Cinema of Finland

Cinema of Finland
Finnkino Plaza, a multiplex movie theater in Oulu
No. of screens	283 (2011)[1]
• Per capita	5.9 per 100,000 (2011)[1]
Main distributors	SF Film 31.0% The Walt Disney Company 24.0% Finnkino 16.0%[2]
Produced feature films (2011)[3]
Fictional	26 (61.9%)
Animated	2 (4.8%)
Documentary	14 (33.3%)
Number of admissions (2011)[5]
Total	7,144,447
• Per capita	1.6 (2012)[4]
National films	1,230,102 (17.2%)
Gross box office (2011)[5]
Total	€65 million
National films	€10.6 million (16.3%)

The Finnish cinema has a long history, with the first public screenings starting almost as early as modern motion picture technology was invented (the first screening in the world was in 1895, in Finland in 1896). It took over a decade before the first Finnish film was produced and screened in 1907. After these first steps of Finnish cinema, the progress was very slow. After 1907 there were two periods (1909–1911 and 1917–1918) when no Finnish films were produced. This was partly caused by the political situation, as Finland held a status as an autonomous part of the Russian Empire and was thus influenced by the worldwide political situation.

In 1917 Finland became an independent country and in 1918 there was a civil war. After the political situation had settled and stabilized, Finnish society and its cultural life began to develop. This was very clear with cinematic arts. More films were produced and they became an important part of Finnish society. The culmination of this development came soon after the silent era, around the 1940s and 1950s, when three major studios were producing films and competing for the market. When society changed in the 1960s, partly because of political trends and partly because of new forms of entertainment, like television, the appeal of films was threatened, practically all studios were closed, and films became political and too artistic for the masses, as commercial production was considered a thing of the past and distasteful. Few filmmakers were opposed to this development, and kept producing popular films that were bashed by the critics but loved by the people.

The most significant Finnish films include The Unknown Soldier, directed by Edvin Laine in 1955, which is shown on television every Independence Day.^[6] Here, Beneath the North Star from 1968, also directed by Laine, which includes the Finnish Civil War from the perspective of the Red Guards, is also one of the most significant works in Finnish history.^[7] A 1960 crime comedy film Inspector Palmu's Mistake, directed by Matti Kassila, was voted in 2012 the best Finnish film of all time by Finnish film critics and journalists.^[8]

A revival in Finnish cinema came in the 1990s, which was partly influenced by the new generation of filmmakers bringing in new ideas, and partly because commercial success was no longer considered to be "non-artistic," thus commercial film projects started to receive support from governmental funds. In the 2000s the Finnish cinema is alive and well, with some films and filmmakers gaining global success and many films receiving a good response from audiences and critics. Today, around 15–20 Finnish full-length feature films are produced every year, and the Finnish cinema is gaining new forms from global influence, such as action and wuxia.