Matti Pellonpää
Birth : 1951-03-28, Helsinki, Finland
Death : 1995-07-13
History
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Matti Pellonpää (28 March 1951 in Helsinki – 13 July 1995 in Vaasa) was an award-winning Finnish actor and a musician. He rose to international fame with his roles in both Aki Kaurismäki's and Mika Kaurismäki's films; particularly being a regular in Aki's films, appearing in 18 of them.
He started his career in 1962 as a radio actor at the Finnish state-owned broadcasting company YLE. He performed as an actor during the 70s in many amateur theatres, at the same time that he studied at the Finnish Theatre Academy, where he completed his studies in the year 1977.
He was nominated Best Actor by European Film Academy for his role as Rodolfo in La Vie de Boheme and won the Felix at the European Film Awards in 1992. He also starred in Jim Jarmusch's 1991 film Night on Earth.
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himself
Juice Leskinen & Grand Slam live set recorded in 1988.
Documentary about the life of Finnish actor Matti Pellonpää.
Rodolfo (archive footage) (uncredited)
An aspiring Hollywood actress, on a visit to a charming North England town, has a brief fling with the town undertaker, who also writes obituaries for the local paper. Returning home, where she works as a waitress at a Japanese restaurant, she tells everyone about the handsome "writer" she met on her trip. Unfortunately, he decides to follow her back to Hollywood, setting up the expected light romantic comedy with asides as the newcomer gains experience about the goings on in Hollywood.
Seeker
Bad Trip, a biker who has been freshly inducted into a gang, flees from them after stealing one of their bikes.
Luikki
The relationship between a priest's wife and the renovator crackles with passion. While the rectory terrace is being restored, there is a triangular drama at the fore: a priest, a priest’s wife and a renovator.
Moses / Vladimir
After years of fame and misfortune in Mexico, the members of the Leningrad Cowboys decide to return to their native village. Their former manager Vladimir, who now calls himself Moses lead them on their way home.
Reino
This droll tale of longing and awkward romance follows two misfits - a coffee addict and a vodka-soaked mechanic - as they hit the road in their Soviet-built Volga. Along the way they manage to pick up two women, the Estonian Tatjana and the buxom Russian Klavdia, despite sharing no common language and being completely clueless as to what to do with them next.
Dino
Finnish comedy.
Dimitri
One man's quest for revenge in a post-apocalyptic world
Rodolfo
Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with no publisher, and Schaunard, a post-modernist composer of execrable noise.
Mika
An anthology of 5 different cab drivers in 5 American and European cities and their remarkable fares on the same eventful night.
Harri
Antti "Zombie" Autiomaa does two things well: play the bass guitar and drink. After several months' sleeping on the streets of Istanbul, he returns to Helsinki where he's called into the army but discharged on mental health grounds after adding turpentine to the officers' soup. Zombie lives bleary-eyed in an apartment off his parents' house where his lonely, unemployed father suffers from heart disease. His girl-friend Marjo has taken up with a hairdresser but comes back to Zombie. His friend Harri hires him as a roadie for his band "Harry and the Mulefukkers" then gives him a chance as a bass player. He has his girl and he has a gig, but can Zombie put the bottle down?
Toimistovirkailijat
Sequel to Kuutamosonaatti (1988).
Vladimir Kuzmin
A stranger arrives in Parisian night café where the Leningrad Cowboys are drinking.
Interpreter of Fruktosian
That Kiljunen familys sets out find their two missing family members, who have been sent to Tampere by the Matalamäki boarding school for retraining due to poor school performance.
Räpsy
Directed by Matti Ijäs and written with Arto Meller, Räpsy & Dolly aka Paris Waits (1990) is a tragicomic love story of a petty criminal and a former cabaret dancer. Detective Karisto (Kari Väänänen) releases Auno "Räpsy" Pirilä (Matti Pellonpää) from prison, who in turn has to calve his childhood friend Börje (Pertti Sveholm) from criminal activities. Alcoholic Dolly (Raija Paalanen) takes Räpsy to live in Kallio, Helsinki, and hopes to move to Paris with her in the spring.
