Aki Kaurismäki
- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Aki Kaurismäki did a wide variety of jobs including postman,
dish-washer and film critic, before forming a production and
distribution company, Villealfa (in homage to Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (1965)) with
his older brother Mika Kaurismäki, also a film-maker. Both Aki and Mika are
prolific film-makers, and together have been responsible for one-fifth
of the total output of the Finnish film industry since the early 1980s,
though Aki's work has found more favour abroad. His films are very
short (he says a film should never run longer than 90 minutes, and many
of his films are nearer 70), eccentric parodies of various genres (road
movies, film noir, rock musicals), populated by lugubrious
hard-drinking Finns and set to eclectic soundtracks, typically based
around '50s rock'n'roll.
In the 1990s he has made films in Britain (I Hired a Contract Killer (1990)) and France (The Bohemian Life (1992)).
In the 1990s he has made films in Britain (I Hired a Contract Killer (1990)) and France (The Bohemian Life (1992)).
