteur who claims his films are a joke. Since 1983, Kaurismäki has produced classically-styled films filled with cinephilic references to film history. He has earned an international art-house audience and many prizes, influencing such directors as Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson. Yet Kaurismäki is often depicted as the loneliest, most nostalgic of Finns (except when he promotes his films, makes political statements, and runs his many businesses). He is also depicted as a bohemian known for outlandish actions and statements. The Cinema of Aki Kaurismäki is the first comprehensive English-language study of this eccentric director. Drawing on revisionist approaches to film authorship, the text links the filmmaker and his films to the stories and issues animating film aesthetics and history, nostalgia, late modernity, politics, commerce, film festivals, and national cinema.
The cinema of Mika Kaurismäki: transvergent cinescapes, emergent identities by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1998.3 .K3852 K33 2011ISBN: 9781841504094Finnish director Mika Kaurismäki's films challenge the boundaries of nations, genre formations, art and popular culture, and fiction and documentary. Synthesizing concepts from a range of thematic frameworks, including transnationalism, eco-philosophy, architectural theory, and cartography, this book provides an interdisciplinary reading of Kaurismäki's body of work. The notion of "transvergence"--thinking in heterogeneous and polyphonal terms--emerges as an analytical method for exploring the power of these films. ...
Directory of world cinema. Finland by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781841506173An important addition to Intellect's popular series, Directory of World Cinema: Finland provides historical and cultural overviews of the country's cinema. Over the course of their contributions to this volume, scholars from a variety of disciplines construct a collective argument that complicates the dominant international view of Finnish cinema as small-scale industry dominated by realist art-house films. The contributors approach the topic from a variety of angles, covering genre, art, and commercial films; independent productions; blockbuster cinema; and Finnish cinema's industrial and historical contexts. ...
Finnish cinema: a transnational enterprise by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .F5 F56 2016ISBN: 9781137576507This book presents an expert analysis of the transnational aspects of Finnish cinema throughout its history. As a small nation cinema, Finnish film culture has, even at its most nationalistic, always been attached to developments in other film producing nations in terms of production and distribution as well as genres and aesthetics.
Other library resource(s)
Scandinavian film from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286This bibliography covers the cinemas of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. These are usually called the Nordic countries, while Scandinavia is sometimes defined more narrowly, with reference to geography or linguistics. Here, however, Scandinavian and Nordic are used as synonyms. While the Nordic countries certainly share parts of their film histories with each other, there are also notable differences.
Selected movie titles
Find more Finnish language films in the library's online catalog.
Mies vailla menneisyyttä = The man without a past by Call Number: Jones Media DVD # 2711ISBN: 9781404922846After a man is beaten and declared dead, he suddenly sits up and walks out of the hospital on his own. Determined to start his life over in a new town and unable to remember his name or anything about his past, he becomes involved with a mother and her sons. Everything seems good until his past comes back to haunt him.
Toivon tuolla puolen = Other side of hope by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #21680ISBN: 9781681434407This wry, melancholic comedy from Aki Kaurismäki, a response to the ongoing global refugee crisis, follows two people searching for a place to call home. Khaled, a displaced Syrian, lands in Helsinki as a stowaway; meanwhile, middle-aged Finnish salesman Wikström leaves his wife and his job and buys a conspicuously unprofitable restaurant. Khaled is denied asylum but decides not to return to Aleppo-- and the paths of the two men cross fortuitously. As deadpan as the best of the director's work, and with a deep well of empathy for its down-but-not-out characters (many of them played by members of Kaurismäki's loyal stock company), The Other Side of Hope is a bittersweet celebration of pockets of human kindness in an unwelcoming world.
Tom of Finland by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #21212Dome Karukoski's stirring biopic Tom of Finland follows his life from thetrenches of WWII and repressive Finnish society of the 1950s through his struggle to get his work published in California, where he and his art were finally embraced amid the sexual revolution of the 1970s. Tom's story is one of love, courage and perseverance, mirroring the gay liberation movement for which his leather-clad studs served as a defiant emblem.
Total Balalaika show: with five music videos by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #13895ISBN: 9781604655018The film of the massive concert in Helsinki's Senate Square with the 150-member Alexandrov Red Army Chorus and Dance Ensemble. Seventy thousand people attended. Also includes five music videos.
Varjoja paratiisissa = Shadows in paradise by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #8442ISBN: 9781604650655An episode in the life of Nikander, a garbage man, involving the death of a co-worker, an affair and much more.
Äideistä parhain = Mother of mine by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #7463During World War II, more than 70,000 Finnish children were evacuated to neutral Sweden to avoid the conflict. 9-year-old Eero increasingly feels abandoned by his biological Finnish mother and not yet attached to his Swedish surrogate mom. When Eero is returned to Finland, his confusion intensifies.
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