Denmark

  • Susanne Bier – Hævnen AKA In a Better World (2010)

    Susanne Bier2001-2010DenmarkDramaRomance
    Hævnen (2010)
    Hævnen (2010)

    The lives of two Danish families cross each other, and an extraordinary but risky friendship comes into bud. But loneliness, frailty and sorrow lie in wait.Read More »

  • Per Kirkeby & Jørgen Leth – Dyrehaven: Den romantiske skov AKA The Deer Garden: The Romantic Forest (1970)

    1961-1970DenmarkDocumentaryJørgen LethPer KirkebyShort Film

    Quote:
    This film about the Deer Garden, a forest park north of Copenhagen, was an assignment to celebrate the Deer Garden’s 300th anniversary. Leth and the painter Per Kirkeby above all wanted to do an attractive film about life in the forest orchestrated around the four seasons. The photography is heavily inspired by the Danish Golden Age painters’ view of nature. Kirkeby, Leth and DP Henning Camre worked on and off for a full year to find the ideal light and the optimum framing, seeking out the truly beautiful. As Leth puts it, “there was complete…golden-section control of the whole film. “The narrative holds tiny traces of romantic-poetry notions of mystical and mythical forest life: a nude woman appears among the tree trunks and vanishes again like a fairy girl on a summer night. Read More »

  • Eduardo Fuller – Dværgen AKA The Sinful Dwarf (1973)

    1971-1980DenmarkEduardo FullerExploitationHorror

    Olaf and his mother run a boarding house and a white slavery ring. They also smuggle heroin to keep the addict girls happy so they do not try and escape. A young couple move into the house and the evil landlords take a liking to the female.Read More »

  • Isabella Eklöf – Holiday (2018)

    2011-2020DenmarkDramaIsabella EklöfThriller

    Quote:
    The white sand sparkles in the hot sun beside the clear blue waters of the Turkish Riviera. Young, blonde, clad in light summer garb and an oversized hat, Sascha (Victoria Carmen Sonne) looks as though she was made for this place. She drifts around the hotel pool on an inflatable crocodile, leans out laughing in the bow of a yacht or giggles over cocktails. One day, buying strawberry ice cream, she catches the eye of a young Dutchman, Thomas (Thijs Römer). But Sascha is already attached – to fortysomething mobster Michael (Lai Yde) – a man whom she has already learned will respond to disloyalty with violence…Read More »

  • Ole John & Jørgen Leth – Se Frem Til En Tryg Tid AKA Look Forward To A Time Of Security (1964)

    Jørgen Leth1961-1970DenmarkExperimentalOle JohnShort Film

    From the cover:
    In this small film, shot in Estepona in the south of Spain, Jørgen Leth and Ole John pursue the principle of asynchronisation and the juxtaposition of disparate elements. The images are footage from a barbershop, a talking man’s face and black film. The sound likewise embraces three elements: a story of how cement is made, which has neither head nor tail; a recording of a shave; and Louis Hjulmand’s score. The tight framing lends the mundane act of a shave a beauty of its own. Meanwhile, in the juxtaposition of near-rambling monologue and music, something else emerges, something more. As a viewer, you try to connect the two, but because no such connection exists, you have to surrender to the pure “experience” of images and sound. The title, a Danish Social-Democratic election slogan, is meaningless in this context. However, if you play around with the juxtaposition of the world “security” and the shots of the man’s soft skin and exposed neck under the barber’s sharply honed razor, the mock meaning rubs up against an altogether different one.Read More »

  • Gert Fredholm – Terror (1977)

    1971-1980ActionCrimeDenmarkGert Fredholm

    When one of the members of a gang of young criminals wants out, he is put under severe pressure.Read More »

  • Anders Rønnow Klarlund – Strings (2004)

    2001-2010Anders Rønnow KlarlundDenmarkExperimentalFantasy

    Plot Outline: Strings is a mythological story about the son of a king, Hal Tara, who sets out on a journey to revenge the death of his father. To his surprise he discovers the truth of his own people – and where he least expects it – he finds true love.

    Actually this film is a bit short on plot but is technically stunning, and incorporates a number of unusual sight-gags, such as the portcullis to the walled city rising (not lowering) to keep people in (because everyone is a puppet and the raised portcullis blocks their strings)…Read More »

  • Lars von Trier – Antichrist (2009)

    2001-2010DenmarkDramaLars Von Trier

    Quote:
    A couple lose their young son when he falls out the window while they have sex in the other room. The mother’s grief consigns her to hospital, but her therapist husband brings her home intent on treating her depression himself. To confront her fears they go to stay at their remote cabin in the woods, “Eden”, where something untold happened the previous summer. Told in four chapters with a prologue and epilogue, the film details acts of lustful cruelty as the man and woman unfold the darker side of nature outside and within.Read More »

  • Jørgen Leth – Det gode og det onde AKA Good and Evil (1975)

    1971-1980DenmarkDocumentaryJørgen Leth

    This central work makes a grotesque attempt to organize life according to a series of captions, cataloguing life’s elements. No more, no less. A series of tableaux showcases actors and other well-known Danes as ‘examples’ of the emotions, conditions or phenomena discussed by the neutral, authoritative voiceover: Faces, Bodies, Objects, Necessary Acts, Unnecessary Acts, Good Thougts, Bad Thoughtd and more. Leth opens with a typical statement: ‘Life is interesting. We will study it.’ The director has described the film as a collage or a catalogue of life. Elsewhere, he has called it a surrealist comedy. A bit of everything, it looks like no other film ever made.Read More »

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