MIRDJA

TV- series by Maria Ruotsala and Leana Jalukse

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Concept

A talented and passionate woman far ahead of her contemporaries in the turn-of-the-twentieth- century Finland struggles against her humble origins, limited opportunities, and the mould of bourgeois expectations to strive for self-realisation as a performer and author.

 

 

The series contains both fictitious characters as well as real-life artists of the era, most notably the modernist painter Ellen Thesleff and the poet Edith Södergran, the first modernist poet of Scandinavia. Set in Finland and France in the turn of the 20th century, it illustrates the stark contrast between the young yet archaic scene of Helsinki and the breath of fresh air that was Paris. Struggling under the Russian empire and the Swedish bourgeois, the life in Finland could be monotonous and dreary as depicted on the paintings by its conservative artists – yet more naïve and pure than Paris with its momentary pleasures, fleeting sensual delights, and exposure to risks – a world that Mirdja, Ellen, and Edith longed for, reading Baudelaire and Nietzsche, following the latest art movements, their deepest source of inspiration firmly rooted in the wild primordial Scandinavian nature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BACKDROP

The art circles of Europe in early 1900s are liberal except for a woman fighting for her voice – education, equal rights, independence – and having to carve out her way outside the millennia-old prejudices and society's expectations.

The society of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Europe is on the brink of major changes – class differences are crumbling, small nations are fighting for the preservation of their language and culture, education is making people more equal. Women as well as lower classes are fighting for their voice – most importantly, the right to vote. Decadent standards, old traditions and dogmas in the spheres of art and literature are challenged while old authorities cling to the established rules. Change is considered even more outrageous if inflicted and executed by women, whose independent thought and creation is crushed by men with unfounded theories of physiology and diagnosis of hysteria. But while the cosmopolitan Paris faces the future and treats its guests to gusts of fresh breeze, life in Helsinki, struggling under the Russian empire and the Swedish bourgeoisie, can be as monotonous and dreary as depicted on the paintings by its conservative artists.