Documentaries and Shorts for All Danes
It’s gonna be a bit personal/sentimental as I worked with Danish short films and documentaries for 20 years. At the Danish Statens Filmcentral, where the distribution on 16mm was huge to the whole non-theatrical sector – schools, community groups and assocaitions, high schools, universities and for children of course the kindergartens, but also art and culture houses, and libraries… Of course many of the films were shown on television, but – even if we around 1990 had 300.000 screenings organised at these places, the question was always from the individual viewer: Yes, but where can we see these fantastic documentaries that you talk about? We don’t have a 16mm projector at home…!
As of today, after we went from 16mm prints to VHS to dvd to internet streaming, the answer is easier, go to your computer – it is organised, NOW, by The Danish Film Institute, through (yes, they use the name of the film institution that existed from 1939 to the mid 1990’es where it was merged with The Danish Film Institute) Filmcentralen, that offers Danes to go online and find films they want to watch for free, or film links where they have to pay a bit on other platforms. On top of that the viewer gets information about the film and its director. The photo to the text is from the poster of the masterpiece by one of ”our” masters, Jon Bang Carlsen, ”Hotel of the Stars” from 1981, available for free, as are 12 of the films by this director, for three others from his hand there is a link to other streaming possibilities. That’s a treat!
300 films are available for free, links to many others, through this Filmcentralen, sorry it is not for non-Danish but why not pick up this idea? It’s cultural policy at its best!
There are of course many films that are not there yet, but it is an excellent start. Bravo!
