In Search of Aki Kaurismäki:

 Aesthetics and Contexts

Andrew Nestingen (ed.)



Who is Aki Kaurismäki? What explains his successes? What are his cinematic aesthetics? What are Aki Kaurismäki's relevant contexts in cinema scholarship and in film history? The five articles in this volume offer the beginnings of answers to these questions much more than ever before in English.

With idiosyncratic, influential, and award-winning films such as Ariel, Leningrad Cowboys Go America, The Match-Factory Girl, Drifting Clouds, and Man Without a Past, Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki’s cinema has enjoyed critical success and international popularity. Showing the richness of alternatives to contemporary Hollywood, Kaurismäki’s terse cinematic language is embedded in film history and Finnish culture, while also concerned with social change in times of globalization. His films are provocative, humorous, and intellectually rewarding. This special issue of the Journal of Finnish Studies is devoted to exploring the aesthetics of Aki Kaurismäki’s cinema, and to putting his films into cinematic, national, and cultural-political context. It includes essays by Satu Kyösola, Pietari Kääpä, Andrew Nestingen, Sakari Toiviainen, and Jochen Werner:

Andrew Nestingen: “In Search of Aki Kaurismäki”

Sakari Toiviainen: “The Kaurismäki Phenomenon”

Satu Kyösola: “The Archivist’s Nostalgia”

Jochen Werner: “Talking Without Words: Aki Kaurismäki’s Rediscovery of the Virtues of Cinema”

Pietari Kääpä: “‘The Working Class Has No Fatherland’: Aki Kaurismäki’s Films and the Transcending of National Specificity”

    Andrew Nestingen: “Leaving Home: Global   Circulation and Aki Kaurismäki’s Ariel”


                                                                                                          
Andrew Nestingen is assistant professor of Scandinavian studies at the University of Washington. He is co-editor with Trevor Elkington of Transnational Cinema in a Global North: Nordic Cinema in Transition.


ISBN: 0-9737165-0-9
Softcover,  119 pages         $15.00