Read More“There is an immediacy and a presence in many of the letters that is hard for any biography to capture. The reader is drawn into a here and now which become both alive and concrete. Sometimes it’s like a diary, intimate and close to the heart, and sometimes it’s narrated like a novel, you just want to read more.”
The film focuses on her formative years in post-war Helsinki, her fight for recognition for her art and the passionate bisexual love affair that was mirrored in the internationally beloved Moomin books. This is the period covered by the inspiring and revelatory Letters from Tove (which Sort of Books are publishing in Oct) edited by Boel Westin and Helen Svensson and translated by Sarah Death. Casting is in process. Watch here for news.
The upcoming feature-length drama film Tove will be shot in Tove’s native language Swedish and filmed on location in her hometown Helsinki and other places that were central to her life and art.
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The director of the film is Zaida Bergroth, a highly acclaimed Finnish director for which this will be the fifth feature-length drama. She says that Alma Pöysti has all the right characteristics for the role of Tove Jansson. “When I searched for an actress to portray Tove Jansson, I was looking for someone who would have that right Tove-like energy, and who could credibly play a person who created something as amazing and imaginative as the Moomins. Alma Pöysti’s version of Tove combines intelligence and melacholy as well as humour and flirt in a wonderful way. I am very excited to be able to present such an incredible actress to a large audience”, Bergroth says.
Vivica Bandler is played by Krista Kosonen and Shanti Roney plays Atos Wirtanen.
Tune in to BBC Radio 4 at 9.45 everyday this week to hear Sarah Lamble reading extracts from Letters From Tove by Tove Jansson. Episode One introduces listeners to the young Tove Jansson, arriving as an art student in Paris and coping with the misogyny and hazing rituals meted out to novices at the eminent École des Beaux-Arts.
Voice of the Wood
SO YOU’VE REALLY GONE AND DONE IT THIS TIME you are lost in the wood how did that happen? The crazed Scots pines camped all around and blaeberries beneath and bracken shrivelled because it’s October and you stand hearing nothing, the non-sound of one leaf dropping to join its siblings on the ground…
“There is an immediacy and a presence in many of the letters that is hard for any biography to capture. The reader is drawn into a here and now which become both alive and concrete. Sometimes it’s like a diary, intimate and close to the heart, and sometimes it’s narrated like a novel, you just want to read more.”
Two mesmerising archive films taken by Tuulikki Pietilä of Tove and ‘Tuuti’ on their summer island, and travelling in Europe were shown by Club des Femmes . . .
Our amazing news is that we will be launching Special Collectors’ Editions of the original Moomin novels in October 2017: the first four titles to coincide with the opening of the Tove Jansson retrospective at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Four further titles will follow in Spring and Winter 2018.
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