The Danish Directors 3: Dialogues on the New Danish Documentary Cinema

By Mette Hjort, Ib Bondebjerg and Eva Novrup Redvall

Emphasizing the new documentary cinema, this book features film-makers who belong to the generation born in the 1970s. Many of the interviewees were trained at the National Film School of Denmark’s now legendary Department of Documentary and Television. The term ‘new’ also captures tendencies that cut across the work of the film-makers. For example, for the generation in question, internationalization and the development of a new digital media culture are inevitable aspects of everyday life, and, indeed, of the professional environments in which they operate. A comprehensive overview of documentary directors currently working in Denmark, this is the only book of its kind about this growing area of Danish cinema.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Release date: Mar 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781783203260

Book preview

Chapter 1

Phie Ambo

Born 1973. Phie Ambo holds a BA in Nordic Philology from the University of Copenhagen. She was subsequently trained at the National Film School of Denmark, graduating as a documentary film director in 2003. Phie Ambo released her first documentary film, entitled Family (2001), while still in film school. Co-directed with Sami Saif, Family won the prestigious Joris Ivens Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). The film follows Saif’s trip to the Middle East in search of his father. Like most of Ambo’s films, Family was shot in CinemaScope. At the same time, however, the film has much of the intimacy of a documentary diary film. Family was one of the first Danish documentaries to achieve a noteworthy theatrical release. Having graduated from film school, Ambo made Gambler (2005), a thought-provoking account of Nicolas Winding Refn’s efforts, against all odds, to complete Pusher 2 (2004) and Pusher 3 (2005). Gambler looks closely at the creative process of Refn’s filmmaking, while also documenting the many economic battles in which the director was involved during the production of the second and third films in his trilogy. Ambo’s more recent films include Hjemmefronten – fjenden bag hækken (The Home Front, 2010), which looks at the hostility that exists between neighbours who share hedges in suburban Denmark; and Fever (2010), a documentary short about the artist Julie Nord. In recent years, Ambo has been especially interested in pursuing work of a more thematic nature, and this in the form of a trilogy focusing on big existential issues. In Mechanical Love (2007), which travelled widely on the international festival circuit, Ambo explored the relationship between human beings and robots, and the nature of emotion itself. Released in 2012, Free the Mind deals with the impact that thoughts have on both the mind and the body. The last film in the trilogy, Ripples at the Shore, is about consciousness, and is scheduled for release in 2014. Ambo is also working on a film called Kongens Foged (‘The Bailiff’), which takes a close look at the social system that shapes Danish realities. Phie Ambo co-owns the production company Danish Documentary with directors Pernille Rose Grønkjær, Mikala Krogh, and Eva Mulvad, and producer Sigrid Dyekjær.