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An important addition to Intellect’s popular series, Directory of World Cinema: Finland provides historical and cultural overviews of the country’s cinema. Over the course of their contributions to this volume, scholars from a variety of disciplines construct a collective argument that complicates the dominant international view of Finnish cinema as small-scale industry dominated by realist art-house films.

 

The contributors approach the topic from a variety of angles, covering genre, art, and commercial films; independent productions; blockbuster cinema; and Finnish cinema’s industrial and historical contexts. While paying heed to Finland’s cultural specificity, the contributors also explore Finnish cultural industries within the broader context of international political, economic, artistic, and industrial developments. Together, they skillfully depict an ever-changing national film culture that plays a dynamic role in the global cinematic landscape. The Directory of World Cinema: Finland will therefore expand not only global interest in Finnish cinema but also the parameters within which it is discussed.

Discussion of Hollywood film has dominated much of the contemporary dialogue on ecocriticism and the cinema—until now. With Transnational Ecocinemas, the editors open up the critical debate to look at a larger variety of films from many different countries and cultures. By foregrounding these films with their economic and political contexts, the contributors offer a more comprehensive and nuanced look at the role of place in ecocinema. The essays also interrogate proposed global solutions to environmental issues by presenting an ecocritical perspective on different film cultural considerations from around the globe.

Part of Intellect’s World Film Locations series, World Film Locations: Helsinki explores the relationship between the city, cinema, and Finnish cultural history. Cinematic representations of Helsinki range from depictions of a northern periphery to a space of cosmopolitanism, from a touristic destination to a substitute for Moscow and St. Petersburg during the Cold War. The city also looks different depending on one’s perspective, and World Film Locations: Helsinki illustrates this complexity by providing a visual collection of cinematic views of Helsinki.

This cinematic city is a collective work where individual pieces construct a whole, and one which we, as viewers, then shape according to our perspectives. The contributors emphasize the role of the city in identity and cultural politics throughout Finnish film history and its central role as the locus for negotiating Finland’s globalization.