The Danish Directors 3: Dialogues on the New Danish Documentary Cinema

by Ib Bondebjerg (Editor), Mette Hjort (Editor), Eva Novrup Redvall (Editor)

Overview

Following the two previous volumes in this series of practitioner interviews with Danish directors, Danish Directors 3 focuses on Danish documentary cinema. Although many of the directors interviewed here have ventured successfully into the terrain of fiction, their main contributions to the thriving post-80s milieu lie in the interconnected areas of documentary film and television. Emphasizing the new documentary cinema, this book features filmmakers who belong to the generation born in the 1970s. Many of the interviewees were trained at the National Film School of Denmark’s now legendary Department of Documentary and Television. The term “new” also captures tendencies that cut across the work of the filmmakers. For example, for the generation in question, internationalization and the development of a new digital media culture are inevitable aspects of everyday life, and, indeed, of the professional environments in which they operate. A comprehensive overview of documentary directors currently working in Denmark, this is the only book of its kind about this growing area of Danish cinema.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783200412
Publisher:	Intellect, Limited
Publication date:	05/15/2014
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Ib Bondebjerg is professor of film and media studies and director of the Centre for Modern European Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He is the editor of the  journal Northern Lights: Film and Media Studies Yearbook.

Mette Hjort is professor of visual studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong and affiliate professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle.


Eva Novrup Redvall is assistant professor in the Department of Media, Cognition, and Communication at the University of Copenhagen.

Read an Excerpt

The Danish Directors 3

Dialogues on the New Danish Documentary Cinema

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By Mette Hjort, Ib Bondebjerg, Eva Novrup Redvall

Intellect Ltd

Copyright © 2014 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78320-041-2

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CHAPTER 1

Phie Ambo

Born 1973. Phie Ambo holds a BA in Nordic Philology from the University of Copenhagen. She was subsequently trained at the National Film School of Denmark, graduating as a documentary film director in 2003. Phie Ambo released her first documentary film, entitled Family (2001), while still in film school. Co-directed with Sami Saif, Family won the prestigious Joris Ivens Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). The film follows Saif 's trip to the Middle East in search of his father. Like most of Ambo's films, Family was shot in CinemaScope. At the same time, however, the film has much of the intimacy of a documentary diary film. Family was one of the first Danish documentaries to achieve a noteworthy theatrical release. Having graduated from film school, Ambo made Gambler (2005), a thought-provoking account of Nicolas Winding Refn's efforts, against all odds, to complete Pusher 2 (2004) and Pusher 3 (2005). Gambler looks closely at the creative process of Refn's filmmaking, while also documenting the many economic battles in which the director was involved during the production of the second and third films in his trilogy. Ambo's more recent films include Hjemmefronten – fjenden bag hækken (The Home Front, 2010), which looks at the hostility that exists between neighbours who share hedges in suburban Denmark; and Fever (2010), a documentary short about the artist Julie Nord. In recent years, Ambo has been especially interested in pursuing work of a more thematic nature, and this in the form of a trilogy focusing on big existential issues. In Mechanical Love (2007), which travelled widely on the international festival circuit, Ambo explored the relationship between human beings and robots, and the nature of emotion itself. Released in 2012, Free the Mind deals with the impact that thoughts have on both the mind and the body. The last film in the trilogy, Ripples at the Shore, is about consciousness, and is scheduled for release in 2014. Ambo is also working on a film called Kongens Foged ('The Bailiff '), which takes a close look at the social system that shapes Danish realities. Phie Ambo co-owns the production company Danish Documentary with directors Pernille Rose Grønkjær, Mikala Krogh, and Eva Mulvad, and producer Sigrid Dyekjær.

Documentary features:

2014 Bondemand Niels ('Farmer Niels')
2014 Ripples at the Shore (working title)
2012 Kongens Foged ('The Bailiff')
2012 Free the Mind
2010 Fever – En film om Julie Nord (Fever: A Film about Julie Nord)
2007 Mechanical Love
2005 Gambler
2003 The Diver Inside Me (diploma film)
2002 Growing Up in a Day
2001 Family (with Sami Saif)

Television:

2010 Hjemmefronten – Fjenden bag hækken (The Home Front, TV 2)

REDVALL: How did you end up becoming a documentary filmmaker?

AMBO: I'm not one of these people who always wanted to make films. I have a BA in Nordic Philology, but already during my years as a student I started to realize that I had a strong desire to tell stories based on reality. However, I wasn't at all interested in journalistic stories. I wanted my own voice to be included because I was really tired of not being allowed to say 'I' at university. I had a strong need to tell a story that was bloody well told by me! I was eager to put myself on the line, and to tell a story that didn't involve all sorts of references to the work of others. But the question was, 'Where could I do that?'

