Lübeck, Oct. 9, 2014. This year’s Retrospective section of the 56th Nordic Film Days Lübeck (Oct. 29 – Nov. 2, 2014) showcases Scandinavian drawing room comedies from 1917 to 2007 as testimony to the liberating power of laughter. The retrospective kicks off with early silent films by Mauritz Stiller, the man who discovered Greta Garbo – “Thomas Graal’s Best Film” (1917), which will open the Retrospective on Oct. 29, 2014 at 7:45 pm in a screening accompanied by Werner Loll on piano, and the elegant screwball comedy “Erotikon” (1920), for which students of Lübeck’s music college will provide new musical accompaniment. “Erotikon” will be shown twice during the festival, on Thursday Oct. 30 at 8:00 pm in the Lübeck University of music on Sunday, Nov. 2 at 3:00 pm in the Volkstheater Geisler.
Also in focus in the Retrospective are the comedies of the Norwegian husband and wife acting team of Unni Bernhoft and Bjørn Sand, with the re-discovered gems “Morons in the Mountains” (1957), “Dust on the Brain” (1959) and “Norske Byggeklosser” (1972). The pair will be on hand in Lübeck to personally introduce their films. Black humour is the driving force behind three cryptic farces from Finland, “Inspector Palmu’s Error” (1960) by Matti Kassila, “The Year of the Hare” (1977, dir: Risto Jarva) and Markku Pölönen’s film “On the Road to Emmaus” (2001). Iceland is represented in the retrospective with the emancipation comedy “The Icelandic Shock Station” (1986), directed by Thòrhildur Thorleifsdóttir. Danish humour comes to Lübeck from a director not usually known for his laugh out loud comedies – Lars von Trier with the 2006 “The Boss of it All”. Sweden is on hand with no less a personage than Ingmar Bergman and his experimental colour film “All These Women” (1964). And Bergman’s former student, Roy Andersson, produced a body of work that is no less idiosyncratic than the master’s own; as part of the Retrospective, the work of this year’s Golden Lion winner in Venice will honoured with an homage titled “Cinema of the Absurd” and including a selection of his commercials and his feature “You, the Living” (2007), as well as a portrait of Andersson made by director Johann Carlsson entitled “Tomorrow’s Another Day” (2010).
The Retrospective programme gets a head start on the festival once again this year, with a lecture in the Gemeinnützige restaurant in Lübeck on Oct. 28, 2014 at 7:30 pm. Speaking on the subject of “Scandinavian drawing room comedies” will be Dr. Anders Marklund, lecturer at the University of Lund and co-publisher of the “Scandinavian Journal of Cinema”, and Jörg Schöning, curator of the Retrospective. Admittance is free. Dr. Anders Marklund will also be leading a new event that is part of this year’s Retrospective, the “Lübeck Film Studies Colloquium”. Lectures in English on the history and background of film comedy in Scandinavia will be held on Friday, Oct. 30 and Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014 from 9 am to 1 pm, augmented by group seminars and panel discussions devoted to current issues in contemporary cinema, with selected guests of the Nordic Film Days Lübeck. There is no charge for the colloquium; participants are kindly asked to register with anders.marklund@litt.lu.se
The complete programme and schedule of the Retrospective and the entire programme of the 56th Nordic Film Days Lübeck will be posted on the festival homepage starting on October 18, 2014. Advance ticket sales begin on October 25. Get the latest news and highlights at facebook.com/nordicfilmdays as well as via tweets at twitter.com/nordicfilmdays.
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