Virke Lehtinen
| Virke Lehtinen | |
|---|---|
| Born |
5 August 1940 Tampere, Finland |
| Occupation | Film director, producer, [Director of photography] and screenwriter |
| Awards |
Silver Bear for Best Short Film (Berlin International Film Festival) 1962 Tori (film) |
Virke Lehtinen (born 5 August 1940 in Tampere, Finland) is a Finnish film director, film producer, actor and screen writer.
He is also the main owner of Filmiryhmä Oy - Finnish film production company, started in 1964.
Lehtinen's first breakthrough film project was the short film Tori (film) (The Market Place) in 1962. It was the incentive which gave the start for the carriers of director Erkko Kivikoski, then 27 and cinematographer Virke Lehtinen, 22, with experienced editor Juho Gartz, then 30. Their film won Silver Bear for Best Short Film of the Berlin International Film Festival. Next year the trio made the feature Kesällä kello 5 (film) (This Summer at Five), which got an enormous popularity and personal awards for the trio and entered 14th Berlin International Film Festival.
Kivikoski and Gartz wanted to start a production company of their own, and they wanted along Virke Lehtinen, who had left for Paris. His aim was to study film making and hopefully enter Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC). He could however not find the famous film school, but he was lucky to make acquaintance with some excellent film makers.
First and foremost Virke Lehtinen appreciates, that director Jean-Paul Le Chanois gave the young film maker a great opportunity to accompany his working. This strengthened Lehtinen’s professional attitude and his ever lasting love for the French art of film making - and above all it made him to understand the warm humanism Le Chanois had.
Lehtinen had to return Helsinki because Kivikoski wanted a third success. The new film was a commercial flop, however. The trio started their common production company. They gave it the name Filmiryhmä Oy ("Film team") - because the name depicts their ideals of working as a team, and the name was modern then. Company didn’t get any financing for a new feature, and when the trio tried to get financiers for their short films, it was falling into boycott of the big traditional production companies.
...
Wikipedia