The first screenings of Love & Anarchy took place 38 years ago at Bio Illusion in the New Student House on Mannerheimintie. The program included films by Lina Wertmüller and Derek Jarman. The event was organized by Image magazine.
Today, where Bio Illusion once stood in the solid stone base of the New Student House, there is a luxury hotel: NH Collection Helsinki Grand Hansa. Because, you know, “an increasingly international Helsinki needs exactly these kinds of projects.” ¹
The online magazine Illusion is the new platform of the Love & Anarchy Festival for all writing and thought related to cinema, society, and the culture surrounding them. Or, to be precise, Love & Anarchy already has a history of publishing film-related articles and essays — but launching a dedicated online magazine is a step towards a more intentional and established practice of publishing film writings. It’s clear that there is both space and need for this in Finland. As the status of cultural journalism and film criticism deteriorates, we want to create more places where people can think and write about cinema broadly and passionately.
And we really are passionate about our films! The festival program is a fascinating convergence, and our texts aim to offer new perspectives on it. And every film in this festival has been carefully selected. They’ve taken us across the world, led to long discussions and complex negotiations, DCP copies has been sent, and program texts has been written. Illusion’s portraits and interviews also give insight into the many people whose passion builds this festival.
I hope Illusion can be part of your festival experience. I hope you can read it on a tram on your way to the cinema or in the theater lobby, awfully hungry and waiting for the last screening of the evening. Hopefully it can still be read years from now—or at least pretended to have been read, even if you never intended to. And maybe it can be talked about after the movie, behind Bio Rex, while a friend lights a cigarette and the September moonlight glows over Helsinki.
Illusion doesn’t dream of going back 38 years, nor into stone walls. Not to any “good old days” or some better time that will arrive by itself. It is, after all, the year 2025—and everything is pretty awful. The surrounding reality often feels like a horrible distortion. Illusion looks at cinema right in the midst of all that.
Let me quote Lina Wertmüller, the festival’s mischievous godmother who gave Love & Anarchy its name. Greetings to wherever you are now, somewhere in film heaven. Lina reminds us:
“After eating and making love, cinema is still the best thing there is.” ²
So let’s watch films, eat, and make love. And write and read while we’re at it.
Enjoy the festival!
Martta Tuppurainen
Editor-in-Chief
P.S. Wertmüller’s Swept Away… By an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August (1974) is part of this year’s program.
Got an idea for Illusion? Get in touch: martta@hiff.f
1. https://yle.fi/a/3-11121498
2. Image 2/1987