CLEANING UP! preceeded by GAS

SATURDAY 1 NOVEMBER AT 4:40PM UGC SHAFTESBURY AVE SCREEN 2

Country Finland Running Time 80 mins Format DV Dir/Prod/S'play/DoP Rotislav Aalto Prod Henrik Niinim 0ki Featuring Risto Puurunen, Timo Kinnunen, Tero V 0nttinen Print Source Zen Media E raalto@uiah.fi

Tero, Timo and Risto are Cleaning Women, the most innocent, unspoilable and to an extent the weirdest rock group in living memory. As we join them on tour it's impossible not to like and admire these three oddballs doing what they love.

Interviewed by bemused Russian reporters, they espouse their philosophy, to 'clean up' the planet, purging it of trashy culture. Their music is to say the least experimental - their instruments are cannibalised from vacuum cleaners, and clotheshorses - the sound they create is tinny, and insistent, but played from the heart. And the small crowds clearly take the band to theirs. In the renowned Club Spartak in St Petersburg, they are lauded to a degree that even the band find strange.

The most striking feature of Rotislav Aalto's film is that its heroes, despite being in a 'rock' documentary, take the music business only as seriously as they need to. If one of them starts getting arrogant, the others level them out. Even the prospect of being signed to a major label doesn't faze them - they know they will be a small fish, out-powered by a marketing machine, and they are determined not to let this happen. As we ride with them through the stunning deserts of the sub-arctic, it's easy to see that these are country boys at heart who will never change. NS

Rostislav Aalto worked as both a cinematographer and editor of documentaries and directed his own fiction shorts before directing his first feature doc, The Shots of Orimattila, in 2000.

GAS UK / Japan | 3 mins | Director Lee Robinson Producer Shoko Hirano Print Source lee@maskomi.com

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