Sanni Kurkisuo

Year 1977. Punk and new wave rock'n roll has arrived to remote Finland and a bleak small town Oulu where increasingly odd-looking youths began to appear in the street with a message. Their rebellion speaks to Välde (17). Välde dreams of joining a rock band and becoming famous. He wants to get drunk for the first time, and to win the love of Pike, the most beautiful girl in the class. When Pike wins the Miss Blue Jeans contest organised by the country´s leading (and only) pop music magazine Suosikki and takes as her boyfriend the bourgeois Henri Hakala, Välde puts all his eggs in one basket. He abandons his former self and begins purposefully constructing a new persona for himself. But everything doesn’t go as Välde wanted … The film is based on a novel by Kauko Röyhkä, an author and indie rock musician.

Known as one of Finland’s most prominent rock institutions, Tavastia club celebrated half a century of being in the business, whilst withstanding the challenges of a global pandemic. In this rockumentary, director Antti Kuivalainen takes us through the history of Tavastia, as the club which brought rock ‘n’ roll to Finland.