A History of Danish Cinema - Paperback

by C. Claire Thomson (Editor), Isak Thorsen (Editor), Pei-Sze Chow (Editor)

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.

Back Jacket

The first English-language book to cover Danish cinema from the 1890s to the present day, 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. C. Claire Thomson is Associate Professor of Scandinavian Film at UCL and the author of Short Films from a Small Nation: Danish Informational Cinema 1935-1965 (EUP, 2018) Isak Thorsen is the author of Nordisk Films Kompagni 1906-1924: The Rise and Fall of the Polar Bear (John Libbey, 2017) Pei-Sze Chow is Assistant Professor of Media and Culture at the University of Amsterdam and the author of Transnational Screen Culture in Scandinavia: Mediating Regional Space and Identity in the Øresund Region (Palgrave, forthcoming)

Author Biography

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.