Portraits of Women

Portraits of Women 1970

5.10

Finnish porn movie producer Pertsa returns from America to his home country to continue his profession with hopelessly small budgets and incompetent casts and crews. A self-ironic satire about director Donner's scandalous fame in late 1960s Finland, notorious for a graphic long shot of his penis pointing northeast.

1970

Kreivi

Kreivi 1971

4.10

Pertti Ylermi Lindgren was engaged to 76 women, married none, but took the money of all. Lindgren is the real thing, as far as swindlers go. Peter von Bagh asked him to play himself in a film that would reconstruct some of his greatest moments, i.e. the most flamboyant stunts – and he agreed.

1971

Fuck Off! Images from Finland

Fuck Off! Images from Finland 1971

5.90

F*** Off! shows no false respect towards the authorities in its impudent and candid reportage of the developing country/welfare state Finland. It is a cinematic parallel to Donner's New Book of Our Land (1967). The travelogue focuses especially on Finland's outsiders, low-paid workers and the unemployed. In desolate provinces, the inhabitants of a cold and barren country either humbly abide their fate, choose to move to Sweden or take refuge in excessive drinking. These images are accompanied by protest songs based on Donner's own prose and the lyrics of poet Jarkko Laine. Perkele is embodied in big business and the political elite.The jagged (anti)aesthetics of the film correspond to the underground movement and the radical politics of the time. The camera agilely penetrates everyday life. Though opposed to censorship, Fuck Off! itself transgresses the boundaries of privacy.

1971

Skin, Skin

Skin, Skin 1966

5.90

A movie about summer, youth, the difficulty of love, and a camping trip to the countryside by four young people from Helsinki.

1966

Sixtynine

Sixtynine 1969

5.60

Tuula's husband Jukka takes care of all domestic chores. Tuula seems to have no idea that her husband spends his evenings working as a major league ice hockey referee. She also finds out about his extra-marital affair with a female rally driver. In revenge, Tuula starts seeing her gynecologist Timo Paasi, a married man with six children.

1969

Black on White

Black on White 1968

5.20

Juha is a sales manager of a refrigerator company. His perfect-looking family and glittering array of modern kitchen appliances have just been featured in a magazine article, but in reality Juha is a womanising chauvinist more at home on the road than with his family.

1968

Bensaa suonissa

Bensaa suonissa 1970

4.80

Two men and a woman, all rallye drivers, get too closely involved, competing in the race and in love.

1970

Asfalttilampaat

Asfalttilampaat 1968

5.90

A story of a doomed young love in a small narrow-minded town.

1968

Girl of Finland

Girl of Finland 1967

6.60

A theater group is training for the play Lapualaisooppera. We see these young people hanging out and talking about what goes on around them. Also sexual matters are involved there and this girl, Tenu, becomes pregnant to Hessu.

1967

Kuuma kissa?

Kuuma kissa? 1968

5.40

This love story finds a lonely teacher resisting the advances of an interested co-worker. She is fearful of affection and relationships due to a previous romance that did not work out. The small-town school marm tries to help a male student who has been suspended for drunkenness. She tutors the young man, and soon the two engage in a tender and passionate love affair in which both people reach out and touch each other physically and emotionally.

1968

Kesäkapina

Kesäkapina 1970

5.40

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.

1970

Pilvilinna

Pilvilinna 1970

3.70

Teenager Erik returns from Paris to Finland in a rowboat and is accosted by a gang of youths in the countryside. He walks to Helsinki, returns to his parents' home and his old high school filled with angry radical teens who, typically for the era, consider the teacher-imposed discipline as another form of capitalist imperialism. Almost reluctantly Erik drifts together with Annika, a girl from a wealthy family, and starts experimenting with sex and marijuana. In the same nonchalant manner Erik gets involved in demonstrations and school politics which escalate into a violent school strike leading to police intervention and heavy sanctions.

1970

Anna

Anna 1970

5.40

A doctor, her daughter, and her young housekeeper spend their summer on a remote island.

1970

Punahilkka

Punahilkka 1968

5.70

Tells the story of young Anja, a teenage girl living in an approved school (otherwise known as a reform school), and the problems she faces in the outside world after running away.

1968