| Birth Date: | 1943 8, df=yes |
| Birth Place: | Helsinki, Finland |
| Occupation: | Film Historian, Director |
Kari Peter Conrad von Bagh (29 August 1943 – 17 September 2014) was a Finnish film historian and director. Von Bagh worked as the head of the Finnish Film Archive, editor-in-chief of Filmihullu magazine and co-founder and director of the Midnight Sun Film Festival.[1] From 2001, he was the artistic director of the film festival Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. Von Bagh was a member of the jury in the competition category of 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
Films directed by Bagh have been screened at prestigious international forums, including an extensive retrospective of his works at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and Festival Internacional de Cine Independente in Buenos Aires in 2012, and at the Tromsø International Film Festival in 2013.
Bagh's wrote approximately 40 non-fiction books, mostly on cinema, and some 60 films for both the cinemas and television include his internationally successful films Helsinki, Forever (2008) and Sodankylä, Forever (2010–2011), a documentary series of the first twenty-five years of the Midnight Sun Film Festival. He died in 2014 at the age of 71.[2]
Born to a German Russian psychiatrist father,[3] [4] Bagh graduated from the Oulun lyseo Upper Secondary School in 1961. He took his Master of Arts degree at University of Helsinki in 1970 with a combination of subjects consisting of Theoretical Philosophy, Sociology, Aesthetics, and Literature. His dissertation Elokuvalliset keinot ja niiden käyttö: Alfred Hitchcockin Vertigo was later published as a book (Helsingin yliopisto, 1979). Bagh took his degree of Doctor of Social Sciences in 2002. His doctoral thesis Peili jolla oli muisti – elokuvallinen kollaasi kadonneen ajan merkityksien hahmottajana (1895–1970), (SKS 2002) examines the fundamental units of cinematic expression, montage and collage.
Bagh has taught and lectured at several schools and universities, e.g. as Professor of Film History at Aalto University since 2001. He has also compiled a textbook on cinema, Salainen muisti (Sanoma Pro, 2009), to be used in schools.
Bagh's focus is the history of everyday Finnish life: images of details conveying something of what the life of the Finns has been like. The films Vuosi 1952 ("The Year 1952", 1980), Viimeinen kesä 1944 ("The Last Summer 1944", 1992), Helsinki, Forever (2008) and Splinters – A Century of an Artistic Family (2011) provide a magnifying glass for peeking at history, defined by a certain moment in time, location, or an artistic family.
Von Bagh made dozens of films for television, including portraits of prominent Finns from different fields (Tapio Rautavaara in Tapsa – Slashes from a Rover's Life, 1980; Paavo Nurmi, 1978; Otto Ville Kuusinen in Mies varjossa, 1994), musicians (Olavi Virta, 1972; Suomi Pop, 1984), actors (Tauno Palo, 1981) and film directors (Edvin Laine, 2006; Mikko Niskanen, 2010).
Von Bagh's fiction films are often documentary in their own way: the main character of The Count (1971) is Pertti Ylermi Lindgren, a con man elevated to nobility by the tabloid papers. Pockpicket (1968) is a variation on Robert Bresson's Pickpocket (1959). In it, an estranged young man attempts to instil tension into his life by slipping banknotes into the wallets of the city-dwellers.
As a scriptwriter, Von Bagh has participated in the making of Risto Jarva's Time of Roses (1969), Rally (1970) and When the Heavens Fall.. (1972).
Von Bagh's literary production includes almost 40 books of non-fiction. In 2007, von Bagh received the Ministry of Education and Culture, Finland's State Award for Public Information for a Lifetime Achievement. The same year his book Song of Finland was awarded The Finlandia Literary Prize for Non-Fiction. He has received the State Award for Public Information twice, in 1986 for Iskelmän kultainen kirja ("Golden Book of Finnish Pop Songs" co-author Ilpo Hakasalo) and in 1975 for Elokuvan historia ("History of Cinema". In 1992 The Finnish Literature Society SKS presented him with the SKS Elias Lönnroth Award for Suomalaisen elokuvan kultainen kirja (Golden Book of Finnish Cinema").
Von Bagh's essays and articles have been published in several film books and magazines both in Finland and abroad. The most famous of these are the French L'Écran, Cahiers du cinéma, Trafic and Cinema 02, the Italian Cinegrafie, the Spanish Nosferatu, the Swedish Chaplin, the British Movie, etc.
Up until his death Peter von Bagh worked as the editor-in-chief of Filmihullu, the magazine he founded in 1968.
Abroad, von Bagh worked as a cinema expert for the French non-fiction publishing house Larousse in 2009, and as a permanent contributing editor of the Italian Einaudi publishing company.
