Until watching this documentary, I didn’t know much about its protagonist, apart from the fact that she authored the famous Unikko pattern for Marimekko. I suspect very few people ever heard of her. The first sentence of the Wikipedia entry goes:
Maija Sofia Isola (15 March 1927 — 3 March 2001) was a Finnish designer of printed textiles, and the creator of over 500 patterns, including Unikko (“Poppy”).
But there was an amazing life before, after, and quite apart from Marimekko. Isola was an artist who wanted to travel, to follow her passions, to be free. Not to spend all her life designing flipping textile patterns.
There is precious little footage of Maija Isola. For the most part, what we hear in the film are the fragments of her diaries and letters, narrated by Päivi Järvinen, and what we see are archive photos, some of which have something to do with Maija. I’m sure the bulk of the material was provided by Maija’s daughter, Kristina, who also appears in the film. It all would be great... if it didn’t make me feel not a little bit uneasy. Which it did, as always happens when being read to someone’s personal diaries and letters. Would Maija approve of it? I think not.
What I enjoyed watching the most are the animated sequences based on Maija’s designs.
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