IMAGES OF A NORDIC DRAMA International Premiere
Section: Artscapes
Director: Nils Gaup
Producer: Linn Henriksen
Running Time: 1 hour 11 minutes
Language: English, German, Norwegian
Country: Norway, Germany
Genre: Feature Documentary
HOT DOCS 2022 Festival Screenings:
Public Screening:
Saturday, April 30 at 11:30am
Location: Varsity 8 (55 Bloor Street West)
Thursday, May 5 at 8:45pm
About
A persistent art collector (Haakon Mehren) faces unexpected resistance while championing the work of an unknown Norwegian artist after finding a cache of paintings in a barn. Despite success abroad, the undiscovered work of Aksel Waldemar Johannessen, an admired contemporary of Edvard Munch, takes nearly three decades to launch. The painter's oil depictions of prostitutes and drunks living in miserable poverty offend the bourgeois aesthetics of Norway's art establishment and challenge the canon to the point of sabotaging his rediscovery. Will rejection by the curatorial staff at the National Museum and gatekeepers of the Munch Museum diminish Johannessen's work? An invaluable insight into art world politics, cultural institutions' ties to big business and the power of exposure, IMAGES OF A NORDIC DRAMA shows Johannessen's pieces repetitively throughout the film, to the point of familiarity, to demonstrate how contact with works of art cultivate appreciation and memorability, and how essential access is to making or breaking an audience for an artist's oeuvre.
Nils Gaup was born in Kautokeino, Northern-Norway in 1955. Gaup is an award-winning screenwriter and director with over 30 years of experience from filmmaking. His first feature film PATHFINDER (1987) was nominated for an Academy Award.
Since then, he has made numerous feature films, with IMAGES OF A NORDIC DRAMA, being his first documentary. His upcoming projects include THE RIOT, a powerful Norwegian historical action film chronicling a miners’ uprising at the start of the 20th century starring Swedish actors Otto Fahlgren (BEARTOWN) and Simon J. Berger (MARGRETE- QUEEN OF THE NORTH).
HOT DOCS 2022 Link to buy tickets:
https://hotdocs.ca/whats-on/hot-docs-festival/films/2022/images-of-a-nordic-drama
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