Often recognized as one of the happiest countries in the world, Denmark, like its Scandinavian neighbors, is known for its progressive culture, which is also reflected in its national cinema. It is not surprising, then, that Danish film boasts as many successful women film directors as men, uses scripts that are often cowritten by the director and the screenwriter, and produces one of the largest numbers of queer films directed by and starring women. Despite all this, Danish film is not widely written about, especially in English. Inclusion in New Danish Cinema brings this vibrant culture to English-language audiences. Meryl Shriver-Rice argues that Denmark has demonstrated that film can reinforce cultural ethics and political values while also navigating the ongoing and mounting forces of digital communication and globalization.
Profiling the canonized figures alongside recently-established filmmakers, this collection features interviews with Lars von Trier, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen, Thomas Vinterberg and Henning Carlsen among many others. It poses questions that engage with ongoing and controversial issues within film studies, which will stimulate debate in academic and filmgoing circles alike. Each interview is preceded by a photograph of the director, biographical information, and a filmography. Frame enlargements are used throughout to help clarify particular points of discussion and the book as a whole is contextualised by an informative general introduction. A valuable addition to the growing library of books on Scandinavian film, national cinema and minority cinema.
Over the last two decades or so, the New Danish Cinema has established itself as an important source of cinematic renewal and innovation, and as a model for how small, minor or peripheral cinemas can survive in an industry dominated by Global Hollywood. Following in the footsteps of critically-acclaimed The Danish Directors (also published by Intellect), The Danish Directors 2 provides a practitioner’s perspective on the social, cultural, and economic milieus in which Danish film-makers have been able to develop their practice, and to thrive. With insider information about the making, marketing and distribution of award-winning films, and interviews with seminal directors such as Anders Thomas Jensen, Annette K. Olesen, and Lone Scherfig, The Danish Directors 2 allows readers entry into what might seem to be a forbidding body of work. The editors are knowledgeable and sensitive interrogators, and their appreciation of the specific qualities of each director’s work elicits thoughtful replies. This volume will appeal to students, scholars, and cinephiles alike.
For three decades, state-sponsored short filmmaking educated Danish citizens, promoted Denmark to the world, and shaped the careers of renowned directors like Carl Th. Dreyer. The first book-length study in English of a national corpus of state-sponsored informational film, this book traces how Danish shorts on topics including social welfare, industry, art and architecture were commissioned, funded, produced and reviewed from the inter-war period to the 1960s. Examining the life cycle of a representative selection of films, and discussing their preservation and mediation in the digital age, this book presents a detailed case study of how informational cinema is shaped by, and indeed shapes, its cultural, political and technological contexts.
A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries 1925-1950 is the first work to consider all the arts and to discuss the role of the avant-garde not only in aesthetic terms but in its cultural and political context.
Dogma 95, the avant-garde filmmaking movement founded by the Danish director Lars von Trier and three of his fellow directors, was launched in 1995 at an elite cinema conference in Paris—when von Trier was called upon to speak about the future of film but instead showered the audience with pamphlets announcing the new movement and its manifesto. A refreshingly original critical commentary on the director and his practice, Playing the Waves is a paramount addition to one of new media’s most provocative genres: games and gaming. Playing the Waves cleverly puns on the title of one of von Trier’s most famous features and argues that Dogma 95, like much of the director’s low-budget realist productions, is a game that takes cinema beyond the traditional confines of film aesthetics and dramatic rules. Simons articulates the ways in which von Trier redefines the practice of filmmaking as a rule-bound activity, and stipulates the forms and structures of games von Trier brings to bear on his films, as well as the sobering lessons he draws from economic and evolutionary game theory. Much like the director’s films, this fascinating volume takes the traditional point of view of film theory and film aesthetics to the next level and demonstrates we have much to learn from the perspective of game studies and game theory.