Cinema Scandinavia Issue Eight/Spring 2015 Preview

news record opening for the heavy water war

The Norwegian World War II film named The Heavy Water War has had a fantastic opening. Since the premiere on the 4th of January, the first four episodes have attracted more than 1.2 million views each, which accounts for a market share of over 60%.

Disappearance

The series is a six part dramatisation of one of the most exciting sories from the Second World War - the Nazi’s efforts to develop an atom bomb and the Allie’s desperate struggle to prevent it from happening.

The Norwegian Film Institute will help out four Norwegian minority productions by providing NOK 6.7 million. They will be awarding the funds to A Man Called Ove, Vallona, What it Was Like Seeing Chris, and Disappearance.

Film and TV Fund launches genre boost

Swedish Film Institute gets Sweden moving

The Nordisk Film and TV Fund has launched a Nordic Genre Boost. This is a new initative aimed at support the development of Nordic genre films and television series on both the Nordic and international market.

The three Swedish region film centres - Filmpool Nord, Film i Väst and Film i Skåne - joined the SFI’s talent development programme titled ‘Moving Sweden’.

The boost will provide development grants of NOK 200,000 for five to seven projects a year.

Petri Kemppinen, CEO of the fund said: “A growing number of filmmakers are developing genre films and TV series that cross borders within the Nordic region and many titles have had successful international launches.Yet financing genre projects, particularly in the development stage remains difficult.”

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four new norwegian co-productions

At the Göteborg International Film Festival, the film commissioner Helen Ahlsson and programme director Christian Wikander informed attendees about the new partners before screening films supported by the scheme. These films were Råggywood: We Will Be Rappers and Guerilla.

Launched in April 2013, Moving Sweden aims to back local filmmakers who want to open new doors and look for powerful stories to shoot in 30, 45, or 60 minute formats.

Cinema Scandinavia

film releases january - May 2015

Bier Directs John le Carré TV Drama Susanne Bier is preparing for her first TV drama: The Night Manager. The series will be produced by the BBC in the UK. Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston will star in the six part series, set to begin filming in the spring. The series follows former British soldier Jonathan Pine (Hiddleston) as he navigates the shadowy recesses of Whitehall and Washington where an unholy alliance operates between the intelligence community and the secret arms trade. To infiltrate the inner circle of lethal arms dealer Richard Onslow Roper (Laurie), Pine must himself become a criminal.

The Night Manager will air on BBC and AMC in 2016.

new digital window for the absent one

In a ground-breaking move, Scandinavia’s film giant Nordisk Film has teamed up with iTunes and the Danish online shop blockbuster.dk to make its biggest commercial titles available for online purchase in Denmark as a new exclusive digital window between theatrical and DVD/BlueRay. Nordisk Film inaugurated its first ever ‘Digital Buy’ in December with Mikkel Nørgaard’s The Absent One, last years top grossing film that has sold almost 1 million cinema tickets.

01 - Staying Alive NOR 05/02 - Men and Chicken DK 05/02 - Storm in the Andes SWE 06/02 - Lovemilla FIN 06/02 - Theo’s House FIN 13/02 - The Circle SWE 13/02 - Ricky Rapper and the Scrooge FIN 19/02 - Itsi Bitsi DK 20/02 - Talvivaaran miehet FIN 25/02 - Reunion FIN 26/02 - People Get Eaten DK 27/02 - Returning Home NOR 03 - Women in Oversized Mens Shirt NOR 03 - The Disappearing Illusionist NOR 03/03 - For Better and Worse SWE 06/03 - Dyke Hard SWE 12/03 - April 9th DK 13/03 - My Life My Lesson SWE 13/03 - The Fencer FIN 13/03 - Other Girls FIN 20/03 - Armi Alive FIN 25/03 - Big Game FIN 26/03 - The Shamer’s Daughter DK 27/03 - Underdog SWE 27/03 - We are the Pirates of the Roads FIN 27/03 - Homesick NOR 04 - The King of Popcorn NOR 03/04 - Leaving Africa FIN 09/04 - The Idealist DK 10/04 - Absolution FIN 10/04 - Detained SWE 17/04 - Viskan Miracles SWE 07/05 - Rosita DK 07/05 - Long Story Short DK 21/05 - In Your Arms DK If you would like to review any of these films, contact us at contribute@cinemascandinavia.com

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Kitchen Stories (2003)

The permeability of the nordic borders in bent hamer’s ‘Kitchen stories’ Words: Kate Moffat

Norwegian auteur Bent Hamer’s Kitchen Stories (2003) tells the story of a post-war friendship between an elderly Norwegian man and a Swedish scientist who is sent to Norway to document the domestic practices of Norwegian bachelors. This objective study prohibits any form of communication between the observer and the subject. In turn, the narrative serves as an interesting backdrop for the exploration of Swedish and Norwegian cultural kinship, particularly in relation to its post-WWII context. Kitchen Stories therefore comes to document a coinciding of two national spaces, where national identity is channeled through the numerous cultural escapades that unfold between the two men. In doing so, the narrative context mirrors the more recent transnational crosscurrents within the Nordic region.

This interaction thus contributes to the complex interrelationship between Nordic national identity and globalization.

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Cinema Scandinavia

Kitchen Stories: Towards transnationalism?

Nature has long been considered a synonymous and irrevocable feature of Norwegian culture. Thus, nature is considered an arterial, cultural and nationally defining marker of Norway’s film culture.

As a potential indication of this films transnational sentiments, however, nature as a Norwegian cultural emblem in Kitchen Stories is somewhat neutralized. We witness how Folke is ultimately all but absorbed into the Norwegian landscape to continue life in Isak’s place. In this sense, the film introduces the notion of the local and the global amalgamating; an aspect amplified through its post-war context, where the nationalistic tensions between the two nations began to dissipate. These historical markers demonstrate how Kitchen Stories has reconstructed itself within a global film culture. The film deals with locally specific themes and attitudes whilst simultaneously mapping out transnational connectivity; Hamer’s film almost eludes classification as a result.

The parochial setting seemingly lost in a wilderness of white, offers few visual or semantic indicators of national specificity. Although the narrative follows a story about an encounter between a Norwegian and a Swede in Norway, the geographical indicators are left blank.

In fact, the localized yet neutral setting of Landstad, the small Norwegian town where the experiment unfolds, becomes a point of national difference only when reference is made as to which side of the road each country drives on. There is thus an elusiveness associated with the setting. One of the key ways the film explores connectivity, however, is through the roads themselves. The roads, although they are not always visible, become a central theme running throughout the film. They become a key component between the spaces and opportunities for communication between the two nations. They are emphasized as a cross-cultural network, emphasizes by Folke’s food packages sent from his aunt in Sweden that literally feed a continuous stream of culturally and nationally significant material between the two countries. Hamer reminds us that despite the ambiguity of this whitewashed landscape; the countries are still very much connected with one another, as the roads ultimately link them. Hamer imposes on his audience a shift from the local to the global, from isolation to communication, and from stagnation to transition.

As aforementioned, although it deals with a post-war environment, Kitchen Stories adopts a new kind of synchronization and expression as a result of its cotemporary production period in 2002, against a backdrop of increasingly significant transnational exchanges. The film doubles up as a metaphoric representation of the culturally significant shift in the exchanges between Norway and Sweden; something that surpasses the quantitative, empirical mantra of the Swedish study, becoming a humanistic encounter rather as opposed to one dictated by nationalistic differences. The interference of the Swedish presence into the sedate Norwegian countryside is perhaps reminiscent of the colonial history between the two countries. Also present, however, is the idea of Sweden’s neutrality during the Second World War. Here the intersection between nation and history forms another integral theme. The relationship between the two men, symbolic of the two national sites, begins to break down upon this brief yet deeply resonant discussion surrounding this rueful historical period.

National boundaries begin to dissipate as the pair grows ever closer through mutual sympathy and a desire to communicate, a factor that is revealed to be playing out amongst the other group participants and their observers across Landstad. What begins as an impartial observation develops subtly into a friendship that erases national indicators. The objectivity of the experiment conducted by the Swedes ulti-

mately fails, instead paving the way for this transnational friendship to develop. By the end of the film, all hallmarks of national identity are deconstructed with Folke literally and figuratively substituting Isak.

National difference and identity instead become something discussed and decontextualized within the domestic space where gender stereotypes are also explored and inverted. Women remain almost exclusively absent as masculinity is diffused within the space of home.

Interestingly, unlike filmmakers such as Lukas Moodysson, Hamer engages and explores national identity through the male body as opposed to the female one. There is an interesting point to be raised as to how gender comes to represent nation and nationality when taken in tandem with the deconstruction of masculinity. The national identity of the two men begins its breakdown within the kitchen. This domestic space of the kitchen and the home in general become the antithesis of the masculine outdoors, the traditional and historical space of nationalistic conflict.

Hamer’s international art cinema and auteur status is believed to have contributed to the film’s considerable success outside the Norden. It gives credence to the idea of a globalized Nordic film culture. This aspect of a director’s successful, international status often cannot be matched by a national, or in this case, Nordic market. Hamer excluded the possibility of standardizing language during the production of the film as he felt this would result in a loss of focus. Spoken Norwegian and Swedish in the 1950s for example would typically have been more disparate and challenging for each party to comprehend. This helps to further crystallize Hamer’s homogenization of Nordic culture. What is also underscored, however, is the idea that transnationalism offers us no greater framework of understanding.

Although transnational cinema is still in the relatively early stages of scholarly investigation, through the very nature of its hybridity, the concept offers us a complex and often paradoxical, fusion of interconnectedness.

The neutral national space that the men inhabit seemingly raises further questions as to whom this film was aimed at, especially considering its success and circulation around other European countries beyond the Norden. The purpose of exploring an intercultural encounter between two different nations may have served as an eye on a transnational audience. Charting an intercultural encounter involves having specific cultural makers decoded, as each nation must elucidate to one another the nature of their separate traditions. In this sense, you could argue that, while the film may appear to be specifically focused on a Norwegian-Swedish encounter, the very fact that therein lies a process of decoding cultural specificity establishes the spectator in a position whereby each identity, regardless of origin, can be deconstructed and explained. This sense of unfamiliarity between Isak and Folke therefore harbours the capacity to appeal to a transnational audience.

Hamer’s international art cinema and auteur status is believed to have contributed to the film’s considerable success outside the Norden. It gives credence to the idea of a globalized Nordic film culture. This aspect of a director’s successful, international status often cannot be matched by a national, or in this case, Nordic market. Hamer excluded the possibility of standardizing language during the production of the film as he felt this would result in a loss of focus. Spoken Norwegian and Swedish in the 1950s for example would typically have been more disparate and challenging for each party to comprehend.

This helps to further crystallize Hamer’s homogenization of Nordic culture. What is also underscored, however, is the idea that transnationalism offers us no greater framework of understanding. Although transnational cinema is still in the relatively early stages of scholarly

Kitchen Stories //11

force majeure (2014)

shiny, happy families:

Gender and relationship politics in Force Majeure Words: mikkel frederiksen A family of four is approached and propositioned by a photographer to let him snap some photos for later purchase. They agree, they smile, arrange themselves, and strike unnatural poses at the photographer’s request. The result is the glossy image of family vacation bliss: father at the far left, his arm draped around his wife, the children mimicking the pose in solidarity with their parents. When they later that day sit down for lunch at an alpine restaurant, they look like they belong on a postcard, the nuclear family gone holidaying. Then, with the force of an avalanche, that picture unravels.

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In Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure, the near-death scare of an avalanche become the tipping point for an inquisition into gender roles and the expectations we have to ourselves and others. Father Tomas’ cowardice sends his relationship with his wife reeling, and caught in the crossfire is both their friends and children. At the threat of being buried in an avalanche, Tomas gets up, grabs his gloves and iPhone, and bolts, leaving his wife behind to shield their children in stunned disbelief. Despite everyone making it out safe and sound, the worst has already happened.

let the right one in (2009)

the look of loneliness Words: mikkel frederiksen In the ideal Scandinavian society, every man is his brother’s keeper; the welfare state is in theory a place of broad, inclusive wellbeing for every child, man, and woman. Utopian in its ambition, one is inclined to expect it depicted as such on the silver screen as well. However, in Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In, that social inclusion and sense of communal belonging is lost in the mid-winter darkness, and instead, adolescent loneliness and familial disconnection reigns.

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Alfredson’s Swedish suburb Blackeberg is like its name suggests, a dark, dark place: pitch-black sky looms large over a snow-clad, lifeless landscape. It’s a relatively small town mostly comprised of low-income housing, apartment buildings in which few apartments show any signs of life. It is in such a building we first see Oskar: half-naked, he stands in his room holding a hand up against the windowpane,

open hearts (2000)

Susanne bier:

What does she bring to Scandinavian cinema?

Words: RaphaĂŤla Faure

In about twenty-five years and fifteen movies, Susanne Bier has changed the landscape of Danish cinema by making touching and striking films about the Scandinavian societies, especially the Danish one and about the human behavior. As our main theme is the Scandinavian company, it was impossible not to mention the work of this exceptional film director.

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Cinema Scandinavia

after the wedding (2006) Susanne Bier was born the 15 April 1960 in Copenhagen. Before being accepted at the prestigious National Film School of Denmark, she studied Arts in Jerusalem and architecture in London. But she realized that what she loved to do was to study people’s feelings and behaviors. Her first movie, Freud’s Leaving Home, was an immediate success. The story was about a Jewish family who lives in Stockholm and a young woman, Angelique (whose nickname is Freud because she studies psychology) who still lives in the family house because she can’t leave her mother. For the sixtieth birthday of the mother, all the family is coming home to celebrate and they learn their mother has cancer. The movie shows us all the tensions and the conflicts with the different members of the family, the different ways to react to the news according to each person and some taboo topics are revealed.

