Ilppo Pohjola

Ilppo Anssi Pohjola (born 30 January 1957 in Keuruu) is an independent filmmaker, producer and artist based in Helsinki, Finland. His international breakthrough was Daddy and the Muscle Academy (1991), a documentary about Tom of Finland. Pohjola has produced the cinematic installations and films by Eija-Liisa Ahtila since 1993.

Ilppo Pohjola works with the vocabulary of film, examining its structural and social elements in order to create a body of work that pushes the limits of the medium's physical possibilities. He works between the narrative tropes of Hollywood and the deconstructive methodologies of independent film. The cumulative bodies of knowledge in Pohjola's works are noticeable for their crispness of conception and excess of information. Given his interest in the formal elements of filmmaking, the content of Pohjola's works are surprisingly physical and sensual, even if assaultive. His film Daddy and the Muscle Academy won the Jussi Award for the best documentary film in Finland, 1991.