FINNISH ANIMATION: Marjut Rimminen

from Marjut Rimminem's 'Stain', 1991

currently I'm scouring finnish animation, looking for notable names, companies and what the er, 'scene' over there is.

Marjut Rimminen lives in London and is, "the most famous Finnish animator" (I glimpsed somewhere I can't remember that talked about Finnish animation as an incredibly niche thing and perhaps Marjut's emigration to London at the age of 30 is evidence of this: though that was a long time ago and I need to do some more investigation).


I suppose the fact that she is a notable player in European animation and I had not even heard of her says something: and it's not just me. Although Many Happy Returns is beautiful and eerily done it has a disappointingly paltry amount of youtube views (that said, I'm sure there's plenty of master animators in Europe and more eastern stretches that suffer the same problem). But she works in a variety of different ways, always with these beautiful gritty textures and more subdued colours. 


And of her recent foray into picture books she says:


"After all the years of painstaking stop-frame animation I have discovered the pleasure of making picture books. Instead of shooting hundreds of frames as in animation, I only need to get one shot of the scene for telling the story."


That's an interesting thing to think about! Is it worth the pain of stop motion, or can you tell the story in a series of beautifully lit, purposefully posed still pictures?


She works now giving animation masterclasses and was the animation consultant for this strange little idea (which I'm very curious about!) I think I need to look into this more.