Croatian film director Veljko Vidak recently spent more than a year in Karkkila, documenting step by step how a new cultural oasis, Kino Laika, founded by Aki Kaurismäki and writer Mika Lätti, grew up on the local factory estate and quickly gained great popularity and a cult reputation.
The end result, however, expands into something greater than the sum of its parts, into a poetic tableau of an entire warm-hearted community – an authentic Kaurismäki fairy tale land and artists’ (of life) collective – that in its own charming way has fallen far from the horrors of modern times, where people still have time to tend their horses, repair their Cadillacs, smoke a philosophical pipe around a chessboard or play a few rounds of billiards near the jukebox.
In addition to the completion of the cinema hall, we will also follow the realisation of the values and worldview conveyed by Kaurismäki’s works in everyday life. In addition to the maestro himself, friends and villagers, collaborators of many decades, and younger colleagues all have a voice, but the real star role of the documentary, seen as the last island of uncorrupted innocence – a kind of almost illegitimate love child of Innisfree and Brigadoon – is Karkkila, the outermost strip of a personal paradise of rushing waters, lush forests and misty fields, a place where dogs still run free, beer flows cool and creativity breeds more creativity.
Lauri Timonen