ROCK AND ROLL COWBOY:
THE FILMS OF AKI KAURISMAKI

With a distinctive style that calls to mind a cross between Buster Keaton, Luis Buñuel, Robert Bresson and Jim Jarmusch, the droll, deadpan films of idiosyncratic ironist Aki Kaurismäki have become almost synonymous with Finnish cinema. Born in 1957, Kaurismäki attended film school in Munich and then founded a production company with his brother Mika which they called Villealfa in homage to Godard’s ALPHAVILLE. Quickly emerging as a prolific wunderkind and self-mocking outsider, the last decade has seen his emergence as a mature, internationally celebrated cinema master. His dryly comic and ironically hip films reveal one of cinema's most gifted and offbeat humorists and, at the same time, one of its most generous humanists. A champion of the mangy and marginal, his films display keen social observation, warmth and affectionate good humor for their usually downtrodden victims of capitalist culture. Enamored by American film and rock-and-roll culture and, famously, the founder of the crazed Leningrad Cowboys—"the world's worst rock band"— Kaurismäki pays witty tribute to the past while confronting the present. Whether saluting film noir or the road movie genre, or offering his own postmodernist updates of Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Ozu or Fassbinder, his quirky blending of irony with empathy, pastiche with pathos, respect for human dignity with delirious deadpan fun, reveal a unique cinematic vision. Organized by the BAMcinématek in Brooklyn, New York, this retrospective offers a comprehensive look at Kaurismäki’s two decades of filmmaking. Special thanks to Florence Almozini of the BAMcinématek, who organized this touring program, Jaana Puskala, Secretary of the International Department at The Finnish Film Foundation, Helsinki, which generously provided new 35mm prints for the series; Sputnik Oy, Helsinki, Aki Kaurismäki’s production company; and Thorsten Schaumann and Bavaria Film International, Munich.

NOV 14 15
FRI 7 P.M., SAT 8:45 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
FINLAND 1983
DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI “An homage to those golden years when one murder was sufficient for one crime film.”—AK. Kaurismäki’s first feature filters Dostoevsky through Bresson to create a spare, nocturnal, offbeat work that updates the famed 19th century Russian novel to contemporary Helsinki. Opening with a shot of a bug being squashed on a butcher’s block (“How’s that for an opening statement on the human condition?”— Jonathan Romney, FILM COMMENT) the film follows a slaughterhouse worker and former law student who murders a businessman, and then finds himself in an intense game of cat-and-mouse with the police. “First and foremost a film about the final desperate rebellion of a young man against society. The society that—as we know—is a desperate machine. Perhaps we are all guilty, but—guilty of what? This insufferable question faces us everywhere, hands on hips, sneering at us.”—Aki Kaurismäki. (93 mins.)

NOV 15 20
SAT 7 P.M., THU 8:45 P.M., GUILD THEATRE
CALAMARI UNION
FINLAND 1985 DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI “No ordinary black-and-white Finnish flick with 17 characters named Frank, this ultra-hip absurdist comedy brought Kaurismäki’s trademark blend of deadpan humor, idiosyncratic irony, mannered minimalism and compelling humanism to the fore. Showcasing a fondness for wry road movies, and his love of disaffected, down-and-out characters, CALAMARI UNION sets its posse of Franks (and one dude named Pekka) on a mock-epic journey through (and under) the mean streets of Helsinki, in search of a better life in the seaside suburb of Eira. A spoof “Last Supper” opening recalls Buñuel’s Viridiana; there are allusions as well to Prévert, Baudelaire, Godard, and Scorsese; and much of the cast is composed of Finnish rock luminaries of the era. Kaurismäki, who cites this film as a personal favorite, cameos as the driver of a Cadillac hearse.”—PACIFIC CINEMATHEQUE. “Kaurismäki’s most Nouvelle Vague-ish film–using Helsinki as a gameboard much like the Paris of BREATHLESS—it’s also an unreconstructed guys’ movie, full of preposterous rock-rebel poses”—Jonathan Romney, FILM COMMENT. (80 mins.)

