Torsdag 31.januar CASA MURILO Torsdag 7.februar VALKYRIEN ALLSTARS Torsdag 28.februar BLACK DEBBATH Lørdag 16.mars RAMMSUND Torsdag 18.april EVA & THE HEARTMAKER Billetter kan kjøpes på www.driv.no, Akademisk Kvarter eller i cafeen på Driv. Sjekk drivs nettside for mer informasjon om program og andre ting som skjer. www.driv.no
Retrospective: Peter von Bagh EXERCISES IN FINNISHNESS What do we really know about Finland? Which key dates of Finnish history can we name? How far would we get making a list of that country’s historical figures, celebrities, heroes? More importantly, how is listing names and dates related to grasping a national identity, the history and mentality of a people? How close can we get to Finnishness by constantly reshuffling the stock clichés of sisu, sauna and alcohol? Enter Peter von Bagh, internationally acclaimed film scholar, film critic, and film historian, and perhaps surprisingly, filmmaker. Peter von Bagh has been making films since 1968, many of them about significant events in Finnish history, some about Finnish places and Finnish people, about Finnish music, Finnish art, Finnish sports. He even made one about a Finnish film festival. Yes: Finnish reality is almost always the point of departure for von Bagh’s films, still it would be wrong to say he is a documentarian. He is a philosopher of history, though this never undermines the truly cinematic qualities of his films. Using clips and scenes from newsreels, features, records and recordings, occasionally supplemented with his own narration, sometimes including filmed interviews, the facts are not his main concern. Von Bagh traffics in dreams, nostalgia, melancholy, exploring the beauty in the voice of the incomparable Olavi Virta, the sublime running of the one and only Paavo Nurmi, and the artistic contributions of several generations of the Aho family. Von Bagh’s only journey into fiction is a joyful farce. Pertti Ylermi Lindgren, real-life swindler, perpetrator of true crimes against women’s hearts and souls, plays himself in some scenes in the count. But since these scenes are clipped together with documentation of his (real) life as a pop singer, we are lost at sea, and we’re loving it. Finally, For those who would like to test out their understanding of Finnishness, we offer an event patented by our sister film festival in Sodankylä: karaoke in the cinema, a communal sing-along to the Finnish musical suuri sävelparaati from 1959. In Finnish of course. We are indebted to German film critic Olaf Möller, who originally curated a retrospective of Peter von Bagh’s work for the International Film Festival of Rotterdam in 2012. His inspired essay on Peter von Bagh for the Rotterdam catalogue constitutes the basis of this text, and he has contributed the notes for each PvB film in this catalogue. We would also like to thank the Finnish Film Archives (KAVA) and YLE for their cooperation. FILmOgRAPHY (uTVALg/SELECTION): 1968 POCKPICKET (CO-DIRECTED) 1971 KREIVI / THE COUNT 1972 OLAVI VIRTA 1978 PAAVO NURMI – MIES JA AIKA / PAAVO NURMI – THE MAN AND HIS TIMES 1978 SINITAIVAS – MATKA MUISTOJEN MAISEMAAN / BLUE SKY – JOURNEY INTO THE LAND OF MEMORIES 1980 VUOSI 1952 / THE YEAR 1952 1988 FAAROIDEN MAA / LAND OF THE PHARAOHS 1992 VIIMEINEN KESÄ 1944 / THE LAST SUMMER 1944 1993 VUOSI 1939 / THE YEAR 1939 2008 HELSINKI, IKUISESTI / HELSINKI, FOREVER 2011 SODANKYLÄ, IKUISESTI: ELOKUVAN VUOSISAT / SODANKYLÄ, FOREVER: THE CENTURY OF CINEMA 2011 LASTUJUA – TAITEILIJASUVUN VUOSISATA / SPLINTERS – A CENTURY OF AN ARTISTIC FAMILY 101
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