Two of the earliest surviving silent films in the Norwegian Film Archives were included in the program, the first of which is Gunnar Sommerfeldt’s epic ode to rugged individualism and self-reliance, The Growth of the Soil, based on the Nobel Prize-winning novel by internationally renowned native author, Knut Pedersen Hamsun. Tracing the pioneering adventures of […]
The divisive issues of immigration and social integration are also in Dominique Standaert’s visually resplendent, whimsical, and affectionate film, Hop. In the opening scene, Justin (Keita Kalumba), a young immigrant from Burundi, tells a fantastic tale of the pivotal role of the African pygmies in the defeat of the Carthaginian general, Hannibal, during the Punic […]
Overtly influenced by René Clément’s anti-war film Forbidden Games, France Stiglic’s equally poignant and impassioned Valley of Peace captures the horrors of war as seen through the eyes of its most vulnerable victims – a young girl named Lotti (Evelyne Wohlfeiler) and a protective older boy, Marko (Tugo Stiglic). Taken into custody by German soldiers […]
The Murderers are Among Us is a haunting and indelible film on the process of healing and reconciling with personal accountability. The film opens to an imbalancing shot of a drunken Dr. Hans Mertens (Ernst Wilhelm Borchert) wandering through the bombed ruins of Berlin as he enters a disreputable cabaret. Once a successful specialist surgeon, […]
The Blue Angel is a desperate, emotionally unrelenting portrait of a man whose consuming love for a cold, manipulative woman leads to moral descent and ruin. Dr. Immanuel Rath (Emil Jannings), is a repressed, middle-aged high school professor who decides to confront Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich), a cabaret singer, about her “bewitching” of his students. […]
On the 100th anniversary of the Dé family’s watch factory, the third generation owner and company president, Charles (François Simon), is awkwardly (and reluctantly) greeted with a venerated speech delivered by an obliging worker for the benefit of a rolling television camera. Overcome with a sudden bout of anxiety, Charles abruptly retreats for the nearest […]