Thank You Anssi Luoma for making sure that people in Ylistaro, a little town in Finland between Vaasa and Seinäjoki, can watch films in a movie theatre. And thank you to my second cousins, Ilona ja Mikael Vehkaoja and their families and their parents, Marjatta and Heikki Vehkaoja, for giving me such a meaningful birthday gift. I got my own plaque at Matin-Tupa (this is the name of Anssi’s movie theatre)! Now my name is mentioned amongst famous Finnish film directors, actors and other relevant people in the Finnish cultural scene. My relatives also donated money in my name so that Anssi can digitize old local documentaries, including Finland’s former president Urho Kekkonen hunting birds in Ylistaro in 1960.

An original Matin-Tupa movie theatre belonged to my grandfather’s family. It was burned down in 1959, and after that Anssi’s family (Anssi is my mother’s cousin) built a new one a block away from the original one. My grandfather, Aarne, helped with the electricity and also served as a doorman for ten years. Anssi pointed out to me that when Aarne was watching movies, he used to sit either in the last row’s aisle seat or row four’s aisle seat. Now I know where I inherited my love of aisle seats in a movie theatre. 

As Ilona and myself were talking with Anssi it came clear how important digitalization has been to small movie theatres. Now they can open films at the same time with world premieres because they are no longer dependent on hard copies of films. Anssi gave me an honor to start a film. What a service he is doing to film buffs and the whole film industry. Without people like him, we wouldn’t have movie theatres in small places. 

Photos: Ilona Vehkaoja