Hugo Barine
A political drama set in the fictional country of Illyria between 1943 and 1945, the story is about the assassination of a leading politician. The country, an ally of Nazi Germany, is on the verge of being annexed to the Eastern Bloc. Kaurismäki's TV adaptation of Jean-Paul Sartre's play Les Mains Sales (Dirty Hands) tells the story of Hugo (Matti Pellonpää) who has just been released from prison. Before going to prison, he has worked as a journalist at his party's newspaper. This timid journalist, who uses the pseudonym Raskolnikov, wants to advance in his career and gets his chance when Hoederer (Sulevi Peltola), the leader of the party, has to be eliminated.
Ravintolan asiakas
Anna Kelanen is an ex-model, who just has been released from prison. She thinks back on her life, when she was a rather successful model, and on the things that went wrong.
self
A group of kids goes on an adventure to help their scientist friend
Vladimir (Manager)
The Leningrad Cowboys, a group of Siberian musicians, and their manager, travel to America seeking fame and fortune. As they cross the country, trying to get to a wedding in Mexico, they are followed by the village idiot, who wishes to join the band.
Matti Ojanperä
A lawyer pays a visit to Matti Ojanperä (Matti Pellonpää), a bum living under a bridge in the Helsinki harbour, to inform him that he is about to inherit an American aunt of his. The sum 1,000,000 Fmk would be his, if only he meets the qualifications set by his aunt. He must show that he is capable of 'living properly' and possessing a 'respectable occupation and a family he can support'. Otherwise the money would go to a foundation the chairman of which the lawyer himself happens to be!
Mikkonen
Taisto Kasurinen is a Finnish coal miner whose father has just committed suicide and who is framed for a crime he did not commit. In jail, he starts to dream about leaving the country and starting a new life. He escapes from prison but things don't go as planned...
Gaffer
A bizarre black-and-white film noir reworking of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'.
Guard
A bizarre black-and-white film noir reworking of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'.
When a new man appears in Tuula's life, Jorma does not tolerate the idea and begins to yearn back for his ex-wife. They drift into a situation where both face a big choice that has far-reaching implications for the rest of their lives.
Nikander
An episode in the life of Nikander, a garbage man, involving the death of a co-worker, an affair and much more.
Earless Man
A new ice age is coming to England. All energy sources have been depleted and despair is taking over the earth. The young king decides to use his last trump card before his power collapses and anarchy reigns over the island kingdom.
Not to be confused with any of the sequels to Sylvester Stallone's classic Oscar-winning Rocky, this short film from Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki is actually meant as a parody of the late Cold War-era Rocky IV, which saw Stallone's character taking on a juiced-up Russian fighter played by Dolph Lundgren. In this 1986 send-up, Rock'y, played by Silu Seppala, goes head to head with Soviet Igor (Sakari Kuosmanen) and loses.
Formulakuski, joka etsii kuolemaa
A man fakes his own suicide in order to see how his close ones react
Frank
Calamari Union is an allegorical movie that tells the story of sixteen men all of whom are called Frank (inspired by Frank Armoton) apart from a single confrere, Pekka. Collectively the Franks and Pekka are unhappy with the perceived oppression they face in their district of Helsinki, Kallio, and decide to move to another, Eira, imagining it to be an unspoiled place where people can live lives of dignity. The journey is an ironic one given that both districts are not so far apart. In this spirit, their journey across the city takes on epic proportions with each of the travellers gradually falling by the wayside due to such travails as marriage, work, and death. In its entirety the film is a wry discussion of humanity within a system that regards humans as subservient components.
Sound Effects
Just when Julia is going to finish her horse drawing, her mother goes to the shop and leaves Julia to watch over her little brother Jonni. Then Julia dreams that when she grows up, she will have her very own circus horse, Josafat.
