March 2012
The Canadian Friends of Finland present Paatalo – the novelist
Director: Hannu Kahakorpi
By any standard, Kalle Paatalo qualifies as one of the two or three most successful authors in Finnish history. A gentleman responsible for 39 novels and numerous additional books, Paatalo is best known for the “Iijoki” cycle – a 26-volume series of autobiographical novels at the heart of his bibliography. Several of these novels received feature-length screen adaptations in the late 20th century. Whereas these features dramatized earlier portions of Paatalo’s life (specifically, his pre-war youth), the eponymous Paatalo hones in on the period of 1951-57 – the period that witnessed him evolving into the four-barreled belletrist that he eventually became. The arc of the tale sees Paatalo moving from his rural home of Taivalkoski to the Finnish industrial metropolis of Tampere, where his ambitions and accomplishments fully flower and the direction of his life crystallizes in a series of majestic, self-defining moments.
Duration: 107 min, 2008
Finnish with English subtitles
Tuesday March 27th at 7pm