Country Blues > Down the Dirt Road

The Other Side of Hope

(1/1)

lindy:
You just never know when the country blues are going to show up on your screen ...

This post is mostly for our main Berlin/Finland connection, Pan.

Last night I watched a film with the same title as this thread, produced in Finland. It's about a Syrian refugee who stows away on a coal ship and ends up trying to get asylum. Good and quirky indie production with a strong story line about refugees from Aleppo.

The director tried to liven up the film by injecting some music from local Finnish performers, and lo and behold there's a National guitar, what looks to be a homemade cigar box guitar (hard to tell), and a bluesy bar band.

Here they be, hopefully all of them to eventually become household names. First, Tuomari Nurmio busking on an amplified homemade box:



Next, Ismo Haavisto playing his National left-handed:



Last, the Dumari and Spuget Band. I like the way the director focuses on the bass player's shoes for no apparent reason except that they're nice shoes:




Pan, please tell us more, are these your home boys when you're in Finland? Looks like there's some kind of down 'n dirty blues scene going on, as there is in many cities around the globe.

And where were you when they were casting the film?

Lindy

Johnm:
Hi Lindy,
Aki Kaurasmaki has some country blues content in almost all of his movies.  In "The Man Without A Past", the hero finds an old jukebox by the side of the road, takes it home, hooks it up, and it plays Lemon's "Crawling Baby Blues".  In "Le Havre", an African teen-age illegal immigrant in France plays a record he finds in the home of the couple who are sheltering him--it turns out to be Willie McTell doing "Statesboro Blues".  Kaurasmaki is really a cool director and I've enjoyed everything of his that I've watched.  Lots of flat affect and very dry Finnish humor.
All best,
Johnm 

lindy:
The only other Kaurasmaki film I've seen is "Leningrad Cowboys go America," which I vaguely remember had Jim Jarmusch, a song from The Doors (Jim Morrison) and a lot of Finnish rock. I also remember smiling a lot, but never really laughing.

I've got a couple of his other films on hold at the Seattle PL, will keep my ears open for the country blues content you mentioned.

L

Navigation

[0] Message Index