Irmeli Debarle, expert of Finnish cinema in France, is the curator of the screening programme at Institut finlandais. Her many projects include La Finlande en trois films, the film festival organised annually at the cinema Reflet Médicis in Paris. We sat down with her for a chat about her career path, projects as well as her thoughts on Finnish cinema. 

 

Hei Irmeli! Could you introduce yourself and tell us about your career?

I have had a very long career. I have done a lot of things in my life, and I’ve been living in Paris for almost 50 years already. I’ve studied all my life. How did I become interested in cinema? I started working with Aki Kaurismäki in 1985 and of course became more and more interested in cinema after that. As I had studied other subjects, especially american literature, languages and art history, I signed up for cinema just like that. I defended a thesis on the director Teuvo Tulio in 2013, who is a key figure in Finnish cinema. 

For about 16 years already, I have been organising a little festival at the Reflet Médicis, located next to Institut finlandais. I named it La Finlande en trois films (Finland in three films), although for the last two years I have been presenting four films. I show Finnish films that are not distributed in France to promote Finnish cinema with the Finnish Film Foundation. 

I have also worked as an interpreter, and it’s true that I have translated a lot of films. The production in Finland is not huge, about thirty fictions per year. I have been doing this since the 80’s, so I must have translated several hundreds of films. As each year, I subtitle the films shown at the festival, little by little, I started to have a collection of them. This is why I present them at festivals in France, and I have been all over the place to show them. 

Apart from that, I also have a National Guide Interpreter Card. I used to guide a lot in museums, everywhere in France. I have had many occupations, I am a very curious person and I have never had a fixed job position. Whenever something works well, I’ve always wanted to change it up a little. So that’s my path in a few words. 

 

How did the La Finlande en trois films project start? 

The project started with a dream. At the time, I was already doing quite a lot of things, and I had a dream in which the Finnish minister of culture suggested that I do it a little more officially. So I went to see the people at Reflet Médicis, and then I spoke with Irina Krohn, who was the director of the Finnish Film Foundation at the time. She asked me right away if I wanted to be appointed as Ambassador of film in France. I said that I didn’t want any title, that I would just like to show some Finnish films in France. Some are shown at festivals, but it is difficult for them to be distributed in cinemas. She said  “Why not?” and that’s how it started.

 

Last autumn, we presented a retrospective of Aki Kaurismäki’s films here at Institut finlandais. You have worked a lot with him, what is your collaboration like? 

In 1985 Aki had asked me to translate his film Calamari Union and that’s when it started. I’ve translated all of his films and I am his interpreter when he comes to France. Aki likes to work with people that he knows well, it is a little like a family around him. We worked together on two films in close collaboration: The Bohemian Life, shot in Paris, and Le Havre, filmed in Le Havre. Aki wrote the manuscript in Finnish and I translated it, and we made the film in French. 

 

You also work with the filmmaker Markku Lehmuskallio, whose film The Raven’s Dance will be shown at Institut finlandais as part of the autumn 2024 screening series. Could you tell us more about him and your work together? 

About 15 years ago I was invited to the International film festival of La Rochelle to be his interpreter. He makes films in the arctic world and in the North of Siberia about the Nenets people. There, he met Anastasia Lapsui, who introduced him to her culture. His way of making films is to live with the people and to observe what they do in the tundra. When certain tasks are repeated, he films them. Thanks to Anastasia, he is able to truly show the Nenets culture, which is on its way to disappear. I think that Markku’s films will live on, because they are not bound by time. They are precious testimonies.  

I started to take care of Markku’s and Anastasia’s affairs in France. We have travelled quite a lot together in the French film festivals. When we organised debates, people didn’t want to leave because the subject was so interesting. Here at Institut finlandais, I already showed their films a few years ago, and the audience thanked me, saying that it was great to see these films. And in October at Institut finlandais we’re going to watch The Raven’s Dance, Markku’s first film. It’s a film that has never been screened in Paris.

 

Have you ever been on the other side of the camera? 

Yes, in The Bohemian Life! I was always next to Aki and the actors, since they spoke French and not him. One day on set, he said to me that I would be Samuel Fuller’s secretary the next day. I said “what do you mean, me, secretary? I don’t look like a secretary at all!”. Afterwards, I looked at my clothes at home, I showed a green one to Aki and he said okay. In the beginning of his career, everyone was wearing their own clothes. It was a completely background role as I did not have any line, I was writing shorthand in the scene with Samuel Fuller and André Wilmes. 

Markku Lehmuskallio also asked me once if I could play in Tsamo. I said that I wasn’t an actress at all, that it wouldn’t be good for the film, but that he could give me a really small part. So he gave me the part of Siiri, who only had a few lines in Swedish, because the film is in Swedish. Tsamo is a film that I showed at La Finlande en trois films, and people really liked it. 

On the right, Irmeli Debarle in the film Tsamo, photo © Laura Oja

How did you end up in France, what is your connection to this country? 

I never learned French in school. I come from a small Finnish city called Imatra and there were no French lessons. I was interested in France and I started to take private lessons very young. Later, I took classes at the culture centre in Helsinki and one day I was invited to Paris and voilà, I came here. At the time I was 22 years old and had no idea that I would spend all of my adult life here. 

After my first year in France, I took all the French classes in the language school of Alliance française. Then, I managed to get into university and I was a student for all my life, studying various subjects. 

 

How do you work with language? 

I always have someone proofreading my work. I could never turn in a sentence without it being checked first. I have a friend I can count on, she is great with the French language. She proofreads everything I translate, in a way we work together. I in no way claim to be a translator. I just try to do my best to interpret. Working with Aki, for example, has been easy because he trusts me. I always try to find out what he means, and if there is something I do not understand, I ask. It is important to find equivalent images, even if it is never going to be exactly the same. 

 

What are the challenges of translating from Finnish to French?

First of all, I find that translation is impossible. One can only, in my opinion, interpret. Language is not something mechanical. It is the Finnish culture and French culture that are very different. We might only be separated by 2000 kilometres, but I find that the mental distance is much larger. We never say things very directly in French, things are always a little implied and between the lines, whereas in Finnish it’s kind of the opposite: we go straight to the point. For example, we often speak in the first person in Finnish. In French, this is avoided. So, the French can get the impression that Finnish people are very concerned about themselves. The pace is also so different. Things move more quickly in France, so there are misunderstandings. 

 

In your opinion, what is the place of Finnish cinema in the French film landscape today? How do you see the future of Finnish films in France? 

I don’t know if there is such a place. People often tell me they know a Finnish filmmaker and it’s always the same one – Aki Kaurismäki. There isn’t much room for Finnish cinema. I don’t know if we could say that there is a future for Finnish cinema globally either. Films are seen at festivals, but the audience is always a fairly small one. It’s difficult because there are so many films coming out across the world, and some excellent ones that are never seen by anyone. I think the saddest fate for a film is to never be seen. There have also been such cases in Finnish cinema. Once I translated a film, but the production company went bankrupt and nobody ever watched it. It’s a shame, when you think of the energy, money and everything that goes into making a film. 

 

Would you like to tell us one last thing about yourself?

I am a bit of everything and at the same time nothing at all. A small speck of dust in this universe. There may be people who feel important, but that is not my case. My ambition is above all to show Finnish films here in France, that’s all. If people come up to me after a screening to say that it was interesting and that they got something out of it, that’s enough for me. In a way, I think I’m a selfish person because I always want to share everything. It’s for my own pleasure, I do not do it for fame or money. Our world would be better if we shared more.

Text by Linnéa Backas