NOV 16 19
SUN 7 P.M., WHITSELL AUDITORIUM/ WED 7 P.M., GUILD THEATRE
SHADOWS IN PARADISE
FINLAND 1986 DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI “Aki Kaurismäki’s austere and oddly moving third feature—the first installment in a “Proletarian Trilogy” that also includes ARIEL and THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL—is a moody, melancholic, miserabilist romantic comedy that features favorite male and female leads Matti Pellonpää and Kati Outinen in fine iconic form. He’s a sad-sack garbage man; she’s a luckless cashier. The hopeless, hemming-and-hawing romance between these two members of the walking wounded runs its sputtering, inarticulate course against a backdrop of drab supermarkets, inexpensive hotels and bingo halls and, in true, generous Kaurismäki fashion, actually manages to move towards hope and optimism (and Estonia). . .[A] winsome film, made with loving perception and a complete lack of sentimentality”—TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL. (76 mins.)

NOV 20 21
THU 7 P.M., FRI 8:30 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
HAMLET GOES BUSINESS
FINLAND 1987
DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI Described by Kaurismäki as a “b&w, underground B-movie classical drama,” this eccentric adaptation and update of the Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is a sometimes hilarious, hard-boiled film noir set in (and savaging) the high-finance world of business. After the mysterious murder of his wealthy father, a spoiled, shiftless playboy (played by popular Finnish comic Pirkka-Pekka Petelius) finds himself head of a huge industrial concern, and embroiled in a vicious boardroom battle over whether or not to sell off the company’s current assets—in order to corner the market on rubber ducks. Stylish, cynical, satirical, always surprising, and loaded with swipes at the ills of contemporary capitalism, HAMLET GOES BUSINESS is “Confidently post-Fassbinder in its noirish angles and deadpan cool”—J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE.
(86 mins.)

NOV 21 23
FRI 7 P.M., SUN 5:30 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
ARIEL
FINLAND 1988
DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI After the local mine shuts down, laconic Laplander Taisto sets out in sunglasses and white Cadillac convertible for the bright lights of Helsinki, hoping to establish a new life. Obtaining work as a day laborer, and moving in with a new girlfriend, he quickly falls into the clutches of the police—and discovers that happiness is possible, but only when you’re not in Finland. Propelled by a music track of Finnish tango and Baltic pop, ARIEL is “inflected with a dark and infectious satiric tone and a beguiling off-beat mood . . . another comic poem of contradiction, full of warm insight into the human predicament of people left behind in the margins of society.” Voted Best Foreign Film of the Year by the National Society of Film Critics. (74 mins.)

NOV 22 28
SAT 7 P.M., FRI 8:45 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL
FINLAND/SWEDEN 1989
DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI The third film in the director’s “Proletarian Trilogy,” after SHADOWS IN PARADISE and ARIEL,.Kaurismäki humorously said he wanted to make “a picture that would make Robert Bresson seem like a director of epic action pictures.” Kaurismäki’s lean, MOUCHETTE-like feminist fable ranks as one of his most laconic works and, in the view of many admirers, one of his masterpieces. It features pokerfaced Kaurismäki diva Kati Outinen as downtrodden Iris, whose bleak existence includes a mind-numbing job on an assembly line and a horrible home life with uncaring, parasitic parents. A new party dress and a one-night stand send Iris’s faint hopes soaring, but the cruel, cruel world is quick to dash them—leading our newly determined heroine to plot suitable revenge on all those who have poisoned her dreams. “Horribly funny and satisfying”—David Denby, NEW YORK MAGAZINE. “One of the ten best of the year.”—NEWSWEEK, ROLLING STONE. (70 mins.)

NOV 22 23
SAT 8:30 P.M., SUN 7 P.M.
GUILD THEATRE
LENINGRAD COWBOYS GO TO AMERICA
FINLAND 1989
DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI “What Finns like best about American culture is jukeboxes and Cadillacs”—AK. Kaurismäki’s uproarious follow-up to ARIEL is a rollicking road movie that has a fashion and talent-challenged “Siberian” rock and roll band setting out for America, “where people will swallow any kind of shit.” Landing in New York, they purchase an old stretch Cadillac from a used car dealer (Jim Jarmusch) and embark on a screwball tour of America, the frozen body of their dead guitarist always in tow. “A cult road movie of quite irresistible charm”—EMPIRE. “Kaurismäki could well turn out to be the seminal European filmmaker of the 1990s”— Vincent Canby, NEW YORK TIMES. (78 mins.)

