Aki Kaurismäki’s Cinema Kino Laika Is Throwing a Party and the Whole World Is Invited, Including Beer-Loving Dogs
variety.comMarta Balaga Welcome to Kino Laika: Aki Kaurismäki and Mika Lätti’s cinema in Karkkila, an hour away from Helsinki. A place where love for movies – and dogs – meets ghosts of cinema’s past. “One time, I had a 35mm copy of the Lumière brothers’ film ‘Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat.’ I lent it to some cinema and it never came back.
And now, I have forgotten which cinema it was,” recalls Kaurismäki, who, like Lätti, has been a resident of Karkkila, a modest town of 9,000, for decades now. “I have lived here for 38 years and I like it a lot, but we never had a cinema here before.
To see movies, local people had to travel to the next town or even Helsinki. Not anymore. It’s wonderful to offer them this chance,” he adds. “Karkkila has been a good place for us both and we wanted to give something back to this town.
I had tears in my eyes when someone said: ‘It has been 30 years since I last went to the cinema and now you came along,’” Lätti says. “I have been repeating the same anecdotes when showing people around and then I realized they tell the same stories bringing over their friends.
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