CINEMA, ANIMATION & MEDIA PUBLICATIONS

Nordic Explorations

Moving Images

Piano Lessons

    Film Before 1930

Nordic Explorations: Film Before 1930 includes twenty previously unpublished essays written for the 1999 retrospective of Nordic cinema at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Italy. The anthology brings together some of the leading research that is currently being conducted 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 in-depth studies of individual films, filmmakers, national styles, and the relation of the medium to other forms of popular entertainment.

Contents

Introduction

1. Denmark
A Small Danish Player in a Big Market: A/S Filmfabriken Danmark’s Output in Russia, 1913–1917, byJan Nielsen
Nordisk Films Kompagni and the First World War, byThomas 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