The White Reindeer
AN INVITATION TO THE MOVIES FROM MYTHIC IMAGINATION
We’re proud to have the opportunity to cosponsor the rare screening of a lost award-winning Finnish art/horror film, The White Reindeer (Valkoinen Peura), at the Plaza Theatre on Sat. Jan. 14 at 7:30 pm, in partnership with the Scandinavian-American Foundation of Georgia (SAFG). Films are the folklore of our times, and this movie will launch an ongoing Mythic Movie series of periodic screenings of films with themes based on folklore and archetypal stories.
The first significant post-World War II Finnish film, The White Reindeer (1952) won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film and the Fairy Tale Award at the Cannes Film Festival from a jury led by Jean Cocteau. However, despite its critical acclaim and beautiful cinematography, this black-and-white film directed by Erik Blomberg only had a limited U.S. release in the late 1950s. Since then it has been largely forgotten, perhaps due to its unusual and enigmatic subject matter blending an art film sensibility, the shamanism/folklore of the indigenous, nomadic Lapland (Sami) people and the unlikely themes of shape-shifting and vampirism which recur in many cultures from Europe to Native Americans.
A lonely and heartbroken Lappish woman, Pirita (Mirjami Kuosmanen), turns to a local shaman for help in reigniting the love of her husband, Aslak, who seems to be more interested in herding reindeer than romancing his wife. But thanks to being born under the curse of the Midnight Sun, the love potion he gives her instead transforms her.
The mythic elements of The White Reindeer will be explored in a post-screening audience discussion led by John Decker, assistant professor of art history at Georgia State University, whose academic interests range from religious and devotional imagery to the zombie apocalypse in conversation with Mythic Imagination Artistic Director, Honora Foah.
In the spirit of the film’s appeal to horror fans, Professor Morte, of the Silver Scream Spookshow, will introduce the movie and also give away several passes to the upcoming Days of the Dead horror convention (March 9-11 in Peachtree City).
Tickets to The White Reindeer are $8 per person and can be purchased at the Plaza Theatre. Proceeds benefit the two nonprofit sponsors, SAFG and MII, and the Plaza, Atlanta’s oldest continuously operating independent cinema, open since 1939, which is also a nonprofit organization. For more information, visit www.plazaatlanta.com and http://www.safg.us
For a wonderful article on the archetype of the white stag, by MII board member Ari Berk: