Making a Mountain

Directed by Kaspar Astrup Schröder and Rikke Selin Fokdal.

The film had its world premiere today, October 1st and will be screened tomorrow at Cinemateket in Copenhagen at 4.30pm as part of the Copenhagen Architecture Festival. Where there will be a discussion after the 55 minutes long informative corporate film that has been made to give the viewers in the architecture world here and abroad an insight to what it means to build a mountain in a flat country.

I refrain from making a film review, it’s of course amazing images from above and from different angles, the architect Bjarke Ingels is a good lecturer and the CEO (until 2017) of Amager Ressource Center Ulla Röttger conveys the enthusiasm and energy that the film lacks.

Where is the festive celebration of this fantastic new building in Copenhagen? And who decided to use Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov from start till end…

To be fair  – here is the description of the film attached to the link I received:

“Wilkommen, bienvenue,” the CEO sang in 2011 when BIG won the architecture competition for a large waste-to-energy plant with a ski slope on top. A camera has followed the process since the tentative beginnings of what became known – from the very first sod cut – as a visionary project that combines waste management and infrastructure with spectacular architecture and a recreational urban space.

But it is going to be an uphill struggle …

The challenges soon pile up along with questions: How do you even combine a waste-to-energy plant with a ski slope? How far is a property developer willing to go? And how much can an architect actually push through when all is said and done?

In a cinematic construction site symphony, we follow our main characters from the popping of champagne corks and the vision taking off, through broken dreams about smoke rings and abrasions from artificial snow, to the first trip down the black slope.

Denmark, 2020, 55 mins.

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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