Love and murder - Swedish Film Institute

28
Women WitH coWs
peter GerdeHaG
direcTor
producTion info p. 46
Back to the roots
peter Gerdehag’s documentary about two elderly women in the swedish countryside is an unlikely box office success.
When peter Gerdehag travels round and shows
Women with Cows (Kokvinnorna, 2011) and
his other films – all of them about people at
odds with modernity – he usually asks the
audience about their own experience of
small-scale farming. almost all of them, he says,
have done some ploughing, some harrowing or
have moved logs by horse. many of them have
even milked a cow by hand.
admittedly, his audiences are often on the
elderly side and have come to the screenings in
the hope of reconnecting with a bygone era, but
what the question does perhaps demonstrate
most of all is how quickly times have changed in
sweden. in the 1950s, a quarter of the
population were involved in what was largely
low-level farming. today that figure is roughly
one per cent, and agriculture in general has
become larger in scale and increasingly
mechanised.
Women with Cows is about two elderly sisters
and their life on a farm in rural sweden. one of
them has moved from the family home, got
married and had children and grandchildren.
the other has stayed behind with the cows,
increasingly infirm yet ever more strong-minded.
although she's bent double and her house and
home are crumbling around her, she looks after
the cows and milks them by hand. the sister is
forced against her will to lend a hand, and
Facts nature photographer and filmmaker peter
gerdehag, born in stockholm in 1953, has
specialised in documentaries set in rural parts of
sweden. both The Horseman (Hästmannen, 2006) and
Women with Cows (Kokvinnorna, 2011) were
highly successful at the swedish box office.
conflicts simmer away beneath the surface.
both are mindful of their deceased father, a
strict man who ruled his girls with a rod of iron.
peter gerdehag – who worked for many
years as a nature and landscape photographer
– has made a series of films about a diverse
group of people which take up questions of
intensive farming, bio-diversity and, to a certain
extent, the freedom to do as one wishes without
the interference of the modern nanny state.
gerdehag brings us people who live in
symbiosis with animals, the land and the
swedish forest, and who in their individual ways
peTer GerdehaG (all picTures)
are too idiosyncratic to function in urban society.
all the films made by gerdehag and his
collaborator tell aulin have been phenomenally
successful, attracting millions of viewers when
they've been broadcast on television. they have
also done well at the cinema.
peter Gerdehag has his own ideas as to why
this is:
“i make low-key films. Women with Cows is
an old fashioned documentary without any
fast-moving edits. i let my viewers relax in the
images. years can pass from the beginning to
the end, seasons come and go, everything
moves at its own pace.
i also think my themes are important. people
have a yearning back to the land, even if they live
hurried lives in the city, as a pause for breath or
to reconnect with their roots.” n
TexT po Tidholm
women with cows is the second biggest box
office success for a documentary since Stefan
Jarl's classic 1968 film They call us misfits. To
date, more than 40,000 people have seen the film
at Swedish cinemas. In Norway and Finland it has
attracted large television audiences. In Sweden it
will have its television premiere just after Christmas
this year. The film has been screened at festivals in
Hamburg, London, Karlovoy Vary, Bergen, Leipzig
and Lübeck.