Cinema of Norway

Cinema of Norway
No. of screens422 (2011)[1]
 • Per capita9.6 per 100,000 (2011)[1]
Main distributorsSF Norge 23.0%
The Walt Disney Company Nordisk Film 21.0%
United International Pictures 17.0%[2]
Produced feature films (2011)[3]
Fictional31 (88.6%)
Animated
Documentary4 (11.4%)
Number of admissions (2013)[4]
Total11,802,662
 • Per capita2.3 (2013)[4]
National films2,690,110 (22.8%)
Gross box office (2013)[4]
TotalNOK 1.1 billion (~€113.8 million)
National filmsNOK 222 million (~€23.1 million) (20.3%)

Cinema in Norway has a long history, dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, and has an important stance in European cinema, contributing at least 30 feature-length films a year.[5]

There have been over 1,050 films made in Norway ever since cinema's first introduction to the country in 1907.[6]

Some of these films have been selected for the most prestigious film festivals around the world such as Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, and Venice Film Festival. Fourteen Norwegian films have garnered Academy Award nominations. Two of them won the award: Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki for Best Documentary Feature Film in 1951[7] and Torill Kove's The Danish Poet for Best Animated Short Film in 2006.[8][9]

The first domestically produced Norwegian film was a short about fishermen, Fiskerlivets farer ("The Dangers in a Fisherman's Life"), dating from 1907. The first feature was released in 1911, produced by Halfman Nobel Roede.[10] In 1931 Tancred Ibsen, grandson of playwright Henrik Ibsen, presented Norway's first feature-length sound film, Den store barnedåpen ("The Great Christening"). Throughout the 1930s, Ibsen dominated the nation's film industry.[11] Fellow film director Leif Sinding was also very successful during this period. Ibsen produced conventional melodramas more or less on the model of Hollywood films.

In the modern era, notable filmmakers of Norway include, Joachim Trier, 3 time Cannes Film Festival contender,[12] and Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, also the creator of the internationally acclaimed Norwegian film trilogy: the Oslo trilogy,[13] which consists of the films Oslo August 31st, Reprise and The Worst Person in the World. Followed by Morten Tyldum, an Academy Award for Best Director nominee,[14] best known for making the Norwegian thriller film Headhunters (2011), The 2014 historical drama The Imitation Game, and the science fiction drama Passengers (2016). Other notable directors include but are not limited to: Eskil Vogt, Bent Hamer, Nils Gaup and Espen Sandberg.

Notable films

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1920s

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1930s

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1940s

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1950s

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1960s

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1970s

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1980s

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1990s

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2000s

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2010s

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2020s

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Notable short films

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Actors

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Directors

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Other notable persons in the Norwegian film industry

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Awards

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The Norwegian equivalent of the Academy Awards is the Amanda award, which is presented during the annual Norwegian Film Festival in Haugesund. The prize was created in 1985. The Amanda award is presented in following categories: Best Norwegian Film, Best Directing, Best Male Actor, Best Female Actress, Best Film for Children and Youth, Best Screenplay, Best Short Film, Best Documentary (however, a documentary can also win the Best Film award), Best Foreign Film and an honorary award.

The documentary Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl received the Academy Award for Documentary Feature at the 24th Academy Awards in 1951. It is the only feature film in Norwegian history to win an Academy Award. In 2006 the Norwegian/Canadian animated short film The Danish Poet, directed by Norwegian Torill Kove and narrated by Norwegian screen legend Liv Ullmann, won an Academy Award for Animated Short Film, and became the second Norwegian production to receive an Academy Award.

As of 2013, five films from Norway have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film: Nine Lives (1957), The Pathfinder (1987), The Other Side of Sunday (1996), Elling (2001) and Kon-Tiki (2012).

Film festivals

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Film commissions

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Film schools

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Film schools include:

Other alternatives for more theoretical higher education in film include:

There are also several more practical private film collages:

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Table 8: Cinema Infrastructure – Capacity". UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Archived from the original on 5 November 2013. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
  2. ^ "Table 6: Share of Top 3 distributors (Excel)". UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Archived from the original on 24 December 2018. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
  3. ^ "Table 1: Feature Film Production – Genre/Method of Shooting". UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Archived from the original on 5 November 2013. Retrieved 5 November 2013.
  4. ^ a b c "Facts & Figures". Norsk filminstitutt. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 22 March 2015.
  5. ^ "Feature Film, Norwegian (Sorted by Release Date Descending)". IMDb.com. IMDb (Internet Movie Databse). Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  6. ^ "Feature Film, Norwegian (Sorted by Release Date Descending)". IMDb.com. IMDb (Internet Movie Databse). Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  7. ^ "Kon-Tiki (150)". imdb.com. IMDb (Internet Movie Databse). Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  8. ^ "The Danish Poet (Den danske dikteren)". nfi.no. Norwegian Film Institute. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  9. ^ McKay, Andrew (22 January 2019). "Norway at the Oscars". Life in Norway. lifeinnorway.net. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  10. ^ Donald Dewey, "Edging Out of Darkness" Norway’s Long Struggle to Establish a Thriving Film Industry" Archived 2012-05-07 at the Wayback Machine, Scandinavian Review (The American-Scandinavian Foundation), Autumn 2010, pp. 18, 30.
  11. ^ Nordic National Cinemas, edited by Gunnar Iverson, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, Tytti Soila, page 105
  12. ^ "Joachim Trier – Awards". IMDb.
  13. ^ "New Norwegian Film: The Worst Person in the World". 21 August 2019.
  14. ^ "Morten Tyldum | Director, Producer, Editor". IMDb.
  15. ^ "Kosmorama Trondheim internasjonale filmfestival". Archived from the original on 2012-07-29. Retrieved 2009-01-05.

Further reading

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  • Hjort, Mette; Lindqvist, Ursula, eds. (2016). A Companion to Nordic Cinema. Malden, Massachusetts: Wiley Blackwell. ISBN 9781118475256.