aki kaurismaki biography

Leningrad Cowboys Collection
Contains: Leningrad Cowboys Go America, the sequel Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses and the concert Total Balalaika Show. Released in the UK by Artificial Eye

Aki Kaurismaki Collection Vol.1

Contains: Match Factory Girl, Ariel and Shadows in Paradise

Available: amazon.co.uk

Aki Kaurismaki Collection Vol.2

Contains: Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana, Drifting Clouds and Juka

Available: amazon.co.uk

Aki Kaurismaki Collection Vol.3

Contains: Crime & Punishment, Hamlet Goes Business, Calamari Union and Bohemian Life

Available: amazon.co.uk

Reviews of most of the movies added & extensive gallery added from all the movies.

Aki Kaurismäki

born: 4.4.1957 Orimattila, Finland

began: his film career as a script-writer and actor in the films of his elder brother Mika, (born 1955) also a film director

produces: his own films through Sputnik Oy, a company he founded in 1987

awarded: the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002 for his film The Man Without A Past; Luis Buñuel Prize at the Huesca Film Festival in 2002

Aki Kaurismäki and older brother Mika are the pre-eminent film making team from Finland. No other film-maker from his homeland or indeed anywhere in the world is quite able to celebrate the lives of such uniquely inarticulate, alienated, unglamorous or misunderstood characters with such style and dry wit. Despite his success he still shoots cheap to retain his artistic independence. His films have a cult following among style gurus, alienated youths and of course Finns, yet are still championed in the pages of cahiers du cinema and retrospectives the world over.

His tale of a Russian rock band touring the US, Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989) has probably been his most visible. It's not his best. Drifting Clouds (1996) and Take Care Of Your Scarf, Tatjana (1994) are the two taken most seriously internationally. Aki's latest Cannes winner, The Man Without A Past (2002), might prove to be his best yet.

Aki made his debut with a modernisation of Dostoyevsky's Crime And Punishment (Rikos Ja Rangaistus) in 1983. Kaurismaki wrote older brother Mika's first two films, The Liar and Worthless.

Drifting Clouds is dedicated to the extraordinary comic actor Matti Pellonpaa, a regular fixture in Kaurismaki's films before his untimely death in 1995. Poker-faced Kati Outinen, a familiar visage in the director's pool of regular collaborators, won best actress at Cannes for The Man Without A Past.

In American and European cinema, passive characters (especially if they are the lead characters) are rare indeed. In Kaurismäkiland they abound, proving that an empty face and a blank expression are just as cinematic as page upon page of hip dialogue.

Critic Jonathan Romney describes the Finn's themes: "Downbeat blue-collar realism, depression, absurdist farce and rock and roll". If you also said overgrown teenage anti-heroes consuming inordinate amounts of vodka, smoking incessantly and staring into space for long periods, you could only mean one man. Others have even pointed to a latent 'death wish' in his work - in his second feature, Calamari Union (1985), eighteen men take a journey across Helsinki by subway and perish one by one, a plot the Finn rationalised with a belief that 'dying is more poetic than going to jail'. This view is unapparent in his upbeat later work, however.

Aki and older brother Mika feasted on a diet of three films a day at the Finnish Film Archive where they worshipped Godard, Ozu, and American Film Noir. Writer Peter Cowie sums them up thus: "they showed a scant disrespect for all things reputable and a passionate respect for all things disreputable".

Jim Jarmusch could be described as Kaurismäki's cinematic alter-ego. Jarmusch makes a cameo appearance in Leningrad Cowboys Go America and uses Helsinki as one of the locations in his film Night On Earth.

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Aki Kaurismaki Dvd Boxsets now released in the UK (Nov 2007)

Leningrad Cowboys Collection
Contains: Leningrad Cowboys Go America, the sequel Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses and the concert Total Balalaika Show. Released in the UK by Artificial Eye

Aki Kaurismaki Collection Vol.1

Contains: Match Factory Girl, Ariel and Shadows in Paradise

Available: amazon.co.uk

Aki Kaurismaki Collection Vol.2

Contains: Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana, Drifting Clouds and Juka

Available: amazon.co.uk

Aki Kaurismaki Collection Vol.3

Contains: Crime & Punishment, Hamlet Goes Business, Calamari Union and Bohemian Life

Available: amazon.co.uk

kaurismäki address

aki kaurismäki
c/o sputnik oy
museokatu 13a
00100 helsinki
finland

kaurismäki wares

kaurismäki 4 dvd boxset

aki kaurismäki
(finnish) 4 dvd boxset

region 2 (europe including uk). 2005

subtitles: english, swedish, norwegian, german.

full list of movies contained in the boxset:

i hired a contract killer (1990) / juha (1999) / hamlet liikemaailmassa (1987) / boheemielämää (1992)

a real collector's item
(2005)

buy: dvd set (uk)

kaurismäki wares

buy @ amazon

aki kaurismaki
total balalaika show
leningrad cowboys / red army legendary helsinki concert.
2002.
buy: dvd (germany)

movie soundtrack
1990.
buy: cd

aki kaurismaki
the match factory girl
movie
1993

buy: video (us)

aki kaurismaki
i hired a contract killer / the match factory girl
double movie set
1990

buy: video (uk)
buy: video (germany)

aki kaurismaki
la vie de boheme
movie
1993

buy: video (us)

aki kaurismaki
ariel
movie
1993

buy: video (us)

aki kaurismaki
ariel / hamlet goes business
double movie set
1987
buy: video (uk)
buy: video (germany)

aki kaurismaki
drifting clouds
movie
1996.

buy: video (uk)
buy: video (germany)

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