Treasures of Finnish Cinema
13.05.-03.06.2025
This spring, Institut finlandais presents a series of screenings with treasures of Finnish cinema, created in collaboration with Irmeli Debarle. These black-and-white melodramas take us on a journey to the Finnish countryside of the 1930s and 1940s, every Tuesday evening from May 13 to June 3, 2025.
The series opens with a film by Valentin Vaala based on the book by Nobel Prize laureate in literature F.E. Sillanpää, and continues with a retrospective of the work of Teuvo Tulio, master of the Finnish melodrama.
Valentin Vaala and Teuvo Tulio were close friends and threw themselves into making films together in the late 1920s, when Vaala was 18 years old and Tulio was only 15.
Valentin Vaala impressed the film industry of the time with his modern and international approach. He based his films on classic Finnish literature, and his style was characterized by lightness, entertainment and unabashed ideology. He also brought some of the biggest film stars of the 1930s and 1940s into the industry and was a so-called “star maker” in Finland.
Cult film director Teuvo Tulio, one of the most colorful and controversial figures in Finnish cinema, became the authentic representative of Finnish melodrama. He introduced a new, bolder image of women full of passion, madness, fear, and possessiveness to the Finnish audiences in the 1940s.
In this retrospective, we delve into Tulio’s melodrama and characteristic visual storytelling, as well as a new way of portraying women in Finnish cinema at the time.
PROGRAMME:
Tuesday 13 May 2025 at 7pm
People in the Summer Night (1948)
Ihmiset suviyössä
Directed by Valentin Vaala
63 min, VOSTFR
The rural drama Ihmiset suviyössä (1948), directed by Valentin Vaala, is adapted from the eponymous novel by F. E. Sillanpää. The film portrays human destinies in Häme on a flowery summer night, filled with joie de vivre and budding love, but also with violence and sadness. In Sillanpää’s style, Finnish nature is depicted as a romantic poem of majestic forests and silvery lakes, punctuated by the delicate, subtle alternation of day and night.
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Tuesday 20 May 2025 at 7pm
The Song of the Scarlet Flower (1938)
Laulu tulipunaisesta kukasta
Directed by Teuvo Tulio
1 h 50 min, VOSTFR
The melodrama Song of the Scarlet Flower (1938), directed by Teuvo Tulio, is based on the eponymous novel by Johannes Linnankoski, which has been adapted for the cinema several times. Olavi, heir to the Koskela house, quarrels with his parents when he cannot marry Elli, the maid. He goes on to work as a carpenter and seduces one girl after another until Kyllikki, the daughter of Moisio’s wealthy family, makes him reflect on the consequences of his frivolity.
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Tuesday 27 May 2025 at 7pm
The Way You Wanted Me (1944)
Sellaisena kuin sinä minut halusit
Directed by Teuvo Tulio
1 h 37 min, VOSTFR
The Way You Wanted Me (1944), directed by Teuvo Tulio, is based on a story by Ahti H. Einola. Innocent archipelago girl Maija loves Aarne, a sailor who, under pressure from her father, abandons the girl. The abandoned young woman flees to the city where she first gets a job as a maid for Dr. Holmberg. Pregnant, she loses this position and turns to prostitution, without ever giving up hope of finding love.
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Tuesday 3 June 2025 at 7pm
Cross of Love (1946)
Rakkauden risti
Directed by Teuvo Tulio
1 h 39 min, VOSTFR
The melodrama The Cross of Love (1946), directed by Teuvo Tulio, is based on a short story by Alexander Pushkin. Consul Mauri Holmberg, who is shipwrecked on Lighthouse Island, lures Riitta, the daughter of Kalle, to the city with him. Abandoned by the consul, Riitta turns to prostitution until she and artist Henrik Hormi fall in love. However, Riitta’s past causes a cycle of lies and deceit.
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5€ per screening, 15€ for the four screenings → Online reservation
On screening days, Café Maa stays open until 7pm. Audience members enjoy a 10% discount on the menu before the film starts.
Curated by Irmeli Debarle.
Irmeli Debarle is the specialist on Finnish cinema in France. A lifelong student of literature, languages, art history and cinema, she completed a thesis on the director Teuvo Tulio in 2013. Having lived in France for almost 50 years, she has decided to promote Finnish cinema, which is still little known internationally, always guided by the same will: the desire to share. Irmeli Debarle contributes to the visibility of Finnish filmmakers by translating their works and by helping to screen their films at various festivals in France. Among her many projects is La Finlande en 3 films festival, which she has been organising every year for the last 16 years at the Reflet Médicis cinema in Paris, with the support of the Finnish Film Foundation. She translates Finnish films and works closely with filmmakers such as Aki Kaurismäki and Markku Lehmuskallio, among others.