New Nordic Cinema
February 19 through May 16, 2014
Wednesdays @ 7 pm & Fridays @ 6:30 pm
$10 ($7 ASF Members); Series pass: $100 ($70 ASF Members)
Scandinavia House brings some of the most influential Nordic films to New York audiences this spring with films from Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.
Directed by Kristina Lindström & Maud Nycander (Sweden & Denmark, 2012). Late in the evening on February 28, 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme and his wife walked home from seeing a film. Palme was fatally shot and killed by an unknown assassin. The murder was never solved.
Filmmakers Lindström and Nycander’s encompassing portrait of Palme began as a means to reassess the former prime minister’s legacy, separate from the drama and horror of his death. More than 26 years have passed since Palme was assassinated, but he remains a divisive figure in Swedish society. Outspoken, courageous, and an advocate for women’s rights, environmentalism, and the peace movement, Palme almost single-handedly changed global views about Sweden.
Palme’s decision to march with the ambassador from North Vietnam in Stockholm in 1968 prompted the United States to recall its ambassador in what many consider to be the nadir of relations between the two countries. In a Time Magazine article, the incident was reported thusly: “No political figure in the Western world was more critical of President Nixon’s decision to resume the bombing of North Vietnam than Sweden’s Prime Minister Olof Palme.” Palme compared the aerial attacks on Hanoi and Haiphong to “Guernica, Oradour, Babi Yar, Katyn, Lidice, Sharpeville, Treblinka.” Despite the political differences between the two nations, Henry Kissinger remained a deep admirer of Palme.
Nycander and Lindström’s film portrait offers an encompassing view both of the man and of his era, with never-before-seen footage released by the Palme family. The film won two awards at the 50th Guldbagge Awards, including Best Editing and Best Music (2013).
103 min. In Swedish with English subtitles.
About the directors
Kristina Lindström has created many of the visually innovative and award-winning programs that have been seen on Swedish Television (SVT), such as Elbyl, Kobra, among others. She has worked as a journalist and filmmaker, in addition to serving as a producer for Swedish Radio’s (SR) society editor. For the past ten years Lindström has been the head of SVT – Culture and Society/Kultur och samhälle; the program has repeatedly won the Stora Journalist prize and the Kristallen television prize.
Maud Nycander has years of experience as a documentary filmmaker, with a dozen films to her name. Previously she has made several historical documentaries and has a great deal of experience with giving new life to archived material. Her film The Nun/Nunnan (2007) won the Prix Italia and a Guldbagge (the Swedish Film Academy Award). Nycander’s most recently shown work has been the attention-¬getting film Restricted Facility/Sluten avdelning (2010) – a TV mini-series documentary about a psychiatric ward in a large hospital in Stockholm; it was nominated for a Kristall award in 2010.
Special thanks to the Danish Film Institute, the Finnish Film Foundation, the Icelandic Film Centre, the Norwegian Film Institute, the Swedish Film Institute, Nordic House in the Faroe Islands, Corinth Films, Magnolia Pictures, and Chezville.
