This January, the Nordic Heritage Museum presents the fourth annual Nordic Lights Film Festival. This cinematic event offers an immersion into the world of Nordic films, focusing on contemporary, award-winning feature-length films, documentaries, and short films from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, presented at the SIFF Film Center (at Seattle Center). This is a not-to-be-missed opportunity to watch high-quality films from the Nordic countries. The following Norwegian movies are showing: Liv and Ingmar, Turn me On Dammit and Twenty Fingers Speak – A Powerful Partnership.
NLFF 2013 Schedule
Friday, January 18, 2013
7:00 p.m.
Sweden – Feature/Drama
Beyond/Svinalängorna (2010) 99 min.
Directed by Pernilla August
Noomi Rapace sheds Dragon Tattoo for more family drama in Beyond, a drama set in 1970s Sweden and centered on a young woman's experiences growing up in a home riddled with abuse and alcoholism.
One morning just before Christmas, Leena (Rapace) receives a phone call from a hospital in her childhood town. She learns that her mother is dying. This news takes Leena on a journey to face her mother for the first time in her adult life. Leena has fought hard to let go of her grief over her lost and dark childhood, and is now forced to deal with her past to be able to move on.
Saturday January 19, 2013
10:00 a.m.
Finland – Feature - Animated/Family
Moomin and Midsummer Madness/Muumi ja vaarallinen juhannes (2008) 88 min.
Directed by Maria Lindberg
A peaceful summer day in the Moomin Valley is interrupted by a volcanic eruption. At the last minute the Moomin family finds refuge in a strange house. It turns out it's not an ordinary house but a theatre stage where the Moomin Family begins to write a play.
Noon
Norway - Documentary
Liv and Ingmar/Liv og Ingmar (2012) 81 min.
Directed by Dheeraj Akolkar
This feature documentary is an affectionate yet truthful account of the 42 years and 12 films long relationship between the legendary actress Liv Ullman and master film maker Ingmar Bergman.
Told entirely from Liv’s point of view, this roller coaster journey of extreme highs and lows is constructed as a collage of images and sounds from the timeless Ullman-Bergman films, behind-the-scenes footage, still photographs, passages from Liv’s book Changing and Ingmar’s love letters to Liv.
2:00 p.m.
Iceland – Feature/Drama
Volcano/Eldfjall (2011) 95 min.
Directed by Rúnar Rúnarsson
When Hannes retires from his job as a janitor, the big, empty timespan that is the rest of his life begins. He is estranged from his family, has hardly any friends, and the relationship with his wife has faded. Through drastic events, Hannes realizes that he has to adjust his life in order to help someone he loves.
Volcano is a love story of someone who has to deal with the choices of the past and the difficulties of the present in order to embrace the future.
4:00 p.m.
Iceland - Documentary
Grandma Lo-Fi Basement Tapes (2011) 62 minutes
Directed by Kristín Björk Kristjánsdóttir, Orri Jónsson, Ingibjörg Birgisdóttir
At the tender age of 70 she started recording and releasing her own music straight from the living room. Seven years later she had 59 albums to her name with more than 600 songs – an eccentric myriad of catchy compositions mixing in her pets, found toys, kitchen percussions, and Casio keyboards. Sigrídur Níelsdóttir is her name, and before long the Icelandic/Danish musician became an adored cult figure in the Icelandic music scene.
Shot mostly on Super-8 and 16mm Grandma Lo-fi is a cinematic tribute to her boundless creativity, created by three musicians and artists whom she has inspired.
6:00 p.m.
Finland – Feature/Drama/War
Silence/Hiljaisuus (2011) 110 min.
Directed by Sakari Krijavainen
Silence is a drama about people under unconventional circumstances. In the Second World War Finland was the only nation that brought casualties killed-in-action back to be buried at home. These actions were carried out by men and women working in assembly centers near enemy lines. This movie is a story of a group of people in a limbo between life and death, in a mental no-man’s-land, where heaven and hell, horror and joy, love and fear touch each other.
A group of four men and three women are running the centre. The never-ending ritual of thawing, tidying, and dressing the deceased separates the small community from the surrounding reality.
8:00 p.m.
Pan Nordic - Shorts
Nordic Shorts 100 minutes
Lonely Together/Alene Menn Sammen
Norway (2006): Thomas has lost his beloved and is full of self-pity. Only when love smiles to him again, does he discover what he really longs for.
