Кари Петер Конрад фон Баг: Финн кинотарихшысы және режиссері

Finnish film historian

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. 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.

Born to a German Russian psychiatrist father, 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.