The Danish Directors 2: Dialogues on the New Danish Fiction Cinema

314 Pages·2010·4.542 MB·English

by  Mette Hjort, Eva Jørholt, Eva Novrup Redvall

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Dialogues on Over the last decade, the New Danish Cinema has es- R
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tablished itself as an important source of cinematic re- d
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newal and innovation. Following in the footsteps of the ll Dialogues on the
Fiction Cinema
critically acclaimed first volume, The Danish Directors
2 provides a practitioner’s perspective on the social, T New Danish
cultural, and economic milieus in which Danish film- h
Edited by Fiction Cinema
makers have been able to develop their practice – and
Mette Hjort, e
to thrive. Featuring interviews with seminal directors
Eva Jørholt and such as Anders Thomas Jensen, Lone Scherfig and
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Niels Arden Oplev, The Danish Directors 2 will appeal
Eva Novrup
to film students, scholars, and cinephiles alike. a
Redvall
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Mette Hjort is Chair Professor and Head of Visual
Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, and Affiliate i
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Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of
Washington, Seattle. h
Eva Jørholt is Associate Professor of Film Studies at
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the University of Copenhagen.
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Eva Novrup Redvall is a film scholar and film critic with
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a PhD on screenwriting collaboration in the new Danish e
fiction cinema.
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‘I see this as a book that has the t
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potential to achieve what might
even be called “cult” status.’ r
Graeme Harper, Bangor University s

2
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Edited by
Mette Hjort, Eva Jørholt
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and Eva Novrup Redvall
intellect | www.intellectbooks.com
The Danish Directors 2
For David Bordwell
The Danish Directors 2
Mette Hjort, Eva Jørholt, Eva Novrup Redvall
intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA
First published in the UK in 2010 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2010 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2010 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Copy-editor: Rebecca Vaughan-Williams
Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire
Cover Image: Paprika Steen as Thea in Martin Pieter Zandvliet's
Applaus(Applause, 2009), produced by Mikael Rieks, Koncern Film.
ISBN 978-1-84150-271-7 / EISBN 978-1-84150-392-9
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
Contents
Acknowledgements 7
Introduction 9
Chapter 1: Nikolaj Arcel 33
Chapter 2: Christoffer Boe 47
Chapter 3: Pernille Fischer Christensen 61
Chapter 4: Per Fly 77
Chapter 5: Peter Schønau Fog 95
Chapter 6: Henrik Ruben Genz 109
Chapter 7: Anders Thomas Jensen 125
Chapter 8: Hella Joof 141
Chapter 9: Ole Christian Madsen 157
Chapter 10: Anders Morgenthaler 173
Chapter 11: Annette K. Olesen 187
Chapter 12: Niels Arden Oplev 201
Chapter 13: Lone Scherfig 217
Chapter 14: Omar Shargawi 233
Chapter 15: Simon Staho 249
Chapter 16: Paprika Steen 263
Chapter 17: Jacob Thuesen 277
Glossary 291
Index 297

Acknowledgements
We are grateful to all the directors included in this volume for having been willing
to contribute to The Danish Directors 2, and for generously making time for us,
in the midst of busy schedules. Each edited and translated interview has been
vetted and approved by the relevant director, and for this too, we are grateful.
We would also like to thank the producers and producers’ assistants who have helped us
with our work, and who have granted us permission to print stills from their films. The list
is long and includes Julie Lind-Holm and Anders Morgenthaler from Copenhagen Bombay;
Thomas Gammeltoft and Tine Engelbrecht from Fine & Mellow Productions; Mikael
Christian Rieks from Koncern Film; Claus Thobo-Carlsen from Nimbus Film; Thomas
Heinesen from Nordisk Film Production; Ib Tardini, Anne Juul, Sisse Graum Jørgensen,
Sidsel Hybschmann, Meta Foldager, Stine Meldgaard and Anders Wøldike from Zentropa;
Anne Katrine Andersen and Jonas Frederiksen from XX Film; and Christian Potalivo from
M&M Productions.
Our sincere thanks also go to the many photographers and cinematographers who have
allowed us to publish portraits of the directors interviewed in The Danish Directors 2, and
production stills. The names of these individuals can be found in the list of figures and also
accompany the relevant images.
Christian Juhl Lemche from the Danish Film Institute has helped us by making films
available along the way, and we are also grateful to the Danish Film Institute for a publication
subsidy.
The work described in this book was partially supported by a grant from the Research
Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project No.
LU340407). Mette Hjort is grateful for this support.
Sam King and May Yao at Intellect have been supportive commissioning editors throughout.
An anonymous peer reviewer for Intellect provided inspiring and constructive comments that
helped us to sharpen the focus of our Introduction.
This book is dedicated to David Bordwell, in recognition of his pioneering work on all
aspects of film practice, and with gratitude for his staunch support for Danish cinema and
those who think it important.

Introduction
Mette Hjort, Eva Jørholt, Eva Novrup Redvall
The Danish Directors 2 picks up the practitioners-based discussion of Danish cinema
where The Danish Directors: Dialogues on a Contemporary National Cinema left
off.1 The interviews for The Danish Directors were conducted at a time when the
‘New Danish Cinema’ was only just beginning to emerge. While The Danish Directors
includes interviews with Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Ole Bornedal and Susanne
Bier, filmmakers whose contributions to the New Danish Cinema have been significant,
the first Danish directors book was very much weighted towards filmmakers who had
been working in the industry for a long time, and whose directorial credits were lengthy.
While the interviews saw filmmakers responding to a variety of questions, some of them
contextual, others more focused on style, issues having to do with small nationhood and
national cinema provided a common thread throughout.
The intention with The Danish Directors 2 is very different from that motivating The
Danish Directors, for the guiding aim here is to focus intensely on the New Danish Cinema,
and, more specifically, on the various factors that allowed it to emerge. We are interested,
that is, in the filmmakers’ subjective understanding of the processes that contributed to
the emergence of the New Danish Cinema. Scholarly accounts aimed at explaining what
is sometimes referred to as the second ‘golden age’ of Danish cinema exist. Mette Hjort
points to a mix of cultural policy (associated with the Danish Film Institute), training
(afforded by the National Film School of Denmark) and artistic leadership (provided
by Lars von Trier), and to the dynamics of a cinematic ‘gift culture’ in which various
forms of generosity and collectivism become the means of enhancing the opportunities
available to filmmakers, their efficacy as filmmakers and their visibility, both nationally
and globally.2 What a scholarly account cannot provide, however, is that direct encounter
with the practitioners’ subjective understanding of the conditions shaping their practices
and aspirations as filmmakers. The Danish Directors 2 is an attempt to get the filmmakers
themselves to reflect on the personal, social and especially institutional factors that provide
the enabling conditions for their work, as filmmakers whose films are very much part of
the New Danish Cinema phenomenon.