[SOUND] American movies dominate the world, but they do so mainly through mainstream genres with budgets that completely beat even the most expensive Scandinavian film. American films have become a kind of global mass culture for all, audiences all over the world. American film culture is, of course, much more than mainstream genres and blockbuster films. Even in America, we find what is often called an independent film culture, a culture outside the dominant major Hollywood studios. This more independent film culture often changes the major studios and experiment with genres and film aesthetics. The global American dominance has been a fact since the 1930s, the era of classical sound film culture and the era before television. But in the silent era, Scandinavian film, and especially Danish films, were much stronger in the world film culture. This was mainly due to Nordisk Film, but also a few other film companies like, for instance, Fotorama. Between 1907 and 10, Nordisk produces no less than 560 films. However, they were all pretty short films of around five to 15 minutes each. Through films like this, Nordisk and other companies developed a series of genres and also star systems, with Asta Nielsen at one, as one of the biggest stars. When really started the Danish international film adventure was the development of the long film, 30 to 45 minutes. This was unheard of in those days and gave silent cinema a major breakthrough with especially social, social and erotic melodramas like the White Slave Trade, the Abyss or the Flying Devils. For a short period between 1910 and 1920, Danish and also Swedish silent cinema had a strong world position, not just with artistic auteur films, but with films covering all genres. The First World War and the following years with the development of sound films changed that and paved the way for the global American era. But even though the dream of Scandinavian world dominance was shattered, the silent era developed the basis for a strong film culture in times to come. A number of Scandinavian directors from the silent period remain international names in film stories, in film history. A few like Danish Carl Th Dreyer continued an international career, but the balance between the Scandinavian films that were only seen and appreciated by a national audience and the films that became an international success had changed fundamentally. The international success for Scandinavian cinema during the silent cinema period was a private enterprise, unlike the culture, gradually developed over the next decades. As already pointed out, around 1970, all Scandinavian countries had developed the system where public support for films supplemented the still very important role of private production companies. In Scandinavia, very few films since the 1980s have been made without some sort of public support, either from the National Film Institute, from public service television stations, or from co-production funding systems in Europe. If we look at the films produced in Denmark between 2009 and 10, we see a clear pattern where a number of films can be very popular with the national audience, but never shown outside its own country of production. Whereas other films can have a much broader international profile, even without necessarily having a big national audience. Of the 40 Danish films from those two years, two films stand out as having an international strong profile. Number one is Susanne Bier's In a Better World from 2010, an Oscar winner seen by around 1.4 million people all around Europe, and also in other parts of the world. And Lars Von Trier's Antichrist from 2009, internationally seen by approximately 900,000 international. What we see here are two examples of the auteur cinema in different forms that speak to an international audience, and in Bier's case, also a national. Both Bier's and Trier's films are furthermore major international co-productions. But for instance, the number four on this is My Sister's Kids in Jutland, is only not nationally financed and only has a national audience. It is a typical example of a national mainstream film, very popular with the local audience, but completely unknown abroad. The auteur is definitely an important international brand for Scandinavian cinema. As already pointed out, world audiences hardly expect to find blockbuster movies from any of these countries. The Millenium Trilogy in 2009 is an exception, but also an indication that co-production can make a difference. But still, even though Scandinavian crime is a strong brand in literature and on film and television, the major Scandinavian contribution to world cinema is auteur films. The very concept of auteur is not Scandinavian, but French. And it was coined by the French in a European New Wave film generation of the 1960s. The concept is in opposition to the American form of filmmaking, the dominance of commercial criteria and formulas, the producer's strong role and the too literary and predictable European films. This young generation of film makers, for instance, Jean Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Francois Truffaut, spoke on behalf of the new European generation that wanted films that were original, based on life, not literature, and where the director was in artistic control. Some of the icons were Scandinavian, like Carl Th Dreyer and Ingmar Bergman, directors that redefined language of cinema. It is no surprise then, that it was a group of Danish directors who launched Dogme 95 in Paris, where also, the first attack on mainstream cinema took place. Inspired by the New Wave generation, Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg called for a new kind of international cinema to bring cinema back to its artistic roots and engagement with reality. The modern Scandinavian cinema's contribution to the international film culture is still the different forms of auteur cinema, ways of creating alternatives to the global mainstream cinema. It is directors like Lucas Moodysson, a harsh global Swedish realist with films like the intense portrait of Swedish teenage life took, Together, from 2000 or the global drama Mammoth from 2009. It is the Norwegian European art cinema director Bent Hamer who dir, who makes humorous images of life in Norway in Kitchen Stories. Or the internationally acclaimed Finnish film director Aki Kaurismaki with his portrait of Finnish life in, for instance, Drifting Clouds, or the international co-production Le Havre from 2011 about migration and ethnic conflicts in Europe. Thank you for your attention. [MUSIC]
