In the winter of 1953, Kurkvaara worked as a studio manager in the ballet film Pessi and Illusia produced by Ralf Rubin.

Auteur style of Kurkvaara is characterized by the fact that he usually designed, produced, wrote, directed, shot and edited his films himself, which was unprecedented before in Finland.

It is estimated that Kurkvaara's reluctance to hand over artistic control to others has been influenced by his previous background as a painter.

[1] In the summer of 1954, Kurkvaara started making his debut feature film, Island of Happiness.

His trilogy consisting of the films Dear ... (1961), Private Area (1962) and The Feast of the Sea (1963) about the loneliness of the modern man is considered Kurkavaara's most important work.