The cinema of Susanne Bier is here. The family, the relations ships with humans, the society and its dysfunctions … These are her favorite topics and she is one of the best to talk about them. This film is, moreover, one of the first to show the Swedish-Jewish culture in Sweden.

Let’s go now to 2000 with the film Open Hearts, with Mads Mikkelsen. Open Hearts is the 28th film to have been made under the rules of the Dogme to better take an interest in the psychology of the characters. The use of close-ups allows us to feel better feelings. In this film, Susanne Bier tell about a tragedy that affect a woman whose husband is paralyzed in an accident, and who falls in love with the husband of the woman who caused the accident. About this notion of tragedy Susanne Bier explains: “Since the tragedy is no longer a part of our popular culture, we do not realise how the outbreak of a disaster can change everything. In itself, this is not so bad, but we have no idea how to respond when disaster strikes us. We are not at all prepared for the upsurge of the unexpected.”1 We can say that in a sense, this is a film that deals with suffering.

All these characters in the movie have normal reactions and current dialogues. The film deals with the pain but also with the way that everyone chooses to get out of this. One of the important points of the

realization is that Susanne Bier doesn’t want to judge her characters.

This movie won the International Critics Award in 2002 at Toronto International Film Festival and it also won both the Bodil and Robert awards for Best Danish Film in 2003.

But Susanne Bier became famous in the whole world thanks to this movie: Brothers. This is the story of a young man who is a successful soldier and who lives happy with his wife and his two kids, but who is, one day, sent to Afghanistan for a UN mission. When he is said to be dead, his brother, a delinquent will take care of the family and become closer with his wife. Once again, this is a film about human relationships, family and its reactions to a tragic and unexpected event.

It mentions the military presence of the Danes in Afghanistan and the psychological consequences on the soldiers who were engaged in Afghanistan and who come back to their family. How international events can hit our individual life and family? This is what we can see in this movie. Every member of the family is affected first by the departure of the soldier and then by his return. And we can feel the feelings of each of them thanks to the directing of Susanne Bier. This movie was an international success, won many prices in different festivals and was remade as an American production with the same title in 2006, by the film director Jim Sheridan.

2006. The year of the release of After The Wedding. This is a drama about the family. Jacob is a man who lives in India and who manages an orphanage. He also takes care of a little boy, Pramod and is attached to him. But the orphanage has some difficulties and one day, he has to go to Denmark since a Danish corporation offers to donate some money to help the orphanage and to maintain it open. But he will see that the real purpose of his visit is linked with his past. This film treads about the family, the link between the past and the present of the characters, the unexpected events, the contrast between rich societies and poor one, the choices we’ve made and their impacts, human relationship contradiction,responsibilities... The world of the poor in India who tried to survive is opposed to the world of the rich who have their own problems too and tried to deal with it. Susanne Bier also shows us briefly the role of Denmark in the humanitarian help in the world that we will describe here in the following lines.

susanne bier //35

pixadores

TUULENSIEPPAAJAT // finland // Dir: AMIR ARSAMES ESCANDARI //93 mins // documentary

A band of graffiti taggers scales the skyscrapers of São Paulo by night, routinely facing death to produce a unique kind of street art called pixação. The city offers plenty of walls for their canvases. These pixadors started tagging as kids, just playing around. Now they protest against the system and repression. This is the story of Djan, Ricardo, William and Biscoito, who live in the same favela. They paint to be hated instead of just ignored. They paint so their lives don’t go unnoticed. They surf on fast trains for kicks, their favorite drug adrenaline. Now the unbelievable happens, and the pixadors are invited to Berlin, to participate in the Biennale exhibition of contemporary art. They’re chosen as representative victims of social inequality who use art as political expression. But when told to restrict their painting to pre-selected walls, the pixadors naturally revolt, causing a scandal among well-meaning benefactors. This edgy documentary gets into the hearts and minds of dedicated rebels whose chosen weapon is paint.

Director Amir Arsames Escandari was born in Iran in 1979. His family was forced to leave the country when he was 7 and landed in a refugee camp in Yugoslavia. When the civil war broke out there, they moved to Finland, where they were granted asylum. Amir’s father bought him a Hi8 camera to keep him out of trouble; he learned to use it, studied film directing at the University of Wales, and worked at the huge Sköldvik oil refinery outside Helsinki. Pixadores, his feature film debut, was financed largely by Helsinki-filmi, with four Nordic Film Institutes as backers. Shot largely in gritty black and white on wobbly scaffolding and fast-moving trains by ace Finnish DoP Peter Flinckenberg, it’s sure to launch Amir’s career internationally.

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