{"title":"Between Sweden and the world: Documentary films about ABBA’s international success","authors":"E. Mazierska","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00057_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00057_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the phenomenon of ABBA, the most popular band ever to originate in Sweden, as accounted for in four documentaries, used to compare domestic and foreign responses to ABBA. Discussion draws on the concept of authenticity as formulated by Allan Moore, arguing that\u0000 authenticity is not located in the music itself, but in the relationship between the artists and their audience. Analysis also considers the authenticity of the documentary form.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49172287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sonja: The White Swan: Music as narrative device","authors":"S. Azatyan","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00053_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00053_1","url":null,"abstract":"Anne Sewitsky’s biopic Sonja (Sonja: The White Swan) (2018) is an example of authorial intervention that prioritizes a character-centred narrative rather than historical context. The article focuses on the musical score and the contemporary pop songs that contribute\u0000 to building the psychological‐emotional portrait of Norwegian-born Sonja Henie, champion figure skater and Hollywood star. In Sewitsky’s narrative strategy, non-diegetic music, sometimes deployed anachronistically, is used both to comment on the protagonist’s motivations\u0000 and behaviour and to express her inner states of mind. By foregrounding Henie’s psyche through music, the film balances her negative and positive sides and presents her as complex and sometimes contradictory individual.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48930152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Documentary filmmakers confront trauma: An interview with Marianne Hougen-Moraga and Estephan Wagner","authors":"Grzegorz Ziółkowski","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00052_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00052_7","url":null,"abstract":"The article features an interview with Copenhagen-based filmmakers Marianne Hougen-Moraga and Estephan Wagner, directors of Songs of Repression (2020), the latest documentary film to tackle Colonia Dignidad, a sectarian German enclave founded in Chile in 1961. The dialogue revolves\u0000 around the film, but it also illuminates some general problems documentarians must face when encountering trauma, among them ethical responsibilities towards protagonists and narrative strategies to employ. The interview is preceded by an introduction that sketches background information on\u0000 the notorious colony, explains how the film originated, examines the role of music ‐ a central motif of the film ‐ for Colonia’s functioning and situates the work in a wider context of documentaries that confront human rights abuses. The political, religious and moral complexities\u0000 of Colonia Dignidad are salient because they point to the way the inadequacy or total absence of processes of redress and reconciliation may ultimately prompt the re-emergence or re-establishment of sinister practices.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45340471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Battleship Femininity’ deconstructed: Unmasking the myth of Eva Dahlbeck and Ingmar Bergman","authors":"Saki Kobayashi","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00049_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00049_1","url":null,"abstract":"The Swedish film star Eva Dahlbeck (1920‐2008) is now remembered mainly for her contributions to Ingmar Bergman’s comedies in the 1950s. The epithet ‘Pansarskeppet kvinnligheten’ (‘Battleship Femininity’), allegedly given to her by the director,\u0000 has integrated her stardom into the myth-making process driven by Bergman and the press. This can erroneously give him sole credit for Dahlbeck’s fame despite her already established star status. To reconsider such an auteurist misconception, this article examines Dahlbeck’s stardom\u0000 from 1946 to 1956, drawing on Richard Dyer’s seminal theorization of a film star as a media construction. By analysing Dahlbeck’s star image and its relationship to three characters she plays in Bergman’s films, the article situates these films in the dynamics formed by diverse\u0000 media texts and elucidates their historical and cultural context while also providing a case study of film stardom in post-war Sweden.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49296543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Involuntary Dogme restrictions: Orca and COVID-19 screen culture","authors":"Maaret Koskinen","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00048_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00048_1","url":null,"abstract":"The Swedish film Orca (2020) was both conceived and produced during COVID-19. As such, it is also about the pandemic and its own becoming. Making use of the proliferation of current screen cultures, including the split screen, writer and director Josephine Bornebusch invigorates\u0000 old-fashioned ensemble acting while also putting current mediality on display.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41544453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rewriting Ibsen for the big screen","authors":"Audun Engelstad","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00046_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00046_1","url":null,"abstract":"Henrik Ibsen is regarded as the champion of realist theatre. In the early days of cinema, there were several silent film adaptations of Ibsen’s plays. One would think, given his standing as a playwright, that there would be a continuous interest in Ibsen’s work after the\u0000 conversion to sound. This article examines how the realist theatre ‐ heralded by Ibsen ‐ relates to classical (Hollywood) cinema and how Ibsen in various ways has been rewritten and has recently re-emerged within contemporary cinema.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41810254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trade stories, film policy and radical uncertainty: Remarks on Scandinavian cinema and COVID-19 inspired by ‘Digging the digital?’","authors":"Joel Frykholm","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00047_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00047_1","url":null,"abstract":"A selection of Corona-related trade stories from the field of ‘creative documentary’ is examined and connected to a discussion about government film policy ‐ long-term support structures as well as ad hoc measures to counter the effects of COVID-19 ‐ all in\u0000 an effort to gauge the pandemic’s ramifications for Scandinavian cinema and the film industry’s navigation of conditions of radical uncertainty.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49613052","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘Northern, not Nordic noir’: A Norwegian case study on crime series and strategies for transnational television","authors":"S. Sand, Thomas Vordal","doi":"10.1386/jsca_00045_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca_00045_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses transnational television and what strategies public service broadcaster NRK Drama has pursued to make the Norwegian crime series Monster: Brutally Far North travel. Monster was the first Norwegian-language television series bought by a major American\u0000 cable network, Starz. Using the concept of production values, we argue that NRK has made a series that is able to ride the Nordic noir wave of success while also offering a new northern Norwegian version of the western. These two factors made Monster a good fit for the American market.\u0000 The series is a result of strategic changes within NRK Drama and a commitment to the private and regional film business. Furthermore, NRK views drama productions as key for reaching audiences and has increased their budgets significantly. The analysis encompasses the industry context, media\u0000 articles, the ‘North’ as location, the series itself and interviews with important stakeholders.","PeriodicalId":42248,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Scandinavian Cinema","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45738564","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}