Anssi Mänttäri’s low-budget movies with their intimate content have become classics. In this black comedy that takes place in Helsinki in summer the main character (played by Mänttäri himself) jumps from one bar and bed to the next. Especially vulgar black humour.
Ritsari
Young Alex Sammako has seen his brothers defy the law in a series of deeds that first land them in jail, and then, after they escape and return to their rural home, land them back in the lap of their locally notorious family. Alex wants nothing to do with them. He is in love with Mirja, whose family is not that different from the Sammakos, but who shares Alex's viewpoints and feelings. Not helping matters is a police department convinced that all Sammakos are bad, and the family itself, pressuring Alex to follow in their murky footsteps.
Säikky-Nilsson
Irma Auer (Satu Silvo) is a former call-girl, trying to distance herself from the past. In a séance she is told to be 'marked for death', and is afterward threatened by her former pimp and abandoned by her groom, as he learns about her past. Irma attempts to commit suicide, and resurrects at the city morgue after being pronounced dead. After the incident, she wanders out direction-less, being pursued by the doctor who treated her and also a strange, tall man.
A Finnish adaptation of Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Honest Man
Nikander
An adaptation of Dostoyevsky's novel, updated to present-day Helsinki. Slaughterhouse worker Rahikainen murders a man, and is forced to live with the consequences of his actions...
kiiluvasilmäinen pilleristi
Kapula Kirkasoja
Rex Räsänen
Manne
Manne, Harri, and Ville Alfa are rootless twenty-somethings in search of purpose for their banal lives. After Manne steals a priceless painting from a group of petty criminals, Manne and Harri flee from the gangsters across Finland, while Ville goes to Paris. On the road they meet Veera, an old girlfriend of Harri's, and try to avoid the gangsters in pursuit.
Three young people, two boys and a girl, meet on a Friday evening in an urban post-disaster setting which has brought Helsinki to ruins. The boys' sole purpose of life is to play a Flip-Flop pinball machine.
Hermonsa menettänyt sotilaskarkuri
Set during the Second World War in the Finnish war zone.
Puhelias keihäsmies
TV play about the legend of Lalli.
Fan of Chandler
Talkative, hyperactive young drifter Ville Alfa goes around Helsinki, basically trying to borrow money from friends and strangers by means of an incessant delivery of quirky and snappy quasi-intellectual lines and fabricated excuses.
Jaakko Sammalsuo
It follows a year in the life of a family in the North-Eastern part of Finland. From the gloomy days of winter to the Mid Summer wedding festivities.
Mopedimies
Follows the life of a pauper child Vike Nilonpoika from the early 1900's to the 1960s. During this time he works as a lumberjack in Lapland after running away from the despotic master. He soon becomes familiar with hookers, card hustlers and alcohol.
Hessu, tykkimies
Liisa, a young nurse returns to a remote island where she has spent the summer leaves in her youth. She soon gets to know some of the regular residents on the island, Pekka and Paula. During the summer party the underlying tensions mount. This film is based on a novel titled "Saari" written by Irene Hammar in 1962
Valdemar Leppänen, "Valtu"
A former Red Rebellion leader returns home after being imprisoned for his participation in the Finnish Civil War, but soon finds out that wartime mindsets still linger in the heads of people.
Dances are ending. Last chance for women and men to find someone. Special prize at Tampere Film Festival 1970.
Schoolboy (uncredited)
When Continuation War started in Summer 1941, German soldiers arrived to Oulu. With their charm they conquered women and town boys. Finnish boys communicated with them on many levels: had trades, worked as interpreters, rotated business, spied on German love adventures and fought with each other about the favor of soldiers. In autumn 1944, the war was ending. Germans left Oulu by leaving behind fragile relationships, bastard kids and unfinished businesses. The most shocking of all was the faith of young Jake...
