In voice-over Eric M Nilsson discusses the choices people involved in the creation of films make, their attempts to create meaning and what the future may hold for the medium and its roll in society. The filmmaker juxtaposes a range of still and moving images, often in humorous ways, in this self-reflecting short film: “Making these images adds up to a total cost of 274 SEK per second, this regardless of quality”. The film was made as a part of the project ‘Sverige 80’, initiated by the Swedish Film Institute, aimed at supporting the creation of high-quality short films.
Tag: SWEDEN
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Stig is 15 years old and lives in neutral Sweden while the rest of the world is swept up in World War II. Like many other boys in his school, he’s in love with biology teacher Viola, but, unlike other boys, he secretly starts seeing her. Viola confesses to Stig that he provides her with much-needed comfort since her marriage to Kjell, a drunk, is falling apart. Their relationship grows complicated when Kjell discovers their affair.
Based on Arata Osada’s book Children of the A-bomb: The Testament of the Boys and Girls of Hiroshima (1959) the film retells the horrors of the Hiroshima bombing through the eyes of children. It mainly consists of illustrations drawn by the children.
Victor is a young boy who dreams about becoming a firefighter one day, unfortunately his mother is told that he’s been diagnosed with leukaemia and only has one more month to live, his mother goes to the local fire station to try to make her kid’s dream come true.
A sick unmarried mother writes on her death bed a letter to the father of her daughter. The father lets young widow Sara Andersson take care of his daughter, and he has no idea that she will be forced to begging.
This biopic centers on Knut Hamsun, a celebrated author in his native Norway. When fascism sweeps through Germany in the 1930s, the writer shocks his countrymen by allying himself with Hitler. Hamsun’s wife, Marie , also joins the Nazi cause, and goes so far as to tour in Germany, hosting public speaking engagements in the country. After the war ends, the author and his wife are further vilified in Norway, and ultimately sentenced for crimes against the state.
Statare, or country workers who recieved most of their payment in natura and didn’t own their own land, were the lowest of the low in Old Sweden. Maria – nicknamed ‘Rya-Rya’ – is born into this lot. A beautiful young woman, who the men tend to flock to, she quickly becomes with child. Her life changes forever…
Acclaimed British filmmaker Peter Watkins collaborates with twenty-four students from the Swedish Folk High School in Biskops-Arno to craft this highly unconventional look at the life of controversial 19th Century dramatist August Stindberg. An iconoclast who flouted the conventions of then-contemporary society to promote political and social change, Stindberg and his freethinking followers were considered outcasts whose revolutionary ideas posed a great danger to the standards of society. By purposefully structuring his film in a carefully layered, spiral manner, director Watkins aims to reflect the filmmaker’s admitted concern over the influence of mass media while simultaneously suggesting ways in which that same media might share its unique power with the people in the not-so-distant future.