I'd spent some time in New York, where I'd worked in a restaurant so as to save up for a camera. And what happened when I got it was that I became fascinated by the process of looking through the lens of a camera, where you select the reality you want. You choose to include certain things in the frame, and to exclude others. It's a particular way of understanding the world around us. I've never been interested in fiction. What interests me is the chaos of reality. I used the camera to unlock a kind of code, and what I experienced was that what I excluded from the frame, what my gaze opted not to include, could actually be more important than what was in the frame. I became really fascinated by that, but I still hadn't figured out where I could go with these ideas, where I could develop them. But then someone suggested that I go and see the graduation films from the National Film School's Documentary & TV programme, and that's when I realized what it was I wanted to do. So I actually applied to the Film School without having made a single film.

REDVALL: Why do you think you got in without having made a single film?

AMBO: The head of the programme, Arne Bro, has an eye for quirkiness. He's good at seeing right through whatever it is you think you're projecting. Looking back, I now see that I applied on the basis of a very tough and confrontational piece of creative work, which was probably the sort of thing the School was looking for. What I sent along was an unedited ten-minute sequence documenting a conversation with my father about how he was dying. It was clearly handheld, there was no editing, and it was just on VHS. So what was clear was that I had a certain drive, but also that I didn't know anything about how to make a film. I remember thinking that, if I was going to spend four years of my life at that school, it had to be the sort of place that could accommodate all that. I was really tired of being moulded. And I wanted to be fully in the picture myself, so I really put everything I had into that application. Talking to someone who's dying is a pretty awful thing to do, but I just wasn't going to hold back. And then I got in, and it was such a relief to feel that someone had sensed that there was a kind of expressive form, an expressive language, somewhere in that rough and rather in-your-face material.

REDVALL: Arne Bro appears to be someone who's very important to you, but also to a lot of other documentary filmmakers from your generation. Why is that?

AMBO: Arne has absolutely no artistic scruples. He has no fixed ideas about what can and can't be art. So as a result he's very good at liberating a language. He's extremely psycho-dynamic in his approach, and that can be insanely exhausting. Sometimes it was really too much. I feel there was too much psychology and not enough technique, but the good thing is that you end up discovering what it is, deep inside you, that actually drives the storytelling. There's not a lot of emphasis on making films that look like films. Instead you're taught to focus on finding those films that are going to allow you to say what you want to say, and then the cinematic language just has to adapt. That's the most important thing you learn from his method. You learn to feel that the cinematic language can be adjusted because, after all, it's the language that has to match what you're trying to say, and not the other way around.

REDVALL: You made your first film, which turned out to be a very important one, while you were still in film school. What were your years at the National Film School like?

AMBO: It was hard being in film school. Initially you just feel happy and relieved because someone has faith in your abilities. But then I made Family after about one year at the School. And you're not really allowed to make films while you're at the School, so that in itself was a struggle because it all had to be a bit surreptitious. Looking back, it was very healthy afterwards to have those three remaining years to develop in; lots of time to make bad films that wouldn't have a lot of negative consequences. That's exactly what you should be doing while you're at the School. You should be experimenting as much and as intensely as possible, and investigating the limits of your expressive language, so that you take all that with you when you graduate. You need to make it a habit to think that every new film you embark on will require something new, and that having to innovate isn't something to be afraid of.

But of course it's difficult to make that transition from a 90-minute film to exercises with one character, one light, and in-camera editing. There was some pretty heavy energy involved in still being in school after having won a major award in Amsterdam, and after having had a theatrical release. Family was one of the films that initiated the new wave in Danish documentary film. It was a striking film too, because none of the journalists knew what to do with it. So they reviewed it as a form of journalism, which of course it isn't. I remember that Politiken claimed that the directors lacked a flair for journalism. And you just think, 'Good grief, there's still a long way to go.' But it was actually good to get those sorts of responses because that's when I realized that it made sense to talk to a much bigger world. If you just focus on the domestic market you end up seriously depressed. Things simply move far too slowly. It was good to be catapulted into a wider world, to discover a much bigger stage to play on.

REDVALL: Family appears to have been made with a theatrical release in mind, and this made it unique in the Danish context. There was that beautiful poster, and a lot of effort clearly went into generating interest in the film, which wasn't at all typical for documentary films at the time. Were you thinking strategically about getting the film into the Danish cinemas from the very beginning?

AMBO: It was mostly our producer, Jonas Frederiksen, who thought a theatrical release would be amusing. He drummed up the money that was necessary to market the film, and he was really our torchbearer throughout that whole process. We were, of course, completely game, and it was all extra amusing because the film was actually a kind of crazy diary. It was great fun to shoot in CinemaScope and with the big screen in mind. That relation between something extremely intimate and its articulation for a broad audience was part of the concept from the outset. So that's why we also felt that it was appropriate to give the film a proper release. I have to say that the number of people who saw Family in the cinemas was really small, but all the things we put together – the poster and the packaging more generally – did end up going along with the film when it subsequently made its way around the world.

REDVALL: Did you travel a lot in connection with screenings of Family?

