Thomas Austin - The Films of Aki Kaurismäki: Ludic Engagements

THE FILMS OF AKI KAURISMKI

THE FILMS OF AKI KAURISMKI

Ludic Engagements

Edited by

Thomas Austin

To Charlotte, the love of my life

Thomas Austin is Reader in Media and Film at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Hollywood, Hype and Audiences (2002) and Watching the World (2007), and co-editor of Contemporary Hollywood Stardom (2003) and Rethinking Documentary (2008). His latest research is on representations of migrants and refugees in the cinema of Fortress Europe.

Henry Bacon is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Helsinki. He headed the Academy of Finland research project A Transnational History of Finnish Cinema, the results of which were published in Finnish Cinema A Transnational Enterprise (2016). Among his publications are the monographs Luchino Visconti Explorations of Beauty and Decay (1998), Audiovisuaalisen kerronnan teoria (Theory of Audiovisual Narration, 2000), Elokuva ja muut taiteet (Film in Relation to Other Arts, 2005) and The Fascination of Fictional Violence, 2015. He has also written extensively on the history of opera.

Ulrike Hanstein is Lecturer in Film Studies at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universitt Jena. She has held academic positions at the Bauhaus-Universitt Weimar, at the Hochschule fr Musik und Theater Leipzig, and was a fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. She is the author of a book on the melodramatic film aesthetics of Lars von Trier and Aki Kaurismki (Unknown Woman, geprgelter Held: Die melodramatische Filmsthetik bei Lars von Trier und Aki Kaurismki, 2011) and co-editor of an anthology on media history entitled Re-Animationen (with Anika Hppner and Jana Mangold, 2012).

Pietari Kp is Associate Professor in Media and Communications at the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy at the University of Warwick. His work has focused on the intersections between transnational and ecocritical media studies. He has published several books on Finnish cinema, including The National and Beyond: The Globalisation of National Cinema in the Films of Aki and Mika Kaurismaki (2010) and The Cinema of Mika Kaurismaki (2011). Other books include Transnational Ecocinema: Film Culture in an Era of Ecological Transformation (2013) and Ecology and Contemporary Nordic Cinema (2014). Kp has also edited special issues of Interactions and Studies in Documentary Film. His latest book Environmental Management of the Media is due out in 2018.

Panos Kompatsiaris is Assistant Professor of Art and Media at the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He holds a PhD in art theory from the University of Edinburgh and has published on the politics of art, media representation, creative labour and cultural institutions in academic journals, magazines and exhibition catalogues. His first monograph The Politics of Contemporary Art Biennials: Spectacles of Critique, Art and Theory (2017) explores the strategies of legitimizing contemporary arts critical potential in Europe through an ethnography of large-scale perennial exhibitions in the context of the rise of the post-2010 protest movements against austerity and neo-liberalism.

Angelos Koutsourakis is University Academic Fellow in World Cinema at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Politics as Form in Lars von Trier (2013) and the co-editor of The Cinema of Theo Angelopoulos (2015). His next book, Rethinking Brechtian Film Theory and Cinema, will be published in 2018.

Michael Lawrence is Reader in Film Studies at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Sabu (2014) and the co-editor, with Laura McMahon, of Animal Life and the Moving Image (2015) and, with Karen Lury, of The Zoo and Screen Media: Images of Exhibition and Encounter (2016). He is currently completing a book called The Bollywood Version: Transnational Adaptation in Popular Hindi Cinema.

Andrew Nestingen is Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, where he teaches film, literature and cultural theory, with a special focus on Finland. His books include The Cinema of Aki Kaurismki: Contrarian Stories (2013) and Crime and Fantasy in Scandinavia: Fiction, Film and Social Change (2008). He co-edited the volumes Scandinavian Crime Fiction (2011) and Transnational Cinema in a Global North: Nordic Cinema in Transition (2005). He was co-editor of a special issue of the journal Lhikuva on Aki Kaurismki and also served as associate editor of the Journal of Scandinavian Cinema.

Eija Niskanen received an MA in critical studies in film and television from UCLA and is currently teaching and researching on the Moomin brand in Japan at University of Helsinki. She has been a programmer for Helsinki International Film Festival since 1989 and is the programming director for Helsinki Cine Aasia Film Festival. Eija also coordinates Finland Film Festival in Japan, as well as working as a freelance film writer and subtitling Japanese films into Finnish. Her interests include East Asian and South East Asian cinema and world animation in general, as well as film festival research.

Lara Perski is a translator and curator of film and video art. She is also an editorial assistant for Screening the Past and a co-editor of the Audiovisual Essay website REFRAME. She is based in Dsseldorf, Germany.

Jaakko Seppl is docent (adjunct professor) in Film and Television Studies, University of Helsinki. His major research interests lie in the field of film style, transnational film history and close textual analysis of meanings. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the import and reception of silent Hollywood films in Finland. In his work for the Transnational History of Finnish Cinema project, funded by Academy of Finland, he built a method for statistically and qualitatively analysing the style of large bodies of films from a comparative perspective. He is currently exploring Aki Kaurismkis film style. Seppl has contributed to anthologies and journals, including Nordic Genre Film: Small Nation Film Cultures in the Global Marketplace (2015), Finnish Cinema: A Transnational Enterprise (2016) and Journal of Scandinavian Cinema and Projections.

This book would not have been possible without the boundless support, advice and companionship of Charlotte Adcock.

Special thanks to Noah Austin, Stella Austin, Guy Austin, Roger Austin, Sue Austin, Margaret Adcock, James Montgomery, Tim Turner, Kristy, Prof G, Prof C and his team, and those who understand the extra symbolism of the cover image. Thanks to Katie Gallof at Bloomsbury for her enthusiasm and support from the start of this project, Erin Duffy and Susan Krogulski, also at Bloomsbury, for advice.

Finally, thanks to Tim Jordan, Frank Krutnik and Matilda Mroz at the University of Sussex; to Kirsi Hatara, Eevi Kareinen and Haije Tulokas at Sputnik Oy for help with illustrations; to Jake Garriock at Curzon/Artificial Eye; and to all the contributors who made this book happen.

Thomas Austin

The cover image for this book, taken from Mies vailla menneisyytt (The Man Without a Past, 2002), captures the arresting moment when the protagonist M (Markku Peltola), having been violently beaten and robbed, then pronounced dead by a doctor, rises from his hospital bed to resume his life but as a homeless amnesiac. By the end of the film, this penniless Lazarus has found a place to live in a marginal but supportive community, a romantic partner and a job as manager of a rock band. Like many of Aki Kaurismkis films,