NOV 28 FRI 7 P.M. GUILD THEATRE
I HIRED A CONTRACT KILLER
FINLAND/SWEDEn 1990
DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMAKI “I made the film in England,” Kaurismäki has deadpanned, “because people there speak a civilized language that I have passably mastered myself.” A stylish black farce paying parodic tribute to the French New Wave and 1940s film noir, it stars François Truffaut stalwart Jean-Pierre Léaud in the lead. Lonely French émigré Henri is presented with a (faulty) gold watch and put out to pasture, a victim of privatization. Absolutely despondent, and unsuccessful as a suicide, he withdraws his savings and hires a contract killer to put him out of his misery. But all of a sudden life starts to look up when he meets a woman and falls in love. Unfortunately, Henri discovers that cancelling the hit man’s contract is not so easily accomplished. “This droll thriller displays the same melancholy vision as Kaurismäki’s brilliant ARIEL . . . It plays like an Ealing comedy on downers”—TIME OUT. (80 mins.)

NOV 29 30 SAT 7 P.M., SUN 7:3o P.M. GUILD THEATRE
LA VIE BOHÈME
FINLAND/FRANCE 1992
DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI Mixing Tchaikovsky and punk rock on the soundtrack, Kaurismäki sets his version of Henri Murger’s 1851 novel (also the inspiration for Puccini’s opera) in a dreamy, timeless Paris. The film follows the misfortunes of three down-and-out bohemians — a poet, a painter and a composer—and their fateful encounter with Mimi and Musette, two waifs from the provinces. The polyglot cast, speaking a fractured French, is made up of the dissolute, stringy-haired types favored by Kaurismäki while the likes of Jean-Pierre Léaud, Louis Malle, and Sam Fuller have cameos. “Well acted, lovingly shot (by Timo Salminen), deftly written, expertly pitched between deadpan humor and heartbreaking drama, LA VIE BOHÈME is vintage Kaurismäki . . . [and] shows him at the height of his powers” —VANCOUVER FILM FESTIVAL. “A beautiful movie . . . hilarious . . .impeccably timed.”—Terrence Rafferty, THE NEW YORKER. “A cool, funny, very free update of La Bohème. Make no mistake about it, Mr. Kaurismäki is an original”—Vincent Canby, NEW YORK TIMES. (100 mins.)

NOV 30 DEC 3 SUN 6 P.M., WED 7 P.M. GUILD THEATRE
TAKE CARE OF YOUR SCARF, TATJANA
FINLAND/GERMANY 1994
DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI At once hilarious and charming this universally themed rock road movie, set in the mid-1960s, is perhaps the archetypal Kaurismäki film. Two morose, slickly-coiffed dudes, a coffee addict and a car mechanic, hit the highway in a Soviet-built Volga and soon link up with two women, a skinny Estonian and a buxom Russian, who know little Finnish. Language difficulties aside, the macho men prove absolutely clueless and inarticulate in the presence of the opposite sex, let alone the obvious romantic opportunity, resulting in much awkward silence and serious vodka consumption. A tender, touching and funny symphony of thwarted longing, unexpressed emotion and non-communication set to homegrown rock and roll, TAKE CARE OF YOUR SCARF is “A gem . . . Marvelously observed and understated, the film exudes a delicious sense of the absurd. This is deadpan as good as it gets”—Geoff Andrew, TIME OUT. (65 mins)

DEC 2 5 TUE 7 P.M., FRI 8:45 P.M. GUILD THEATRE
TOTAL BALALAIKA SHOW
FINLAND 1994
DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI Finland’s farcical Leningrad Cowboys –“the world’s worst rock and roll band”— aren’t really a Siberian combo; they just play one in Aki Kaurismäki’s kitschy LENINGRAD COWBOYS GO AMERICA. This wildly conceived concert film captures the campy Cowboys in an outdoor performance with Russia’s Alexandrov Red Army Chorus and Dance Ensemble before 70,000 people in Helsinki’s main square on a memorably manic evening in June 1993. Among the chestnuts trotted out in the unlikely East-meets-West extravaganza: “Volga Boatmen,” The Turtles’ “Happy Together,” Tom Jones’s “Delilah,” and Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” all leading to a rousing “Those Were the Days” finale. A night of music like you’ve likely never seen (or considered) before. “It’s Irony Curtain all the way”—Deborah Young, VARIETY. (57 mins.)

PRECEDED BY
ROCKY VI FINLAND 1986 A Sylvester Stallone spoof set to the music of the Leningrad Cowboys. (8 mins.)

THRU THE WIRE FINLAND 1987 Fugitive escapes from prison in this mock-Bresson satirical take on America, accompanied by the Leningrad Cowboys. (6 mins.)

