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High-Impact Films and the Festival Circuit

•  Scandinavian Cinema since the 1990s

•  Blockbuster or High-Impact Films?

•  Diversity of Production and Audience

•  The Festival Circuit and Exemplary Films

•  Dogme 95 (DK)

•  Kitchen Stories (2003, N)

•  Reprise (2006, N)

•  Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005, 2009, 2011, S/US)

Scandinavian cinema since the 1990s •  National attendance crisis

and cinema-institute revitalization

•  Professionalization

•  Economics over aesthetics

•  From grant-making to automatic funding schemes

•  50/50 and 40/60

•  International co-productions and emphasis on circulation and exposure (Hjort)

Dane Susanne Bier claiming 2011 Oscar for In a Better World

Blockbuster films

• Oriented to national audience

•  High-concept

• National topics

•  Saturation release and marketing

•  Little or no foreign distribution or festival exposure Bad Boys (SF, 2006)

High-Impact Films •  Production and distribution

synergy

•  Strategy

•  Networks

•  Festival exposure and notoriety

•  International, multi-local audience

•  Niche identity

•  Promotional impact on careers and national cinema

•  May include national blockbusters Björk in von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark (2000)

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Diversity of Production and Audience

•  Waning of Art Film/Farce Film Dichotomy

•  New diversity of production

•  Auteur cinema

•  Genre cinema

•  Documentary cinema

•  Diversification of distribution

•  Festivals

•  National cinema

•  Internet and television

2000-hit Swedish comedy Jalla! Jalla!

Film Festivals •  Loosely organized network of

some 500 film festivals worldwide

•  Hierarchy of exposure

•  Concentration of cultural and economic importance

•  Film markets at key festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Sundance)

•  Focused marketing at key festivals by companies and national film institutes

•  Festival success creates international media exposure, and subsequent business

Actor Andre Wilms and Filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki

in Cannes, 2011

Scandinavian Cinema and the Festival Circuit Dogme 95

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Kitchen Stories (2003)

Reprise (2006)

•  Joachim Trier’s (1974) first feature film

•  Discovery Award, Toronto IFF (New York, Rotterdam, Karlovy Vary)

•  Densely referential, cinematically and musically

•  Simple story, made complex for a youthful, art-house audience

•  Solid narrative structure, with sound and editing disruptions

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (’05, ’08, ’11)