Screaming Men (2003)

A film about the art of screaming. Meet the screaming choir that travels from Finland to Tokyo with the goal of getting good photographs of their Japanese audience while performing Japanese national anthem. Meet the choir that screams La Marseillaise at the museum of modern art in Paris even though the museum and the embassy of Finland try to prevent them. Meet the choir that makes parody of nationalism and fascism # and can only be led by a total dictator. The Finnish Screaming Male Choir, Mieskuoro Huutajat, dressed in black suits, white shirts, and rubber ties is a unique choir which performs its repertoire by shouting and screaming. Led by the conductor Petri Sirviö, the choir has traveled during 15 years of existence from an idea in a bar table all the way to the front line of modern European performing arts, receiving the same strong reaction everywhere: the audience has been mostly exalted, and sometimes also shocked and bewildered. The appeal of the performance of Huutajat is based on combinations of strong contrasts. The disciplined and smartly dressed male choir shouts patriotic songs and marches as well as children's songs in original languages. Exact articulation mixes with howling and comical turns into serious without a warning. What makes Huutajat internationally significant is how the choir treats nationalism. Their versions of national anthems of different countries do not always make everybody happy. When Huutajat was performing at the museum of modern art in Paris, both the museum and the Finnish embassy tried to prevent them from performing the French national anthem. When Huutajat was performing in Iceland, where it is prohibited by the law to perform the national anthem in any other version than the original, they had to find another solution # and the audience was amazed. SCREAMING MEN is a film about intransigence and firm belief in your own art. The creative process of conductor Sirviö often leads to conflicts between the choir and the outside world - sometimes also within the choir. The film follows the choir both in Finland and on international concert trips (France, Japan, and Iceland) during a time span of five years. Similarly to the choir, the documentary walks the thin line between the dead serious and the absurd.