Le Havre - Aki Kaurismäki

Le Havre is the second biggest harbor-city of France, however it is also the name of the new film of the Aki Kaurismäki. Those who know the style of the Finnish director will find in this movie the most pure Kaurismäki: the long shots with little movement of camera and the simplified performance of the actors, as well as the deepness of the content which tells the stories of the most unlucky people. Kaurismäki's Le Havre is a critic to the Fortress Europe which treats the clandestine immigrants like criminals.

The director of Le Havre, Aki Kaurismäki

The film, shot in French, counts in the cast with two fellow countrywomen of Kaurismäki, the actresses Kati Outinen and Elina Salo, veterans of the Kaurismäki cinema, who have acted in several of his previous films, as The man without a past (2002) or The match factory girl (1990). The main character, Marecel Marx is played by the French André Wilm, who takes the risk to help an African boy who escapes from the police because his crime is to walk free in the streets of Europe. Kati Outinen plays the role of Arletty, the wife of Marcel Marx. Arletty speaks with a strong foreign accent, which she probably exaggerated by the wish of the director. However, Arletty's accent joined to the fact that she says all the sentences like learned by heart and with a very serious face can make of her quite comic or surrealistic to the eyes of the native French-speakers.

Le Havre had its premier in Finland a week ago, the 9^th September. Translating is always a difficult task and seems to be common that the translators consciously or inconsciously tend to stilisice the original textes when translating. This sometimes brings even to distorsions of the content. This seems to happen in the Finnish subtitles of Le Havre by the substitution of the French term 'inmigrant' by the one of pakolainen (refugee) when translated to Finnish. The difference of meaning is considerable. According to the most of Finnish media Kaurismäki's film is a critic about the situation of the refugee, however at least the original French version doesn't seem to speak about that but about the even larger phenomenon of immigration.

The Finnish term pakolainen refers to the person who scapes from his country because of a horror which threatens his life, usually a war or a political persecution. An exact similar term in fact doesn't exist in English or French, and the term refugee (in French réfugié) or asylum seeker would be the closer matches. As the translator of Le Havre worked also in the production of the film itself, it is also possible that Kaurismäki expressed her -to the translator- his wish to change the term inmigrant in Finnish by that of the person who scapes forced by a thread (pakolainen) to underline the misfortune that such situation suposes to the people who are on it. We will have to ask Kaurismäki personally.

The Finnish Sauli Niinistö invites non-EU-countries to help Portugal

Traslated by Roberto Blanco R.


”Finland has to carry the responsibility of all the things even if there is going to be a change of government”, says Sauli Niinistö, one of the most important Finnish politicians. Picture Kaisa Rautaheimo (S.K.).

The previous spokesman of the Finnish Parliament, Sauli Niinistö (from ’National Union’, the main Finnish center-right party) asks for changes in the help-packet which is being designed for Portugal. He reminds that the details have not been yet decided, so that it is possible to influence on them.

According to Niinistö a problematic situation could be avoid joining more countries to those which will take responsibility of helping economically Portugal. In that case the money that every EU country would have to loan to Portugal would be smaller, included also the participation of Finland, that half of the Finnish citizens oppose, according to recent surveys.

Niinistö proposes that the same system used in the rescue operation in Ireland is used now with Portugal. In that one participated the European Commission and the International Monetary Found, which is composed of 185 countries.

”In the case of Ireland the participation of EU countries got limited to a third of the whole help-packet”, Niinistö points out. ”But the help-packet to Portugal has been designed quite exclusively inside Europe”.

Jyrki Katainen (from the same party than Niinistö), who is leading the negotiations inside Finland about the help-packet to Portugal and the Finnish EU-commissionaire Olli Rehn emphasized that supporting Portugal is essential to avoid a new world-wide financial crisis. However, Niinistö expects larger reasoning.

”Why would only the EU-countries be payers if in fact it’s about saving worlds economy? It doesn’t make sense”, he points.

”Why don’t Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Poland or United States, Japan and China want to save World’s economy?”

Based on an article published in the Finnish magazine Suomen kuvalehti

Article in Spanish about the results of the Finnish Parliamentary elections

Visual present in the capital of the coal

A miror of the past, the remins of the iron era.

Here some pictures of Katowice, the capital of the Polish region of Silesia. This region was not always Poland, it has been Poland less than a hundred years. People from Silesia are also said to be very proud of their region. And it's not about a critic, it's about a landscape with without doubt is often astonishing for the eyes of a foreigner. In this visual chapter about images of the not best known Katowice the few (but big and centric) modern buildings and the larger mothern infrastructures don't appear. This chapter is reserved to the elements of the past which remain in the new EU-Poland, the best example of it are the railway lines, the trains, the iron transportation, which was and is still basic to one of the main reasons of the existance of this big industrial urban metropolis: the coal. Katowice and Silesia have also the atmosphere of the working-class area, which reminds of the unexistance of middle class for decades in that area of the world.

Barriers

Private road

Colour between grey

Big boys conversation

Dirty play