Image: Remembrance As part of the inaugural edition of the Birkbeck Essay Film Festival, the ICA will screen a series of works by major practitioners of the essay film. These will include a tribute to Peter von Bagh 24 March, with a programme featuring Helsinki, Forever and Remembrance.
“In a series of brilliant essay films produced over several decades, the Finnish director and curator Peter von Bagh was able to coalesce and give expression to his long-term, profound engagement with the image, the archive and Finnish history as refracted through its cinema. Despite which his films are barely known in the UK, an oversight that the inaugural edition of the Essay Film Festival very much hopes to address.” says Kieron Corless, Deputy Editor of Sight & Sound.
Helsinki, Forever was a breakthrough for Peter von Bagh, a film that drew on decades of filmmaking, writing, researching and curating. The film added another dimension to Peter von Bagh’s ongoing discussion about the history of Finland, as seen through its culture, icons, music, cinema, literature and politics. It is a unique film in the way it portrays the city of Helsinki through a dazzling amount of sensitively edited images, music and texts extending over several decades.
An exercise in autobiography, Remembrance - A Small Film about Oulu in the 1950s brings together an extraordinary array of archival materials, images, music and other elements to reconstruct the filmmaker’s memories of growing up in Oulu, one of Finland’s largest cities and industrial cities. The film is a very tender and yet critical view of postwar Finland and its present.
The films will be introduced by Olaf Möller and film historian Bernard Eisenchitz.
The Finnish Institute in London supported the Essay Film Festival at the ICA.
Tuesday 24 Mar 2015
6:30 pm and 8:30, Cinema 1, ICAMore information and ticket enquiries here