ECTS:
2
Syllabus
Week 1: Spotlight on women: Die Asta: Asta Nielsen – the fi rst Nordic international fi lm star.
Week 2: Spotlight on women: Torturing ‘witches’ in Nordic cinemas: Benjamin Christensen’s
Häxan (1922), Carl T. Dreyer: The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).
Week 3: Spotlight on women: The tradition of torturing ‘witches’ continued: Carl T. Dreyer’s The
Day of Wrath (1943), Lars von Trier’s Medea (1987).
Week 4: Spotlight on nature: Lars von Trier’s dark ecology and eco-melancholia: Antichrist
(2009) and Melancholia (2011).
Week 5: Spotlight on nature: The dark ecology of the welfare state: Jordskott (TV-series,
Sweden, 2015, 2017) and Border (Ali Abbasi, 2018).
Week 6: (Dis)comfort in the land of hygge: Dogme 95 and challenging the language of cinema:
Festen (Thomas Vinterberg, 1998) and Italian for Beginners (Lone Scherfi g, 2000).
Week 7: Nordic cinemas of discomfort: The aesthetics and politics of Ruben Östlund’s long
take: Play (2011), Force Majeure (2014), The Square (2017).
Week 8: Spotlight on children and youth: Scandinavian cinema of initiation: Fanny and Alexander
(Ingmar Bergman, 1982), The Hunt (T. Vinterberg, 2012)
Week 9: Spotlight on children and youth: Excluding otherness in Lukas Moodysson’s Fucking
Åmål (1998) and Lilya 4-ever (2002).
Week 10: Spotlight on children and youth: Initiation stories in TV-series: Skam (Norway, 2015–
2017) and Quicksand (Sweden, 2019).
Week 11: The landscapes of Nordic Noir: The Bridge (Sweden, Denmark, 2011–2018).
Week 12: Spotlight on Iceland: The white trap and Arctic noir (Cold Fever, 1995; Noi Albinoi, 2003;
Trapped – TV-series, 2015–).
Week 13: Spotlight on Iceland: National nature and the transnational gaze: The fi lms of Benedikt
Erlingsson (Of Men and Horses, 2013; Woman at War, 2018).
Week 14: The landscapes of Sápmi: The Kautokeino rebellion (Nils Gaup, 2008); Midnight Sun
(TV- series, Sweden/France, 2016).
Week 15: Arctic landscapes and male skiers: Deconstructing the nation and white masculinity in
Norwegian horror fi lms (Cold Prey, 2006; Zombie SS, 2009).
Module aim
Emancipated women, social equality, environmental awareness, the happiest people in the world,
hygge, the welfare state, children’s rights, ethnic diversity. These are some phenomena and
cultural values widely associated with the Nordic region. How are these social and cultural
qualities manifested in one of the Nordic region’s cultural fl agships: its cinemas and television
cultures? As we shall see, many of these values are not simply expressed in Nordic audio-visual
cultures, but are debated and contested in them as well. The lecture series Spotlight on Nordic
Cinemas: From Silent Stars to Nordic Noir aims at providing an overview and analyses of the
most eminent fi lms, fi gures, themes and genres in the cinemas of this region, from the era of
silent fi lm till today, with a double focus on the aesthetic trends and cultural values expressed in
them. The Nordic presence in world cinema and television has grown substantially in recent
decades, becoming far more diverse than the artistic auteur cinema associated with the Silent
Golden Age and Ingmar Bergman. Owing to such important phenomena as Dogme 95 or Nordic
noir, the Nordic ‘small-nation’ cinemas have become centrally positioned on the global cinematic
transnational arena. The lecture series will focus on selected ‘spotlights’ from the Nordic region’s
cinemas and television cultures, showing thematic and aesthetic continuities and discontinuities
between earlier periods in Nordic fi lm history and today, between art cinema and genre
productions, and between the Nordic region’s central fi lm producing countries (such as Denmark
and Sweden) and its – no less important – younger cinema and television traditions (such as Iceland or Sápmi). The series aims at providing students with a knowledge of both the diversity
and regional specifi city found in the cinemas and television series of the Nordic countries, as
well as illuminating the reasons behind their transnational success.
Information
Year: 2020/2021
Semester: Summer
Hours: 30
Language: English
Building:
Room:
Tips:
Topic: Spotlight on Nordic Cinemas: From Silent Stars to Nordic Noir
Module: 03-EPI-SNC
Prerequisites
Timetable:<br />
Thursday 11.30-13.00<br />
<br />
Pre-requisities:<br />
Good understanding of English
Lecturer
prof. UAM, dr hab. Anna Mrozewicz
Academic title: Professor
Email: esteram@o365.amu.edu.pl
Reading list
1) Kim Toft Hansen and Anne Marit Waade, Locating Nordic Noir. From Beck to The Bridge,
Palgrave Macmilan 2017.
2) Linda Badley, Lars von Trier, U. of Illinois Press 2009.
3) Linda Badley, “Antichrist, misogyny and witch burning: The Nordic cultural contexts”, Journal
of Scandinavian Cinema, Volume 3, Issue 1 (2013).
4) Ingmar Bergman Revisited: Performance, Cinema and the Arts, ed. Maaret Koskinen,
Columbia University Press 2008.
5) Anna Westerstahl Stenport, Lukas Moodysson's Show Me Love (Nordic Film Classics),
University of Washington Press 2012.
6) Mette Hjort, Lone Scherfi g's Italian For Beginners, Museum Tusculanum Press 2010.
7) C. Claire Thomson, Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen / The Celebration, Museum Tusculanum
Press 2013.
8) Films on Ice. Cinemas of the Arctic, eds. Anna Westerstahl Stenport, Scott MacKenzie,
Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press, 2016.
9) http://www.kosmorama.org/ServiceMenu/05-English/Articles.aspx
10) http://english.carlthdreyer.dk
