meditations on art and cultural bridges

With a little help from Kaurismaki.

[1] dialectics (with a little Italian lesson in subtitles)

[2] If Finns and Russians can have so much fun, Finland being the last country to swiftly repulse a Russian invasion, indeed the last country to repel swiftly a superpower invasion... why can't we have such as this below between Australia and Indonesia or Vietnam, or China and Japan? Some background on the Leningrad Cowboys and the Red Army Choir here.

And for those who fear Arabs as a class of people, meet Yasmine Hamdan.

and if you have time enjoy the movie in which that scene takes place, near the end

Jim Jarmusch made the film, surely America's answer to Finland's Kaurismaki

— Everyone speaks slowly, so the Spanish subtitles are an excellent language lesson

With Tilda Swinton and John Hurt, not really your average vampire movie,
but a voyage into the jadedness of world-wandering people who live a very very long time...

 

humanism, humour, art, cinema: Kaurismaki

We have a film by Aki Kaurismaki coming to the local (Huskisson) Sydney Travelling Film Festival. Kaurismaki is an adventure. A Finnish director who once wrote to the New York Film Festival to thank them for their kind invitation but that as the US Government would not allow his friend the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami attend, he certainly would not be able to attend.

The film I embed below, with a collage of Kaurismaki and very intelligent commentary, is a startling reflection on humanism through a very unusual approach to comedy. By Lewis Bond who has other work here.

The film is rewarding to watch in a time of world grimness. Bond notes that many dramas unfold the journey of people into tragedy; Kaurismaki's protagonists begin in deep trouble and the trouble becomes comprehensive. So goes the world. Here smile about it, enter a mindstate that might lead to thoughts of betterment.

and this is the movie of grand perspective coming to little Huskisson

oh and um, wonder of wonders, dubbed in Italian, some English
Leningrad Cowboys go America
for which Italian language not essential,
confirming Kaurismaki's view of conversation first video above...