By Alex Deleon

The Midnight Sun Film Festival w (known in Finland as Sodankylän elokuvajuhlat) as founded in 1986 by Finnish filmmakers, e.g. the Kaurismäki brothers, and the Municipality of Sodankylä. The village of Sodankylä is located in the heart of Finnish Lapland, some 120 kilometers above the Arctic Circle, where the sun doesn´t set at all in the summertime. The Lappish nature and the nightless night provide the Midnight Sun Film Festival a setting no other festival can compete !

Peter van Bagh on the Job

Let me say right off the bat that the Sodankylä Midnight Sun film festival is the most unique Filmfestival on this planet, and not only because of the total absence of night at this circumpolar location. What makes it so special is the convivial circuslike atmosphere, (many films are actually shown in a converted circus tent), the complete takeover of this town by hordes of highly knowledgeable film freaks, mainly from every corner of Finnland, the unusual roster of special guests and the exceptionally savvy selection of films. Then of course there are the Finnish language signs all over the place that look like strings of Martian computer code with not one single familiar looking word. The name of the Main Street for example is  Jäämerentie, Sodankylä's modest answer to Canne's Croisette. The name Sodan-kylä itself, by the way, means "War Village".

In the past two days two documentaries have popped up which call for special mention. The first is about Peter Von Bagh, one of the founders of this festival who passed away in 2014 at the age of 71.. Von Bagh in spite of his aristocratic German sounding name was 100% Finnish and a national cultural institution. The festival owes a great debt to director Tapio Piirainen, who has put together a masterpiece of a study of this cinema polymath who basically turned the festival into living history with his legendary morning discussions with the greatest filmmakers of the day. (A small checklist of interviewees since 1986: Sam Fuller, F.F. Coppola, Bertolucci, Val Guest, Robert Wise, Kieslowski, Zanussi, Chabrol, Tavernier, Kiarostani, Jancsó, Szabo, Costa Gavras,  etcetera, on and on)

Here is the Wikipedia blurb on Von Bagh which only tells the basics of his story. 

   "Karl Peter Conrad Von Bagh was a Finnish film historian and      director. Von Bagh worked as the head of the Finnish Film Archive. He was the editor-in-chief of Filmihullu magazine and co-founder and director of the Midnight Sun Film Festival. Died September 17, 2014."

  Piirinen's film tells  the rest of the Story in a masterful compilation of live Von Bagh interview footage and now historical commentary by others. While Von Bach was known as a walking encyclopedia of world cinema, he was also himself a filmmaker, prolific writer, radio Personality, family man, and finally -- which emerges in a ten minute monologue by him at the end of the film --  a philosopher without portfolio. This last section with Von Bagh expounding his views on life against a birch forest background could be a complete film by itself.   He left the church early and claimed to have no belief in an afterlife, but our immortality resides in the work we leave behind, he says als he knowingly approaches the end of his own life-- and what he left behind was an enormous body of work not miuch of which has been translated into English. This film left me speechless sitting in my seat for ten minutes after the screening contemplating my own mortality.

What I wonder is that, since Von Bagh's notoriety is basically limited to Finland, and perhaps somewhat to Italy, where he was invited to chair the Bologna Cineteca for several years, whether this film will travel very far beyond the Finnish borders is a big question. But even if he remains famous only in his own out of the way country, those who attended his morning seminars here will never forget him -- in any case, a remarkable piece of work as a biographical documentary film.

Next up: "Brando on Brando" -- Marlon Brando tells it like it was in his own words and images. Listen to me Marlon", by Peter Riley.