Password: Marjut. The film contains material with rights restrictions.
Finland emerged from the Second World War in a schizophrenic state, having survived two wars against the Soviet Union with her independence intact, but having officially come out on the losing side. The film explores post-war adjustment in five episodes, examining how fathers struggled with civilian life after combat while mothers took control of household organisation.
A charged and deeply personal creative collaboration with composer and co-director Päivi Takala that steps unflinchingly into the charged territory of generational relations, historical amnesia and the secret agendas of the human heart.
At Animateka, Kinodvor, Ljubljana, 7 to 13 December 2009, in the Finnish focus programme
Retrospectives
Secret Cinema13 March 2007, Curzon Soho, London: Learned by Heart, Many Happy Returns and Some Protection, followed by a conversation with Gareth Evans; organised by animate! and the Finnish Institute
Learned by Heart, Some Protection: Annabelle Honess Roe, Animated Documentary2013, Palgrave Macmillan. Learned by Heart is a case study of the chapter Animated Memories (pages 146 to 150 and 154 to 155): the film "disrupts any simple understanding of its superficially nostalgic aesthetic as reactionary or sentimental", and the afterword returns to how "Rimminen reconciles her childhood with the social evolution of Finland" (169). Some Protection is placed in the Blind Justice series (page 13); Marjut is among the filmmakers the book thanks for interviews
Learned by Heart: Paul Wells, Never Mind the Bollackers: Here's the Repositories, Sites and Archives in Nonfiction Animation, in Jonathan Murray and Nea Ehrlich (eds), Drawn from Life: Issues and Themes in Animated Documentary Cinema2018, Edinburgh University Press, pages 114 to 116, drawing on Wells's own 2007 interview with Marjut: the film is "an exploration of post-Second World War Finland seen through the perception of a young girl, but also the specific form of perception in the moment as it is later remembered", and "even more sophisticated in this respect. The film falls, however, between disciplinary stools in a way that dictates only a partial recognition of its achievements"
Learned by Heart: Bella Honess Roe, Animated Memories2013, Animation Studies 2.0, Society for Animation Studies: the film as an animated documentary that recalls the past
