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- Volume 7, Issue 3, 2017
Journal of Scandinavian Cinema - Volume 7, Issue 3, 2017
Volume 7, Issue 3, 2017
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Aki Kaurismäki and Finnish strangeness: Leningrad Cowboys Go America as a cult film
More LessAbstractLeningrad Cowboys Go America (1989) was Aki Kaurismäki’s international breakthrough. The film has been less frequently analysed than prototypical Kaurismäki films such as Mies vailla menneisyyttä (The Man Without a Past) (2002). This article approaches Leningrad Cowboys Go America as a cult film and argues that it introduced Kaurismäki’s signature style of ironic minimalism to international audiences in an especially pronounced form. The film participated in the creation of the ‘strangeness’ that Finland is eager to market today.
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From Hollywood to Norway and back again: The transnational horror film and Norwegian directors in America
More LessAbstractIn the nearly fifteen years since the release of Villmark (Dark Woods), the Norwegian horror genre has been a regular cinema attraction in Norway. In the same period, many directors who made their mark in Norwegian horror have been hired for work in American film. In this article, I argue that the genre sensibility that these directors have displayed, a fairly new characteristic of Norwegian cinema, is the reason their services have been wanted in Hollywood.
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Cinematic landscapes of the Anthropocene: Scandinavian documentary film at the turn of the twenty-first century
More LessAbstractRecent discussions about renaming the current geological epoch the Anthropocene provide a constructive lens to consider the work of contemporary Nordic documentary filmmakers (including Stefan Jarl, Michael Madsen and Mikael Kristersson) who are each exploring an evolving understanding of the ways that humans are simultaneously part of and separate from nature. The films considered here investigate how deeply embedded humans are in natural systems by manipulating anthropocentric perspectives as well as geographical and temporal sense of scale. The effects of these cinematic experiments help to form a renewed understanding of relatedness about how the future of humanity and the ecological fate of the planet are intertwined.
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From success to human waste management: Class, family and traces of neo-liberalism in the Finnish films Beauty and the Bastard and Bad Family
More LessAbstractGenerational conflict is at the core of youth films. In several films in the 2000s, this conflict has been connected to the ethos of neo-liberalism. This article presents two Finnish fiction films, Dome Karukoski’s Tyttö sinä olet tähti (Beauty and the Bastard) (2005) and Aleksi Salmenperä’s Paha perhe (Bad Family) (2010), as examples of the ways in which films in the changing Nordic welfare state, and under the prevailing ethos of neo-liberalism, function as a technology of class, i.e. how they negotiate the class divisions in contemporary society. The films, depicting the generation conflict within a middle-class and an upper middle-class family, are analysed in the context of hardening neo-liberal attitudes arising from the competitive efforts of individuals to achieve or sustain a successful position. The families in the films are understood to be miniature societies relating how young people negotiate the constraints of the dominant neo-liberal ethos. Both films represent a critical view towards generational continuity and a success story as the only acceptable option; however, as they also depict a shift from success to human waste management, they represent different attitudes towards neo-liberalism.
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The cinematic fauna of Bengt Berg
More LessAbstractThis short subject initiates new research into the career of pioneering Swedish nature documentarian, Bengt Berg. During the silent era, the Swedish zoologist-turned-filmmaker earned international praise for his cinematic studies of the Swedish avifauna. But ties to the eugenics movement and the German Nazi Party have rendered him a problematic figure of Scandinavian film history. Drawing on newly restored film prints, contextual archival findings and previous research on Berg, this article explores new paths of inquiry into Berg’s oeuvre.
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The visual style of Susanne Bier’s films
More LessAbstractThis article analyses four of Susanne Bier’s films with regard to audio-visual style and the role of style in relation to the presented story. Bier’s visual style in the selected films – Open Hearts (2002), Brothers (2004), After the Wedding (2006) and In a Better World (2010) – is a combination of a generally applied style that I call Dogme light and one consisting of various small montages and extreme close-ups. The Dogme light style can be traced back to the tradition of realism, and Bier has used it consistently throughout her directing career, whereas her use of small montages has varied greatly from 2002 to 2010. By combining these two stylistic tendencies, Bier has become highly regarded internationally as an art-house director, while also reaching a broader audience in Scandinavia.
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