The Twin/Tvillingen
Sweden (2011): Gustav is a hard working architect and a passionate free-diver. He practices holding his breath all the time, which results in a hissing noise. When he consults a doctor, he discovers something strange in Gustav's throat.
So it Goes/Korsoteoria
Finland (2012): A working class woman called Elli has never traveled outside of Finland. She will either get a cruise abroad or love. But not both.
2 Birds/Smáfugla
Iceland (2008): One bright summer night, a group of young teenagers go on a journey from innocence to adulthood.
Lifelong Love/Livslang kjærlighet
Norway (2011): Lifelong Love is not for amateurs. Berta and Eilev, who have managed this, have been married for over 50 years when we first meet them and hear their thoughts about a long life together.
Sunday January 20, 2013
10:00 a.m.
Finland – Feature - Animated/Family
Moomin and Midsummer Madness/Muumi ja vaarallinen juhannes (2008) 88 min.
Directed by Maria Lindberg
A peaceful summer day in the Moomin Valley is interrupted by a volcanic eruption. At the last minute the Moomin family finds refuge in a strange house. It turns out it's not an ordinary house but a theatre stage where the Moomin Family begins to write a play.
Noon
Finland - Documentary
The Finland Phenomenon 60 min.
Directed by Sean T. Faust
Finland’s education system has consistently ranked among the best in the world for more than a decade. The puzzle is, why Finland? In this film, Dr. Tony Wagner guides the viewer through an inside look at the world’s finest secondary education system. A life-long educator and author of the best-selling book The Global Achievement Gap, Wagner is uniquely qualified to explore and explain Finland’s success.
2:00 p.m.
Norway – Feature/Comedy
Turn me On Dammit/Få meg på, for faen (2011)76 min.
Directed by Jannicke Systad Jacobsen
In Skoddeheimen, Norway, 15-year-old Alma is consumed by her hormones and fantasies that range from sweetly romantic images of Artur, the boyfriend she yearns for, to daydreams about practically everybody she lays eyes on.
Turn Me On, Dammit! is a story about a group of teenage friends who feel trapped in the Norwegian small town in which they live. Alma is experiencing desires she never felt before and is just discovering her own sexuality. Her sexual curiosity makes daydreaming and phone-sex an escape from everyday life. At a party, Artur — the boy who frequents Alma's dreams — makes a bold move on her, but everything seems to go wrong. The life Alma wanted to escape from has somehow become even worse.
4:00 p.m.
Denmark – Feature/Drama
Teddy Bear (2012) 92 minutes
Directed by Mads Matthiesen
Dennis, a 38-year-old bodybuilder, would really like to find true love. He has never had a girlfriend and lives alone with his mother in a suburb of Copenhagen. When his uncle marries a girl from Thailand, Dennis decides to try his own luck on a trip to Pattaya, as it seems that love is easier to find in Thailand. He knows that his mother would never accept another woman in his life, so he lies and tells her that he is going to Germany. Having never traveled before, the hectic Pattaya is a huge cultural shock for him, and he is about to lose hope when he unexpectedly meets Toi.
6:00 p.m.
Sweden - Documentary
Women with Cows/Kokvinnorna (2011) 80 min.
Directed by: Peter Gerdehag
This award-winning Swedish documentary depicts two sisters: 77-year-old Britt who, despite being hunched over thanks to a long-ago back injury, tries to single-handedly run her dairy farm; and 75-year-old Inger, a widow who lives in a nearby town and begrudgingly helps her sister.
Does this film say anything about the environment, corporatization of farming or the upside of organic farming? Nope. Just a simple, effective portrait of two of the most stubborn women you've ever met. When contrasted with some remarkable Kodachrome home movies, taken when they were young, there are hints of different ways their lives could have been lived.
8:00 p.m.
Denmark - Documentary
Hello My Name is Lesbian/Goddag mit navn er Lesbisk (2009) 52 min.
Directed by Iben Haahr and Minna Grooss
This documentary is the first film about the modern lesbian culture in all its diversity in one of the most sexually liberated countries in the world: Denmark. The film features lesbians ranging in age from 19 to 84 who share their life stories and views on sex, family, nightlife, and careers.