Anne Bachmann

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Locating inter-Scandinavian silent film culture

The cover picture represents the Swede Julius Jaenzon shooting a nature short for A/S Norsk Kinematograf in Vestvågøy in Lofoten on March 10, 1910. It brings together several threads discussed in this thesis: geneaologies of ‘national cinema’; transnational mobility of film practitioners within Scandinavia; nature as a trope moving from still photography into silent cinema, a practice in which Danish film production eagerly partook; and in Anders Beer Wilse’s photo a theoretical backdrop of visual culture and archival issues. One of Jaenzon’s works counts as the first Norwegian fiction film, but he is above all one of the emblematic figures from the Swedish feature-film successes around 1920. These cornerstones in the conception of Swedish national cinema often staged and performed Scandinavian-nesses and inspired or provoked production practices in both Norway and Denmark. In the thesis, I will return on occasion to Lofoten and other geographical sites used to embody a particularly resonant specificity and topographic authenticity on multiple, concurrent levels: local, national and Scandinavian.