HUB - Helsinki University Bulletin - Helsinki at ease

Living the motion picture

Aki Kaurismäki’s films simply fiction, or actual fragments of Finnish life? For Jari Sedergren, film researcher, the line between fiction and reality has become blurry, as his Helsinki oozes the same kind of ambiance which can be found in Finnish film.

When you interview a cinephile, the Corona bar on Eerikinkatu is the perfect place. Lengthy discussions on film have taken place at this venue, as it is the natural place to go after seeing a film at Orion, the National Audiovisual Archive’s film theatre.

Jari Sedergren, researcher at the National Audiovisual Archive, sees Helsinki through the people who live and lived in the city. Sedergren, who did his doctoral thesis on censure in Finnish film, thinks that he’s primarily a conversational person, although he’s spent a fair share of time in libraries.

For Sedergren, Helsinki looks like a map of different groups of people and their favourite spots. After a while you start to categorise people according to the places they frequent. Corona, for example, holds a special place in many filmgoers’ hearts, as the bar was founded by famous Finnish directors, the Kaurismäki brothers, Aki and Mika.

Sedergren knows what he’s talking about. When he was younger he worked at the library at the Faculty of Social Sciences, which labelled him for years to come. ”Hundreds of students pass by you each week. When you sit in the library for a certain amount of years, you begin to know people and they begin to know you – I believe roughly 3,000 people knew who I was. It’s quite funny, actually; you become pigeonholed.”

For many years Sedergren was the guy who worked at the library, no matter what else he did. “After I obtained my doctorate it wasn’t funny anymore, I wanted to be known for something other than being the library clerk.”

While studying at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki in the 1980s, the people-interested researcher spent much of his time sitting in cafés and film theatres in Helsinki.

”I saw many legendary characters and situations in a bar at the old Student House (Vanha). There were rock musicians, actors from the student theatre Ylioppilasteatteri and their friends and acquaintances. When you sat there you started to know most of the people. The best about those days was that we formed a group of regulars. Good laughs and steamy discussions about culture and politics were had on the premises.”

Sedergren’s own life and film are becoming intertwined almost unnoticeably, and not only because of his profession. The Helsinki seen in films is fiction, fact and fantasy at the same time: the line between reality and make-believe is sometimes hard to discern.

”When you are abroad you are always supposed to have an opinion on Kaurismäki’s films. My answer is that it’s hard to be of any opinion, because I’ve been living the films the whole time, I’ve been in those movies. And there have actually been situations when the scripts for these films have been written at the neighbouring bar table.”

Sedengren’s suggestions for to see in the Helsinki metropolitan area

After the snow has melted I usually take a daily walk from Herttoniemi Manor to Marjaniemi and back along the coast. Herttoniemi Manor also holds a special place in Finnish film. For Toivo Särkkä, the director, perhaps most known for his film The Unknown Soldier, the manor served as a source of inspiration, and it can be seen in many of his films.

The magnificent film theatre Orion gave the best film education one could hope for; two to three shows a day, over a sufficient amount of years. What started out as a hobby became my profession in due time. I warmly recommend this particular film theatre to everyone. After a movie a great place to go to is Corona right next door, where discussions continue after hours, or Anna K, where karaoke is sung through the night.

National audiovisual archive
Andorra
Anna K

Coming from the northern part of Finland, my experiences with ethnicity and race had been very limited in my youth. That world opened up for me in Vanha’s basement, where I often sat at the “African table”. Tales were told about Finnish men in the foreign legion, who laughed about killing people of colour – an introductory course to Finnish racism, in other words. A couple of years later I moved from the basement up to Vanhan kuppila, to meet people, network and talk about culture. Nowadays the old group of regulars sits at Virgin Oil, just across the square.

Virgin Oil

When I first came to Helsinki I lived in the student dorms in Vallila. In the evenings it was nice to leave the small, crummy apartment and go to Botta in Töölö, where I would dance for hours on the power of mineral water, especially on Sundays, when the Ladies’ Dance was organised. As an active member of my Student Nation I also got free tickets to the Tavastia night club. With these perks the realities of being a poor student felt very distant. In the late 90s, when I lived in Töölö, the other cafés and bars on Museokatu became familiar, especially Kuu Kuu, and I frequently visited Elite on Eteläinen Hesperiankatu as well.

Tavastiaklubi
KuuKuu
Elite

As a student I spent many a year in libraries, and I also worked at the university library for a couple of months as a copyist. In upper secondary school the librarian even took my school report and signed it with the library’s stamp where the parent’s signature should be, with the justification that ”you spend more time here than at home anyway”. The same applied up until the turn of the century, when the time card started to limit my library life. Rotunda is still dear to me, however, although I go there far too seldom.

Text: Mirkka Maikola
Photo: Veikko Somerpuro

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