Professor Risto Orko, who enjoyed a career of more than 60 years with Suomi-Filmi as a director and producer, died in Helsinki on September 29th. He was 102 years of age, and had achieved the rare feat of living through three centuries.

   

Risto Eliel William Orko (he was born as a Nylund and changed his name later) was born in Rauma in 1899. He graduated from high school in 1920 and came to Helsinki to read law. At the age of 34 he started work with Suomi-Filmi, and was made the studio's head of production and its chief director. He became CEO in 1945.

Suomi-Filmi was the most important

Finnish movie production company in the post-war years, alongside T. J. Särkkä's Filmiteollisuus and the Mäkelä family's Fennada-Film. Suomi-Filmi also owned a chain of cinemas and was involved in large-scale import and distribution of films.

   

Risto Orko, an energetic and hard-working man with a gift for languages and a breathtaking span of general knowledge, was the undisputed lord and master of the company. During its golden age, stretching into the 1960s, Suomi-Filmi produced more than 100 feature films and numerous shorts. Orko was active in keeping an eye and a finger on the subjects chosen for production.

   

In the years from 1933-43, Orko also directed more than a dozen films, showing a fine touch for light comedy. He handed over the director's chair remarkably early, citing the need to develop the company in other directions. At least two of his films from the late 1930s (Jääkärin Morsian and Aktivistit ) were banned in the immediate post-war period as being "overly patriotic", but they were subsequently released once more when the climate thawed between Finland and the Soviet Union.

During the Second World War

, Suomi-Filmi had direct contacts with Germany and the German film industry. This did Orko no favours in the years just after the war. However, he had also made many contacts in the Soviet Union during the 1930s, and Russian film-makers did not forget him.

   

Suomi-Filmi was chosen as the studio for a famous Finnish-Soviet joint production in 1959. Sampo (known in English as The Day the Earth Froze) was made in colour and cinemascope with two directors (one of them Orko, though he is mysteriously credited as Julius Strandberg) and a Russian cast. As the only full-length Finnish (even partly Finnish) attempt at a cinematic rendition of the massive national epic Kalevala , it was an ambitious, colossally expensive, and ultimately rather doomed project.

   

The outspoken film magnate Orko was well aware of his pre-eminent position in the field, and he would argue forcefully on cinema policy, often setting himself up in opposition to the prevailing ideas. He held a large number of administrative and honorary positions in the branch, and only formally severed his ties with Suomi-Filmi in 1999.