Peter von Bagh was also active promoter of literature in his native country, working as an editor and preface writer for the Love kirjat publishing company during 1977–1996. The titles published by Love kirjat, more than one hundred, include translations of world literature classics from Aiskhylos (Oresteia, Love 1991) to Balzac (Lost Illusions, Love 1983, The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans, Love 1991), from Jack London (The Iron Heel, Love 1977) to August Strindberg (Pieni katekismus, Love 1981), to poetry (e.g. Matti Rossi), essayism (e.g. Raoul Palmgren) and detective stories (James Cain: Double Indemnity, Love 1982), literature research (György Lukács Balzac ja ranskalainen realismi, Love 1978), not forgetting economics, military history, and Sigmund Freud The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious, Love 1983).
Love kirjat has also brought several fundamental works of film literature to the Finnish readers, e.g. André Bazin's essays (Love 1981, 1990), Sergei Eisenstein's Film Form: Essays in Film Theory (Love, 1978); Federico Fellini's Fellini on Fellini (Love, 1980) and Giulietta (Love, 1990); Jean Renoir's My Life and My Films (Love, 1980), for which Peter von Bagh has written a preface. Other important Love translations are Elokuva Godardin mukaan, a collection of film criticism by Jean-Luc Godard, translated into Finnish by Sakari Toiviainen (Love, 1984), and François Truffaut's The Films in My Life (Love, 1982).
Besides film literature, Love also published elemental work of other art forms, e.g. Meyerhold's A Revolution in Theatre (Love, 1981) and Hanns Eisler's essays on music (Love, 1980).
The Midnight Sun Film Festival was founded in 1986 on the initiative of Anssi Mänttäri. In addition to Mänttäri, the Festival policy and guidelines were created by Kaurismäki brothers, Mika and Aki Kaurismäki and Peter von Bagh.
The two-hour morning discussions, hosted by Peter von Bagh throughout the Festival's history, are internationally unique items. From discussions with hundreds of guests, Peter von Bagh has selected the best elements for his book Sodankylä, Forever (WSOY, 2010) and a four-part documentary series of the same name. The series has garnered extensive praise at the world's film forums, e.g. at Lincoln Center in New York in August 2011 when Nico Baumbach wrote in Film Comment (Sept/Oct 2011):
From 2001 Peter von Bagh worked as the Artistic Director of Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna. The Festival specializes in "recovered" treasures, previously believed lost or unknown, silent films and restored prints. The screen annually erected in Piazza Maggiore in Bologna at the turn of June/July attracts an audience of thousands of spectators. The Festival audience includes both local cinephiles and international specialists of the field.
Von Bagh also acted as an Artistic Expert for San Sebastián International Film Festival in 2009, the Visiting Artistic Director of the Telluride Film Festival in 1997, and as a member of the Cannes Film Festival Competition section in 2004.
Peter von Bagh worked as the executive director of the Finnish Film Archive in 1966–1969, and as the Programme Planner until 1984. During that period, the Archive's programming gained its present esteemed reputation, and the number of screenings proliferated.
In the speech von Bagh gave at the FIAF (International Federation of Film Archives) conference in Lisbon in 1989 he emphasized: "When I started the Archive offered only two screenings per week. I immediately increased the number of screenings to four. Soon we managed to screen eight films each week. A few years passed this way, and when the confidence of the audience had solidified, we began to screen three films a day." It was a golden era for the cinemas in Helsinki. An example: "In the 1970s Bresson's films brought in more money in Helsinki than in Paris."
Peter von Bagh continues: "Many archives have fallen for easy baits and an emphasis on fashionable films. That is the best way to lose an audience whose confidence can only be won through a patient building process. Officials equipped with short-sighted calculations may find it difficult to understand why a small archive would order a rare film from a distant country for one screening only. Calculations like this easily paralyzes socio-cultural activities altogether. The discrepancy hangs in the air, written in fiery letters: the audience seems to be drooling after de Palma and Eastwood, although an inner voice calls you to screen bodies of works scrutinizing the output of Victor Sjöström and Carl Th. Dreyer...The first screening of Victor Sjöström or Carl Th. Dreyer might bring in fifteen people, but after five years and some more efforts there will be a full house. The preservation prints of an early Yevgeni Bauer film, or Maurice Tourneur's The Wishing Ring (which would be almost nothing in 16 mm or in video) will look just miraculous to any public that comes in – and there will be one once you build a place where everyone can trust that miracles take place, almost on daily basis. --. In the beginning a film maybe a complete unknown but the visiting card it leaves behind remains forever: a wonderful beauty."
In the same speech, von Bagh defines the responsibilities of the archives: preservation of a confidential relationship with the audience, protection and restoration of the classics, and especially domestic films, and supportto film clubs as a common film bank which makes the screenings possible.
Hundreds of radio programmes from 1961, including extensive series:
Sininen laulu (The Song of Finland)