AMBO: Not really. I don't like that sort of thing much. When I've completed a film, I'm happy to be present at a few screenings, but I quickly tire of that because I think it's incredibly important to get on with the next film. If I keep talking about my old film, I can't get into my new film. I think I've attended all of two festivals, although I could have attended as many as 100. Some directors really benefit from traveling with their work, and from meeting various audiences and talking to them, but I'm just too restless. I really need to make sure I have time, peace of mind, and the conditions I generally need if I'm going to work on a new film. I like being constantly involved in the making of a new film; that sense of constantly being on the move. And I wouldn't have time for that if I were to travel all around the world. I make films because I'm curious about things. There's always something I want to figure out, and then I want to work on that constantly; that's part of the energy. It's like being a detective who's on the job. You can't let things that aren't related to the task at hand put that sort of energy on standby.

REDVALL: Family was in many ways a striking debut, perhaps because you and your then boyfriend, Sami Saif, were characters in it. What was the experience of being in your own film like?

AMBO: Well, Sami's the one who really gets stoked up. Our motivations for making that film were very different. He wanted to make a film, and he wanted to tell a good story, and he had a good story to offer. I, on the other hand, wanted to figure out how to make sense of him. For me, the film was a means of getting close to him. So, as a result, we were operating with two quite different approaches to the material. I'm not really that interested in intimacy for its own sake, and I very much doubt that I'll ever produce anything quite that intimate again. Family is the way it is because that's how I was best able to tell that story.

REDVALL: But you also figure in your diploma film, The Diver Inside Me. It's almost as though the Film School wants its directors to be in front of the camera at some point in their programme. Is that the case?

AMBO: Yes, it is. I suppose you could say that Family had taught me how to be on camera, how to be tough, and how to make use of myself as a fictional character. When you're in the editing room, you have to be able to look at yourself as though you were a different person. You just can't be vain; and the same is true for the main characters in your film. It's good to make films about yourself, and every film school student has done precisely that for that very reason. You get a sense of what hurts, and of what feels good, and you realize that it's good – at least as I see it – to make sure that people find themselves in situations where they lose their footing because that's when what they're all about as characters becomes really clear. But at the same time you have to make sure that there's a certain balance, so that they can actually live with it all afterwards. If you try to do this sort of thing with people you're close to, you find yourself protecting them in the process, even as you're pushing them on.

REDVALL: It seems like there's a lot of collaboration across the fiction/non- fiction divide in Danish film, and amongst practitioners with different specializations. How does that work and why do you think this is the case?

AMBO: We collaborate a lot, and I think this has everything to do with the Film School. You spend all that time sitting next to each other in the cinema, and you have to share what you've come up with in response to specific exercises. And you know that what you have to share is really intimate and really bad, but you have to put it up there on the screen nonetheless, so a lot of boundaries get pushed. But then you discover that nothing dreadful happens as a result of that. You realize that at some point you're going to have to screen the films you make for others, and that you might as well deal with any blows they're going to provoke in the company of friends. You learn that there's protection to be had from the process of involving others in your work.

Family was really a great experience, partly because I felt lucky to have been able, so early on, to put something out there that was like a fist on a table. It wasn't this business of having placed some small film or other with a short film festival. Janus [Billeskov Jansen], who did the editing, is clearly an important part of the picture here. He wasn't afraid of big gestures, symphony orchestras – the works. That process of working very closely with Janus has been a cornerstone in my education. He means a lot to me because there's something raw about him. You can't lull Janus into some aesthetic stupor. He sees through that sort of thing straight away. He cuts right to the bone, and he's better than anyone I know at telling stories in a way that keeps them moving forward. Sitting next to him as we worked simply set the standard in terms of what I wanted to achieve in the future. I've used his expertise in every single film I've made since Family. Even if he isn't doing the editing, I still get him to take a look because he's not seduced by aesthetics, which other people sometimes are.

I've collaborated in similar ways with Jacob Thuesen on my most recent films. I bring him into the process when I can tell that something isn't quite working, and I can't precisely identify what's wrong. Jacob is capable of turning the entire film around, of suddenly making use of material from research I did five years ago, which I had no intention whatsoever of using. It's such an incredible gift to work alongside people who think about film in a completely free way.

REDVALL: Your first film after film school was Gambler, which looks at the challenges that Nicolas Winding Refn encountered when making Pusher 2 and Pusher 3. It provides a complex picture of what's actually involved in creating a film. How did you end up making that film?

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Phie Ambo

2. Dola Bonfils

3. Dorte Høeg Brask

4. Mads Brüger

5. Pernille Rose Grønkjær

6. Jesper Jargil

7. Torben Skjødt Jensen

8. Max Kestner

9. Mikala Krogh

10. Simone Aaberg Kærn

11. Asger Leth

12. Janus Metz

13. Eva Mulvad

14. Michael Noer

15. Katia Forbert Petersen

16. Jeppe Rønde

17. Sami Saif

18. Anne Wivel

19. Anders Østergaard

Glossary

Index of Titles and Names

Index of the Institutional Landscape and Central Topics