BIG TIME & Den anden side

For those of our visitors, who don’t read Danish: I have written two reviews, with top scores, in Danish language as this could push Danes go to the cinema. ”Den anden side” by Pernille Rose Grønkjær about and with standup comedian Anders Matthesen has been running in cinemas all over Denmark since April 27, mainly through the chain of Nordisk Film Biografer. Big marketing work has been done, good reviews, hope it will give results, the film deserves it. The film will definitely have an international appeal as well, when it gets to the festival circuit.

Where ”BIG TIME” by Kasper Astrup Schröder will also go, for sure. It premieres tomorrow May 3 in more than 50 cinemas in Denmark with DoxBio as distributor. Again big marketing work, interviews with Bjarke Ingels, the now world famous architect, clips on tv etc.

(A footnote from one who started as consultant and press person at the National Film Board of Denmark (Statens Filmcentral) in 1975, where it was almost impossible to make the press interested in documentaries – why… because they were not screened in cinemas or at festivals. Today Copenhagen (and some other bigger Danish cities) are full of festivals like CPH:DOX, like the architecture festival that runs now, Cinemateket has its ”documentary of the month” etc. etc. So happy about this development!)

Back to the standup comedian Matthesen and the architect Ingels. Both have been followed over several years, you see that in the final results and both deal with men, who face crises in their private and professional work at the age around 40! The directors Pernille Rose Grønkjær and Kasper Astrup Schröder go close to their protagonists, both public persons, who are often in the media and who deserve a bravo for letting the filmmakers into their stressful lives. These two well-produced films fit perfectly into the international line of direct cinema portraits of celebrities, that we know mostly from the American documentary history.