Now @ HoweCine Salon: Sodankylä ForeverMonday, January 30, 2012
Sodankylä Forever by Peter von Bagh: A Tribute to the Midnight Sun Film Festival  This film will be presented in four parts:
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Jan. 30 - Part 1: The Century of Cinema -
Feb. 13 - Part 2: The Yearning for the First Cinema Experience -
Feb. 27 - Part 3: Eternal Time -
Mar. 12 - Part 4: Drama of Light Read the Valley News article about this film series!
Peter von Bagh is a filmmaker, film historian, and director of the Midnight Sun Film Festival. Sodankylä Forever is von Bagh's tribute to the force and legacy of cinema, in which he assembles over 20 years of interviews with luminaries such as Milos Forman, Francis Ford Coppola, Jacques Demy, Samuel Fuller, Michael Powell, Abbas Kiarostami, Monte Hellman, and many more. These legends of cinema talk about their influences, censorship and, of course, their love for film.
“Surely the most singular of events in the annual calendar of film culture, the Midnight Sun Film Festival is held every June in the Finnish village of Sodankylä beyond the Arctic Circle -- where the sun never sets. Founded by Aki and Mika Kaurismäki along with Anssi Mänttäri and Peter von Bagh in 1985, the festival has played host to an international who’s who of directors and each day begins with a two-hour discussion. To mark the festival’s silver anniversary, festival director Peter von Bagh edited together highlights from these dialogues to create an epic four-part choral history of cinema drawn from the anecdotes, insights, and wisdom of his all-star cast: Coppola, Fuller, Forman, Chabrol, Corman, Demy, Kieslowski, Kiarostami, Varda, Oliveira, Erice, Rouch, Gilliam, Jancso, and 64 more! Ranging across innumerable topics (war, censorship, movie stars, formative influences, America, neorealism), these voices, many now passed away, engage in a personal dialogue across the years that’s by turns charming, profound, hilarious and moving”. -New York Film Festival 2011
“The backbone of Sodankylä Forever is an assemblage of clips taken from dozens of public interviews with major filmmakers who are guests of the 25-year-old festival. The guests are asked a few key questions and allowed to launch into expansive answers that amount to a declaration of principles on cinema's greatness.
"In Part One: The Century of Cinema, the filmmakers consider how history and film have interacted, and how the 20th century, particularly WWII, was documented on film. A long discussion about war and its effects, from Sam Fuller—the fest's first honored guest—on combat experience to Francis Coppola on Vietnam, may be a strange way to start a film about cinema's legacy, but the theme allows von Bagh to create a gallery of the generations of Midnight Sun guests.
"It's quite likely that there will never be another film that encapsulates the living testimony of such a wide range of filmmakers from the classical Hollywood honor roll (Vincent Sherman, Stanley Donen, Robert Wise) to 60s East European stars (Jerzy Skolimowski, Milos Forman, Miklos Jansco, Ivan Passer, Krzysztof Zanussi, Krzysztof Kieslowski) to French masters (Agnes Varda, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Demy) to American independents (Coppola, Jerry Schatzberg, John Sayles, Monte Hellman).” -Variety
"Peter von Bagh carves a forceful, fast moving, often melancholic but frequently funny essay about cinema as the essence of the 20th century." -Film Comment
VIDEO:
Sodankylä Forever (2010) Peter von Bagh Finland. In English, Finnish, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Hungarian with English subtitles. With Milos Forman, Francis Ford Coppola, Samuel Fuller, Victor Erice, Elia Suleiman, Claude Chabrol, Youssef Chanine, John Sayles, John Boorman, Michael Powell, Chantal Akerman, Freddie Francis, Bob Rafelson, Roy Ward Baker, Monte Hellman, Agnieska Holland, Stanley Donen, Jonathan Demme, Joseph H. Lewis, Abbas Kiarostami, Claude Sautet, Jean Rouch, Val Guest, Sergio Sollima, Vittorio De Seta, Emir Kusturica, Samira Makhmalbaf, Robert Wise, Vincent Sherman, Istvan Szabo, Ivan Passer, Francesco Rosi, Dino Risi, Dusan Makavejev, Krzysztof Zanussi, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Peter van Bagh, Aki Kaurismaki.
Courtesy: Finnish Film Foundation, Buffo Films, and Nosferatu Oy
Ciné Salons will occur on alternate Mondays at 7 pm from January 30 to April 23, 2012.
Programs subject to change without notice.
Date: January 30, 2012
Time: 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm
Location: Mayer Room
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