THESE BOOTS FINLAND 1992 The Leningrad Cowboys cover the famous Nancy Sinatra song while Kaurismäki serves up a tongue-in-cheek history of postwar Finland. (5 mins.)

THOSE WERE THE DAYS FINLAND 1991 As a man and his donkey wonder the streets of a postcard Paris, the Leningrad Cowboys perform the standard made popular by Mary Hopkin in 1968. (5 mins.)

DEC 3 5 WED 8:30 P.M., FRI 7 P.M. GUILD THEATRE
JUHA
FINLAND 1999
DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI “Literature is full of triangle dramas. But few of them can beat Juhani Aho’s novel ‘Juha’ (1911) for deepness of emotions.” Produced as a daring experiment in silent filmmaking and as a tribute to the beginnings of cinema, JUHA recalls F.W. Murnau’s late masterpiece SUNRISE (1927), JUHA tells a wistful tale of love and loss in which a naïve farm couple’s happy marriage is broken up by the arrival of a slick and seductive stranger from the city. Beautifully shot in black and white and employing all the requisite stylistic conventions of the silent era, only the symphonic score by composer Anssi Tikanmäki keeps company with the images. “His riskiest venture to date . . . [JUHA] demands to be taken seriously —not quite but almost at face value—as persuasively as Todd Haynes’ reworked Sirk in FAR FROM HEAVEN,” —Jonathan Romney, FILM COMMENT. (78 mins.)

DEC 6 7 SAT 7 P.M., SUN 5 P.M. GUILD THEATRE
DRIFTING CLOUDS
FINLAND 1996
DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI One of Kaurismäki’s most moving films, the story follows the downward spiral of Ilona, a restaurant hostess, and husband Lauri, a transit worker. When both suddenly lose their jobs, the poker-faced pair are left scouring the mean streets of Helsinki in a humiliating search for work, any work, and soon find themselves scraping the bottom of that proverbial barrel. Shot in bold primary colors (mostly blue) by Kaurismäki regular Timo Salminen, and described by Kaurismäki as a cross between BICYCLE THIEVES and IT’S A WONDERFUL, DRIFTING CLOUDS is “a beautiful, melancholy work that all but restores humanism to contemporary cinema. Who but Kaurismäki could make a comedy about unemployment, and turn it into a soulful, transcendent statement about hope and survival? —James Quandt, CINEMATHEQUE ONTARIO. “Sublimely funny... DRIFTING CLOUDS mixes the deadpan wit of Buster Keaton with the melancholy of Robert Bresson”—SIGHT & SOUND. (96 mins.)

DEC 7 SUN 7 P.M. GUILD THEATRE
LENINGRAD COWBOYS MEET MOSES
FRANCE/GERMAN 1993
DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI Following up on the road-weary band after its American tour (LENINGRAD COWBOYS GO AMERICA), the sequel finds the combo down Mexico way to where they’ve enjoyed a top ten hit but also been decimated by “a snake in paradise—tequila,” which has significantly reduced their ranks. Heading back north for a gig at Coney Island, the survivors reunite with long-lost manager Vladimir, who now claims to be Moses and vows to lead them back to the promised land—Siberia. A musical highlight amidst all the mock Biblical antics is a rendition of “Rivers of Babylon.” Undeniably one of the director’s most whimsical efforts, the film marks the final Kaurismäki performance for regular trouper Pellonpää, who died in 1995. “One of the silliest movies I have ever seen and one of the funniest.”—David Sterrit. (94 mins.)

DEC 11 14 THU 7 P.M., SUN 7 P.M. GUILD THEATRE
THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST
FINLAND 2002
DIRECTOR: AKI KAURISMÄKI Kaurismäki’s most recent film confirms his place as one of contemporary world cinema’s masters. Nominated for the Foreign Film Oscar and winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, this deadpan paean to human dignity provides a glorious showcase of the director’s economical style, idiosyncratic humor, and enormous generosity. A middle-aged man, newly arrived in Helsinki, is brutally mugged and left for dead. Waking with no memory, he sets about building a new life for himself amongst the homeless and dispossessed on the city’s docks, and becomes involved with Irma, a repressed Salvation Army worker. A postmodern Preston Sturges comedy shot in eye-popping primary colors, THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST displays Kaurismäki’s ability to treat the heaviest of subjects with the lightest of touches. (97 mins.)