КАТАЛОГ СATALOG

БОЖЕСТВЕННА П’ЯТІРКА З ДАНІЇ HIGH FIVE FROM DENMARK
Tue Steen Müller,
film consultant
I have done the High Five with the
grandchildren again and again, when we
have achieved something together. We
made it! Be it building a Ninjago Lego,
baking buns or making an espresso for
grandfather.
When I arrive in Kyiv, thanks to a generous
invitation from the festival, I will do a
High Five with Victoria Leshchenko, who
has been struggling to get copies to show
to the festival audience. Entering the age
of digitalization, the Danish Film Institute
does not have resources to have files of ‘old’
films. But we made it!
So now you think that the High (Quality) Five
films that I have chosen to show to you are
‘old’. They are – for some, in terms of their year
of production – but they are still fresh, and
they are definitely by filmmakers who have
set the agenda for the further development
of documentaries from Denmark.
I have chosen Jørgen Leth, an icon in
Danish film, literature, journalism and show
business, who together with Ole John made
the playful examination of movements
Motion Picture (1970) and the trend-setting
pop-art film 66 Scenes from America (1981).
And Jon Bang Carlsen, like Leth an
internationally acclaimed film director, who
– a couple of decades before the so-called
hybrid film – worked with what he called
‘staged documentary’, one of them being It’s
Now or Never (1996). A true artist, who also
paints and writes books.
And then I chose the two films that won
the main awards at the IDFA festival in
Amsterdam because of their novelty and
originality: Sami Saif and Phie Ambo made
Family (2001) and Pernille Rose Grønkjær
The Monastery (2006). Both use a classical
dramaturgy, constructed as if they were
fiction, dramatic – but shot with small
cameras over a long period, great stories
which were constructed in the editing room.
The two films have set new standards for
development and production in Denmark…
... as you will be able to discover at the
90-minute talk with clips that I will give on
Danish Docs during DOCU/CLASS.
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