History of Danish Cinema

Dr C. Claire Thomson is Professor of Cinema History at University College London (UCL), where she is the Director of Film Studies and teaches Nordic cinema and cultural history, as well as translation from the Scandinavian languages. Her previous publications include the monographs Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (U Washington P, 2013) and Short Films from a Small Nation: Danish Informational Cinema 1935–1965 (EUP 2018), the edited volume Northern Constellations: New Readings in Nordic Cinema (Norvik, 2006), and numerous articles on short films, film and public health, multisensory cinema and the work of Carl Th. Dreyer and Thomas Vinterberg. She is an editor of the journals Scandinavica and Kosmorama. Dr Isak Thorsen holds a doctorate in Film Studies from the University of Copenhagen with a dissertation titled ‘Isbjørnens anatomi – Nordisk Films Kompagni som erhvervsvirksomhed i perioden 1906–1928’. A revised English-language version was published by John Libbey in 2017, as Nordisk Films Kompagni 1906–1924: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Bear. He is the editor and author of the Danish entries in the Historical Dictionary of Scandinavian Cinema (2012). He has contributed to the anthologies 100 Years of Nordisk Film (2006), International Western Films: Re-Locating the Frontier (2013), Dansk-tyske krige – kulturliv og kulturkampe (2020) and written for journals such as Film History, Kintop, Scandinavian-Canadian Studies, 16:9, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema and Kosmorama. Dr Pei-Sze Chow is Assistant Professor of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. She is the author of Transnational Screen Culture in Scandinavia: Mediating Regional Space and Identity in the Øresund Region (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2021). Her interdisciplinary work takes a spatial, media-geographic approach to film and media research, focusing on representations of space and place, the cinemas of small nations and cities and peripheries on film and television. She has published and co-edited work on Nordic noir and geopolitics, urban space and architecture, and more recently on artificial intelligence and film.

The book aims at effectively countering potential misconceptions about Danish cinema, and the authors exhibit an overriding sense of fairness toward their subject matter. For instance, modes of film that have commonly been dismissed as simplistic or populist are tackled respectfully with depth, complexity, and contextualization. For its spirit of disciplined collaboration, its thorough and authoritative perspectives, and its effortless clarity, A History of Danish Cinema represents a fine achievement in the balanced portrayal of a storied national cinema.

• AcknowledgmentsNotes on contributorsIntroduction - C. Claire Thomson, Isak Thorsen and Pei-Sze ChowPart I: From the first ‘Golden Age’ to the Occupation1. Surviving a crisis: Nordisk Films Kompagni as a world player - Isak Thorsen2. Asta & Co.: The politics of early Danish film stardom - Julie K. Allen3. The European principle: Art and border-crossings in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s career - Casper Tybjerg4. Derailed: Danish film during the German Occupation - Lars-Martin SørensenPart II: National genres5. The art of the popular: The folkekomedie tradition - Niels Henrik Hartvigson6. Social realism of the 1940s: Between paternalistic care and dignifying humanism - Birger Langkjær7. Imagining Denmark: Danmarksfilm as documentary portraits of a nation - Ib Bondebjerg8. Rural dreams: Landscape, family, sexuality and queerness in Homeland Cinema - Niels Henrik Hartvigson9. The Olsen Gang in Denmark—and abroad - Stephan Michael Schröder10. Making a life of your own: Films for children and young people in the 1970s and 1980s - Christa Lykke Christensen11. Pornography and censorship - Isak ThorsenPart III: Auteurs and institutions in the new Golden Age12. Into the dark forest: The cinema of Lars von Trier - Peter Schepelern13. ‘I am no longer an artist’: Heritage film, Dogme 95, and the New Danish Cinema - C. Claire Thomson14. Stories of Scandinavian guilt and privilege: Transnational Danish directors - Meryl Shriver-Rice15. Danish television drama in the twenty-first century: New synergies between film and television - Eva Novrup Redvall16. New Danish Screen and The Sketch: The role of imposed and self-imposed constraints in talent development - Mette HjortPart IV: Decentring and diversifying Danish cinema17. Danish Documentary Production: An all-female company - Anne Jerslev18. Welcome to Denmark: Immigrants and their descendants in Danish cinema - Eva Jørholt19. Dirty films: Grimy materialism and ecological aesthetics - Benjamin Bigelow20. Regional film funds and production - Pei-Sze Chow21. ‘Finally, we’re beginning to tell our own stories’: Filmmaking in Greenland - Isak Thorsen and Emile Hertling PéronardReferencesIndex of film titlesIndex of namesIndex