Estonian Ambassador to France Presented Filmmaker and Publicist Vladimir-Georg Karassev-Orgusaar With Order of the White Star IV Class

08.04.2011

No. 118-E

At the Estonian Embassy in Paris on Friday, 8 April, Ambassador of the Republic of Estonia to France Sven Jürgenson presented Vladimir-Georg Karassev-Orgusaar with the Order of the White Star IV Class bestowed upon him by President Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

Vladimir Georg Karassev-Orgussaar was born in Tallinn in 1931. After studying literature and history at Tomsk University in Russia, he studied cinematography at the State Institute of Cinematography in Moscow. After returning to Estonia, Karassev-Orgussaar made primarily non-fiction films for Tallinnfilm and Eesti Telefilm in the 1960s. From 1968 he belonged to the editorial board of Eesti Telefilm. During that same period he also worked part-time in the film criticism department of the weekly paper “Sirp ja Vasar”. After his fictional 1971 film “Lindpriid” was banned, which was followed by a ban on cinema work for him, Karassev-Orgusaar pursued political refuge in France during a trip to the Cannes Film festival in 1976. He has lived in Paris ever since.

In 1981 Karassev-Orgussaar began working with the editors of the Estonian- and Russian-language programmes on Radio Free Europe and continued to do so for one and a half decades. One year later, with the help of Free Europe, he initiated the idea of observing Fallen Freedom Fighters, Day on 27 March, the day that Jüri Kukk, an Estonian researcher jailed for political reasons, died. In 1990 Vladimir Georg Karassev-Orgussaar was chosen as a member of the Estonian Congress, and for the next two years he was the representative of the Estonian Committee in France. As the founder and co-president of the Association France–Estonie — Pont de la Démocratie, which was created in 1991, Vladimir Georg Karassev-Orgussaar has actively helped to introduce Estonia in France over the years.

Additional information:
Estonian Embassy in France
Sigrid Kristenprun
Press and public affairs officer
Tel: (33) 1 56 62 22 00

www.est-emb.fr

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