DocPoint x Yle Teema: The Saimaa Gesture

In Aki and Mika Kaurismäki’s film classic, drinking is only part of the story. As Rolf Jacksen famously put it, the nights are filled with “bloody intense nocturnal philosophising”, while a drunken boat circles Lake Saimaa like Mercury orbiting our star. Between live gigs by Juice Leskinen & Slam, Eppu Normaali and Hassisen Kone, cigarette smoke billows and tongues wag incessantly.

The film was shot at a time when bureaucracy did not yet obstruct the realisation of ideas, not even on our cultural periphery. With a single phone call, the directing brothers received their entire budget, 50,000 Finnish marks, straight from Jörn Donner’s wallet.

Operating with the sensitivity of a time machine, The Saimaa Gesture (1981) illuminates a slice of Finnish rock life in the 1980s, glowing with Bukowskian boozing, romantic posturing and irony, while conveying moods that are at once moving, intoxicating and liberating. It is a portrait of a time before globalism flattened culture into uniformity.

The brothers’ camera captures moments of such immediacy that even the great master of direct cinema, D. A. Pennebaker himself might have felt a twinge of pride. The tour stops include Lappeenranta, Mikkeli, Kuopio, Heinävesi, Punkaharju and Joensuu. At the end of the run, a collective rendition of Maamme — Finland’s national anthem — rings out.

Joonas Nykänen (translated by Eleonora Weyner)

The film will be screened at the DocPoint as a free sing-along screening in collaboration with Yle Teema on 4 February. The celebration of Finnish rock continues after the screening with karaoke festivities at Semifinal.