Nordic Explorations

Description

Nordic Explorations: Film Before 1930 brings together leading research on early cinema in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and includes essays on some of the major figures in Nordic cinema including Dreyer, Christensen, Sjöstrom and Stiller. Much current research in Nordic film before 1930 is also represented in this anthology with studies of the Norwegian travel genre, Nordic animated film, the relation of Nordic cinema to German and Russian film, the development of educational cinema and industrial film, as well as studies of individual films, filmmakers and national styles, and the relation of the medium to other forms of popular entertainment.

The essays included in Nordic Explorations make a timely contribution to the more general study of cinema, afford authoritative and stimulating insight into research in the field, and challenge many assumptions regarding Nordic cinema before 1930.

Contents

Introduction
1. Denmark
A Small Danish Player in a Big Market: A/S Filmfabriken Danmark’s Output in Russia, 1913?1917, by Jan Nielsen
Nordisk Films Kompagni and the First World War, by Thomas C. Christensen
Red Satan: Carl Theodor Dreyer and the Bolshevik Threat, by Casper Tybjerg
Benjamin Christensen in Germany: The Critical Reception of His Films in the 1910s and 1920s, by Ib Monty
Palladium and the Silent Films with ‘Long and Short’, by Marguerite Engberg
À la recherche des films perdus: A Substantial Find of Early Danish Cinema, by Bo Berglund
2. Finland
Born Under the Sign of the Scarlet Flower: Pantheism in Finnish Silent Cinema, by Antti Alanen
Silents for a Silent People, by Peter von Bagh
3. Norway
Sisters of Cinema: Three Norwegian Actors and their German Film Company, 1917-1920, by Gunnar Iversen
Travel Films in Norway: The Persistence of the ?View? Aesthetic, by Bjørn Sørenssen
Caricatures, Cartoons and Advertisements: The Pioneers of Nordic Animated Film, by Gunnar Strøm
4. Sweden
Exchange and Exhibition Practices: Notes on the Swedish Market in the Transitional Era, by Jan Olsson
Educational Cinema and Censorship in Sweden, 1911-1921, by Åsa Jernudd
Seeing the World with Different Eyes, or Seeing Differently: Cinematographic Vision and Turn-of-the-Century Popular Entertainment, by John Fullerton
Towards Classical Narration? Georg af Klercker in Context, by Astrid Söderbergh Widding
‘A Dangerous Pledge’: Victor Sjöström’s Unknown Masterpiece, Mästerman, by Tom Gunning
Spearhead in a Blind Alley: Viking Eggeling’s Diagonal Symphony, by Gösta Werner
Snow-White: The Aesthetic and Narrative Use of Snow in Swedish Silent Film, by Marina Dahlquist
Victor Goes West: Notes on the Critical Reception of Sjöström’s Hollywood Films, 1923-1930, by Bo Florin
Industrial Greta: Some Thoughts on an Industrial Film, by Mats Björkin

Biography

John Fullerton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies, Stockholm University, and has published widely on early Swedish film. He has edited Celebrating 1895: The Centenary of Cinema for John Libbey, and also co-edited Moving Images: From Edison to the Webcam the second publication in the Stockholm Studies in Cinema series.

Jan Olsson is a Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies, Stockholm University, and has published many books on Scandinavian cinema. Allegories of Communication: Intermedial Concerns from Cinema to the Digital, an anthology of essays from a major conference at Stockholm University, was published in 2000.