A History of Danish Cinema

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Edited by C. Claire Thomson, Isak Thorsen and Pei-Sze Chow

Type: Studies
Subject: Countries > Denmark
Keywords: Denmark, history of cinema
Publishing date: 2023
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
1st publishing: 2021
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 336 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-4744-6113-9

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Book Presentation:
This wide-ranging collection places well-known auteurs such as Carl Th. Dreyer, Lars von Trier and Susanne Bier in their cultural context, and introduces a number of genres and themes that are less familiar to international audiences, including film stars of the silent era, children’s film, folk comedies, porn film, trends in documentary and Greenlandic cinema. With twenty-two chapters, all of them specially commissioned for this volume, A History of Danish Cinema explores the role of screen representations and film policy in shaping Denmark’s cultural identity, but also emphasises just how internationally mobile Danish films and filmmakers have always been ― showcasing this small nation’s extraordinary contribution to world cinema.

About the authors:
Dr C. Claire Thomson is Professor of Cinema History at University College London (UCL), where she is the Director of Film Studies and teaches Nordic cinema and cultural history, as well as translation from the Scandinavian languages. Her previous publications include the monographs Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (U Washington P, 2013) and Short Films from a Small Nation: Danish Informational Cinema 1935–1965 (EUP 2018), the edited volume Northern Constellations: New Readings in Nordic Cinema (Norvik, 2006), and numerous articles on short films, film and public health, multisensory cinema and the work of Carl Th. Dreyer and Thomas Vinterberg. She is an editor of the journals Scandinavica and Kosmorama.Dr Isak Thorsen holds a doctorate in Film Studies from the University of Copenhagen with a dissertation titled ‘Isbjørnens anatomi – Nordisk Films Kompagni som erhvervsvirksomhed i perioden 1906–1928’. A revised English-language version was published by John Libbey in 2017, as Nordisk Films Kompagni 1906–1924: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Bear. He is the editor and author of the Danish entries in the Historical Dictionary of Scandinavian Cinema (2012). He has contributed to the anthologies 100 Years of Nordisk Film (2006), International Western Films: Re-Locating the Frontier (2013), Dansk-tyske krige – kulturliv og kulturkampe (2020) and written for journals such as Film History, Kintop, Scandinavian-Canadian Studies, 16:9, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema and Kosmorama.Dr Pei-Sze Chow is Assistant Professor of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. She is the author of Transnational Screen Culture in Scandinavia: Mediating Regional Space and Identity in the Øresund Region (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2021). Her interdisciplinary work takes a spatial, media-geographic approach to film and media research, focusing on representations of space and place, the cinemas of small nations and cities and peripheries on film and television. She has published and co-edited work on Nordic noir and geopolitics, urban space and architecture, and more recently on artificial intelligence and film.

Press Reviews:
The book aims at effectively countering potential misconceptions about Danish cinema, and the authors exhibit an overriding sense of fairness toward their subject matter. For instance, modes of film that have commonly been dismissed as simplistic or populist are tackled respectfully with depth, complexity, and contextualization. For its spirit of disciplined collaboration, its thorough and authoritative perspectives, and its effortless clarity, A History of Danish Cinema represents a fine achievement in the balanced portrayal of a storied national cinema. -- Jack O’Dwyer ― EuropeNow

Danish cinema has had a worldwide impact at least twice, through the Nordisk company's spectacular success before the First World War, then when Dogme 95 revitalised independent filmmaking on the threshold of the digital era. But of course there's much more to discover and assess. This shrewdly planned new history sheds fresh light on many aspects of Denmark's rich screen heritage, and also offers an exemplary model for 'small country' media history. ― Ian Christie, Birkbeck College, University of London

The book aims at effectively countering potential misconceptions about Danish cinema, and the authors exhibit an overriding sense of fairness toward their subject matter. For instance, modes of film that have commonly been dismissed as simplistic or populist are tackled respectfully with depth, complexity, and contextualization. For its spirit of disciplined collaboration, its thorough and authoritative perspectives, and its effortless clarity, A History of Danish Cinema represents a fine achievement in the balanced portrayal of a storied national cinema. -- EuropeNow ― Jack O’Dwyer

See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press

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