Michael Loukinen offers clips and insights from his forthcoming film. Commencing with a portrait of the UP’s diverse ethnic music, the film focuses on the cultural history of Finnish American folk dance music in the Copper Country and its vital relationship to musicians in the Twin Cities that began in the 1970s and continues today (www.upnorthfilms.com).
Michael Loukinen is an award-winning cultural sociologist filmmaker, from Marquette, MI, now retired from Northern Michigan University. His 1980s films were about a Finnish American: farm family and folk artists. Subsequent documentaries concerned the traditional culture and history of Euro-American loggers, trappers, and fishers. A film about Native American and Metis fiddlers led him in the 1990s to document Ojibwe drum groups, wild ricers, bead work artists, and wigwam builders. Now he is back with films: Winona: a Copper Country Ghost Town, Pelkie: a Hundred Years of Finnishness in Michigan’s Northwoods, Matikka (Burbot): American Finlander Lobster, American Finnish Chip Wood Carvers and forthcoming films on Finnish American rag rug weavers and folk dance musicians.
Co-sponsored by Finn Fest USA and the Nordic Folklife project at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the music series features noted performers and scholars of Finnish-American folk music. Register at the link below for this and future events. Links to the virtual program will be sent to your registered email address one day in advance of the event.
RSVP HERE: https://forms.gle/iNE3RNaTMG81pAt57
Although this event is free and open to anyone who can and wants to take part, we do hope you will consider donating to the Finn Fest USA organization, whose hard work and dedication makes events like this possible. If you have the ability to donate any amount of money to Finn Fest to support future programming, please visit their donation page here: https://finnfest.us/festival-financing. Thank you for your generosity.
