Danish

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Ophelia’s Suicide soliloquy is staged by a forest pond against the backdrop of a stretched piece of blue fabric gently quivering in the accidental breeze. A few years earlier, Jørgen Leth and Per Kirkeby had put on a highly stylized production of “Hamlet” at the Svalegangen theatre in Aarhus and from there comes the idea of Ophelia’s soliloquy literally “going to pieces” according to this principle: when Leth in the wings, strikes two wooden blocks together, the actress halts her reading and starts over. As the actress is halted again and again, the soliloquy breaks up according to the accidental principle, which is unpredictable and enervating. Read More »

Apolonia Sokol was born in 1988 to a French father and a Polish mother, the two of whom owned a Paris theater, Lavoir Moderne Parisien. This was a hub for all kinds of subversive plays, cabaret acts, and other performances, a space that was constantly running into rent troubles. Here Apolonia was surrounded by bohemian figures (artists, writers, performers) who were integral to her upbringing. Though she came and went from Paris after her parents split up (she left with her mother for Denmark), this theatre was her actual home when she caught the attention of young film student Lea Glob.Read More »

In 1800s Denmark, a farmer has a bad harvest and thus not enough food for his family. He makes a deal, that includes his farm and his daughter getting married, with a nearby rich farmer.Read More »

How can you not love a psychedelic animated kids’ film in which a young boy, bored with the dreary and gray Adult World, follows an enchanted tadpole through the drain in his bathtub – where he discovers a surreal and musical undersea world?? Populated by singing (and barely dressed) Mermaids, a funky hepcat Octopus and whiskey-drinking Skeleton Pirates, the underwater kingdom is the grooviest scene this side of YELLOW SUBMARINE, with helpings of Dr. Seuss, Sid & Marty Krofft and Harry Nilsson’s THE POINT thrown in. (Kids’ entertainment in the early 1970s was truly outtasite!) In addition to the candy-colored, kaleidoscopic visuals, the film is famed for its incredibly addictive soundtrack featuring Jazz heavyweights of Copenhagen circa 1970, with vocals sung by the cream of Danish 60s Pop and Rock including Peter Belli, Otto Brandenburg, Poul Dissing and Trille on tracks like “Octopussong/ Blækspruttesangen” and “seahorsesong/ Søhestesangen”. Read More »

Aged 63, Karen Blixen, the Danish author best known for her autobiographical novel “Out of Africa,” is at the pinnacle of her fame and next in line to win the Nobel Prize for literature . It has been 17 years since she gave up her famous farm in Africa, only to return to Denmark with her life in ruins. Devastated by syphilis and having lost the love of her life, she has reinvented herself as a literary sensation. She is an isolated genius, however, until the day she meets a talented 30-year-old poet. She promises him literary stardom if he in return will obey her unconditionally – even at the cost of him losing everything else in his life…Read More »

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Bænken (The Bench), dir. by Per Fly. tells the tale of Kaj, a stubborn and proud alcoholic who has squandered away most of his life in devotion to the bottle. When his estranged daughter moves, by coincidence, into the same public housing project as him, he gets a second chance. A sympathetic, witty, and moving drama about responsibility and family ties, à la Ken Loach and Mike Leigh.Read More »

Kresten’s dad dies and he returns to the farm on Lolland to take care of things incl. his retarded brother. He employs a hooker as maid. He loses wife and job due to lies. The maid’s kid brother moves in and they’re a family of 4.

DOGME 95 #3Read More »

En Kærlighedshistorie AKA Dogme # 21

REVIEW by Scott Tobias (from avclub.com):
The 21st film to receive official Dogme certification, and one of the few unharmed by its minimalist limitations, Ole Christian Madsen’s powerful Kira’s Reason: A Love Story could be the undercard to A Woman Under The Influence, John Cassavetes’ seminal study of a marriage and mental illness. Beginning with a wife’s return home after time in a psychiatric ward, both films gain their tension from the strained attempt to return to normalcy after everything has irrevocably changed, a transitional phase made all the more painful by brief flashes of the couple’s old dynamic. Though Madsen’s middle-class heroes have little in common with Cassavetes’ more combative blue-collar counterparts, their reunion is similarly raw, painful, and unexpectedly romantic, as they try to redefine their relationship around a new set of terms. Looking and acting uncannily like a young Genevieve Bujold, Stine Stengade gives a touchingly unhinged performance as the title character, a madwoman who tries to find her footing as a wife and mother after being committed for an unspecified condition.Read More »

A young man spurs romance and helps his friend and himself go through times and struggles of their ordinary life in Denmark.Read More »