A Sense of Time and Place: Peter von Bagh

Scholar, author, teacher, critic, commentator, and remarkably prolific filmmaker Peter von Bagh (b. 1943) holds legendary status in his native Finland and in the world of cinema at large. Famous for writings that embrace film studies (his texts on filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki are especially well known), Von Bagh has also published nearly forty works about his homeland undefined including Song of Finland, awarded a Finlandia Prize for nonfiction. Using mostly archival materials, his layered films construct a social landscape that is local and specific, yet somehow universal and timeless, and his impassioned work for the preservation of film culture is renowned (he serves as artistic director for two unique annual film forums undefined one in the north of Finland, and the other in Bologna, Italy). The series is a collaboration with the Finnish Film Foundation, Finnish Film Archive, Embassy of Finland, and the National Portrait Gallery.

The Year 1939

September 7 at 2:00
McEvoy Theater, National Portrait Gallery

Helsinki was scheduled to host the 1940 Summer Olympics but the event never took place for reasons now well known. “Nineteen thirty-nine was a year of anticipation undefined but of what? The Year 1939 is an exemplary reconstruction of a historical turning point undefined over and over, the images and the remembered stories, the songs and the faces of politicians, celebrities, and millions like us just refuse to add up to a vision whole and clear undefined something is always askew. History is the abyss staring back at us” undefined Tromsø International Festival. (1993, subtitles, 107 

Place 
McEvoy Auditorium, National Portrait Gallery

Street address 
8th and F St. Washington DC

Links 
National Gallery of Art