Emancipated women, social equality, environmental awareness, the happiest people in the world, hygge, the welfare state, children’s rights, ethnic diversity. These are some phenomena and cultural values widely associated with the Nordic region. How are
these social and cultural qualities manifested in one of the Nordic region’s cultural flagships: its cinemas and television cultures? As we shall see, many of these values are not simply expressed in Nordic audio-visual cultures, but are debated and
contested in them as well. The lecture series Spotlight on Nordic Cinemas: From Silent Stars to Nordic Noir aims at providing an overview and analyses of the most eminent films, figures, themes and genres in the cinemas of this region, from the era
of silent film till today, with a double focus on the aesthetic trends and cultural values expressed in them. The Nordic presence in world cinema and television has grown substantially in recent decades, becoming far more diverse than the artistic
auteur cinema associated with the Silent Golden Age and Ingmar Bergman. Owing to such important phenomena as Dogme 95 or Nordic noir, the Nordic ‘small-nation’ cinemas have become centrally positioned on the global cinematic transnational arena. The
lecture series will focus on selected ‘spotlights’ from the Nordic region’s cinemas and television cultures, showing thematic and aesthetic continuities and discontinuities between earlier periods in Nordic film history and today, between art cinema
and genre productions, and between the Nordic region’s central film producing countries (such as Denmark and Sweden) and its – no less important – younger cinema and television traditions (such as Iceland or Sápmi). The series aims at providing students
with a knowledge of both the diversity and regional specificity found in the cinemas and television series of the Nordic countries, as well as illuminating the reasons behind their transnational success.
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