07/11/2006

Yesterday was a historic day for Nordisk Film. Her Majesty Queen Margrethe II was among the 200 VIPs who walked the red carpet of the biggest studio – Studio 3 – at the company’s headquarters in Valby, to attend the celebration of the company’s 100 years of activity and the Nordisk Film Awards ceremony, which crowned Anders Morgenthaler and Nils Malmros.

The multi-talented Morgenthaler, director of the controversial feature debut Princess [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], was awarded the DKK100,000 (€13,400) Nordisk Film Award, presented each year to a Danish film talent who has contributed in an extraordinary way to the Danish media and film environment. He succeeds his fellow writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen and 2004 winner Jørgen Leth.

The Nordisk Film-100 Years Honorary Award of DKK 100,000 was awarded to filmmaker Nils Malmros and four Erik Balling Travelling Grants of DKK 50,000 were split equally between writer/director Nikolaj Arcel, documentary filmmaker Ander Østergaard, writer Lise Nørgaard and film composer Bent Fabricius-Bjerre.

Founded on November 6, 1906, on a marchland plot in Valby on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Nordisk Film is now one of Denmark’s most successful media brands, with branches in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. On the film production front, the company continues to make children’s film a high priority through its animation studio A Film – creators of the animated feature The Ugly Duckling And Me [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (103,000 admissions in Denmark in one month) – and its new 33.3% stake in Morgenthaler and Sarita Christensen’s production outfit Copenhagen/Bombay.

However, Nordisk is also a partner of Fine & Mellow Productions, whose new comedy Easy Skanking [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Hella Joof is at the top of the local box office (147,821 admissions in only two weeks) and makes its own in-house productions under Kim Magnusson’s aegis, such as Tomas Villum Jensen’s Clash of Egos [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (275,384 admissions) and Christina Rosendahl’s feature debut Triple Dare [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (106,489 admissions).