Reference.com

Aki Kaurismäki

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Cite This Source

Aki Olavi Kaurismäki (born April 4, 1957 in Orimattila, Finland) is a Finnish script writer and film director.

Career

Aki Kaurismäki started his career as a co-director in the films of his elder brother Mika Kaurismäki. His debut as an independent director was Crime and Punishment (1983), Dostoevsky's famous crime story set in modern-day Helsinki.

He gained worldwide fame with his movie Leningrad Cowboys Go America.

His style has been influenced a lot by such directors as Jean-Pierre Melville and Robert Bresson, as he relies on low-key acting and simple cinematic storytelling to get his message(s) across. Critics have also seen an influence from Rainer Werner Fassbinder but Kaurismäki - a keen film buff himself - has said that he somehow never got around to seeing any Fassbinder movies until recent years. His movies have a unique downplayed humorous side that can also be seen in the films of Jim Jarmusch, who has a cameo in Kaurismäki's film Leningrad Cowboys Go America. Jarmusch also used frequent Kaurismäki actors in his film Night on Earth, a part of which takes place in Helsinki, Finland.

Much of his work is centred on his native city of Helsinki, particularly Calamari Union which is largely set in the working class neighbourhood of Kallio, and the trilogy that comprises Shadows in Paradise, Ariel, and The Match Factory Girl. His vision of Helsinki is, it should be noted, both critical and singularly unromantic. Indeed, the characters often speak about how they wish to get away from Helsinki: some end up in South America [Ariel], others in Estonia [Kalamari Union and Take Care of Your Scarf Tatjana]. The setting is the 1980s, even in the more recent movies.

Awards and protests

In terms of awards, Kaurismäki's most successful movie to date has been The Man Without a Past. It won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002 and was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category in 2003. However, Kaurismäki refused to attend the gala, noting that he didn't particularly feel like partying in a nation that is currently in a state of war. Kaurismäki's next film Lights in the Dusk was also chosen to be Finland's nominee in the category for best foreign film. Kaurismäki again decided to boycott the Awards and refused the nomination as a protest against US President George W. Bush's foreign policy
In 2003, in one of his most famous protests, Kaurismäki boycotted the 40th New York Film Festival backing his Iranian fellow director, Abbas Kiarostami who was categorically refused a US visa for the festival. Kaurismäki later said :

Filmography

Feature films

Documentaries

Short films

  • Rocky VI, 1986 (8 min)
  • Through the Wire, 1987 (6 min)
  • Rich Little Bitch, 1987 (6 min)
  • L.A. Woman, 1987 (5 min)
  • Those Were The Days, 1991 (5 min)
  • These Boots, 1992 (5 min)
  • Välittäjä, 1996?
  • Dogs Have No Hell, 2002 (10 minute episode in the collaborative film Ten Minutes Older - The Trumpet)

References

  • Roger Connah K/K: A Couple of Finns and Some Donald Ducks: Cinema and Society. VAPK Pub., Helsinki, 1991 [A remarkable placement of both Aki and Mika Kaurismäki's films within Finnish society. Witty and erudite]

See also

External links



Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia © 2001-2006 Wikipedia contributors (Disclaimer)
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Wednesday February 06, 2008 at 14:36:25 PST (GMT -0800)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation