Rock n' Roll Cowboy:
The Films of Aki Kaurismäki

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 20 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 19 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
SAT 7 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 21 22
FRI 7 P.M., SAT 4:30 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS
CZECH republic 1970.
DIRECTOR: Jaromil Jires. Based on a surrealist novel by Vitezslav Nezval, this remarkable celluloid poem has been described as "a Jodorowsky/Bergman co-production of a Grimm's fairytale." In a 19th century Central European village, a 13-year-old girl crosses the threshold into womanhood, her life entering a baroque, gothic world of vampires, witchcraft, mysticism and lacivious priests. Rich in imagination, color, and sensual textures, VALERIE remains a Czech cult classic, “A delicate, exquisite jewel . . . one of the most charming romantic tales on a girl coming of age ever made.”—VARIETY. (77 mins.)

Preceded by
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
CZECH repiblic 1980
DIRECTOR: Jan Svankmajer. Poe's classic tale of terror, envisioned with stones, trees, furniture, and other objects in place of humans is a remarkable example of tactile animation. (15 mins.)

and
THE RAVEN
CZECH republic 2000
DIRECTOR: Lucie Simková-Sunková "What could have inspired Edgar Allen Poe to write the poem, The Raven?" (5 mins.)

NOV 22 SAT 7 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
INVISIBLE AKA THE DAMNED HOUSE OF HAJN
CZECH republic 1988
DIRECTOR: JIRÍ SVOBODA. In his fanciful reinvention of the ‘lunatic-in-the-attic’ tradition, Svoboda blends narrative and stylistic elements that invoke, simultaneously, Roman Polanski, Billy Wilder, Maya Deren, and Dario Argento. Petr, a young, ambitious Prague businessman, marries Sona, beautiful daughter of country aristocrats, and moves into the House of Hajn, her family’s gothic mansion. Petr quickly discovers that the place is cursed, and that he has a dangerous rival for Sona’s sexual attentions in Cyril, her lunatic uncle, who thinks he is invisible. Perhaps best described as an experimental Gothic noir, the film transcending its particular time and place to explore such universal themes as fate, lust, madness, and, as the opening line reveals, the (im)possibility of happiness. “A most enjoyable, bumpy ride . . . [It] plays like ROSEMARY’S BABY on amphetamines, DARK SHADOWS on LSD, albeit filtered through a distinctly Czech sense of propriety and interior design”— VANCOUVER FILM FESTIVAL. (107 mins.)

Preceded by
DEFECTOR
CZECH republic 1998
DIRECTOR: Václav Kadrnka "Beyond the shores of evil lies the vast, unmapped kingdom of the darkest sides of the human soul. It is the realm of an unnamed demon...We call him Defector." (9 mins.)

NOV 23 SUN 7 P.M.
WHITSELL AUDITORIUM
THE PIED PIPER
CZECH republic 1986
DIRECTOR: Jirí Barta. One of the most ambitious projects in Czech Republic animation history. Barta was inspired by a German legend to createthis expressionistic visual metaphor for the fall of a materialistic society. The medieval drama unfolds through an assortment of techniques, including wooden puppets, oil paintings, and footage of live rats. “An impressive film, notable not only for its richly imaginative juxtapositions of visual textures, but for its resolutely grotesque account of a society’s lemming-like race towards self-annihilation” —Geoff Andrew,TIME OUT. “Extraordinary... Barta creates a gothic never-was world caught somewhere between Gaudí and Kafka, Caligari and Svankmajer”—Pacific Film Archive. (55 mins.)

Preceded by
THE LAST THEFT
CZECH republic 1987
DIRECTOR: Jirí Barta. A jewel thief breaks into a crypt and finds a group of vampires who lure him into a dangerous game. Mixing animation, live-action, and puppetry techniques, Barta combines scary and comic moments in an otherwise serious parable. (21 mins.)
and
GOLEM
CZECH republic 1999
DIRECTOR: Jirí Barta. An excerpt from a presently unfinished feature which uses exceptional animation and trick methods. (7 mins.)