Nordic Explorations

Book excerpt: Nordic Explorations: Film Before 1930 includes twenty previously unpublished essays written for the 1999 retrospective of Nordic cinema at la Giornate del Cinema Muto in Italy. It brings together leading research on early cinema in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and includes essays on some of the major figures in Nordic cinema including Dreyer, Christensen, Sjöstrom and Stiller. Much current research in Nordic film before 1930 is also represented in this anthology with studies of the Norwegian travel genre, Nordic animated film, the relation of Nordic cinema to German and Russian film, the development of educational cinema and industrial film, as well as studies of individual films, filmmakers and national styles, and the relation of the medium to other forms of popular entertainment.The essays make a timely contribution to the more general study of cinema, afford authoritative and stimulating insight into research in the field and challenge many assumptions regarding Nordic cinema before 1930.