Midsummer Night's Tango

Germany, Argentina, Finland | 2013 | 84 min | Dir. Viviane Blumenschein

Tango is THE folk music of the Finnish people. Although it is unexpected for the quiet Finns, but dancefloors can be found everywhere, revealing their hidden passion. Tango belongs to Finland like sauna and skiing. Fin-Tango is undoubtedly the Finns' favorite music, especially amongst the rural population.

The documentary film Midsummer Night's Tango follows the trace of Finnish Tango from the viewpoint of Rodolfo Mederos, an Argentine tango legend who will travel to Finland together with three other musicians to find out whether Kaurismäki is right with his statement that the Tango was invented in Finnland. They encounter the great Finnish Tango singers and composers like Reijo Taipale, Eino Grön und M.A. Numminen, who gained fame in their country in the 60s, and the Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, creator of films, which painted a resilient picture of the melancholic and humorous Finns in our heads.

This documentary film will consist of partly staged scenes with musicians, small concerts and dance evenings, archive material from the 1960s and interviews with Tango singers. The partly reenacted scenes will mainly be the encounters of the Argentinean with Finnish musicians, where two mentalities clash around the Finnish sense of humour.

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