Nordisk Panorama 25 Year

I attended the opening of the 25th edition of Nordisk Panorama friday night in Malmö, Sweden. It was a grand event because the organisers had picked the right film to start the festival. Below is the website description of Garden Lovers by Virpi Suutari, a film that is about love and full of love towards the characters, the many old couples, whose warm relationships still flourish, in beautiful garden surroundings. The film has a unique flow going from couple to couple, from situation to situation, some of them very ”Finnish” meaning wonderfully weird, always surprising, supported by constant wonderful camera movements (dop: Heikki Färm) and an amazing music score composed by Sanna Salmenkallio, who you will know from (among others) ”3 Rooms of Melancholia” by Pirjo Honkasalo.

The site description: …a documentary love story about Finnish couples who have a passion for gardening. The film with comic undertones looks at their stories behind the hedges. The garden provides a framework for tales of relationship conflicts and joys; it depicts the many ways in which life can flourish; it gives strength and unites, but it also becomes a meeting place for farewells. There is an invisible bond that grows between the couples in the film; they comment and comfort each other with their own stories.The film’s gardening stories celebrate fertility, play and love.

25 years of Nordisk Panorama. As one who was there at the first edition in Grimstad, Norway in 1990, I was asked to make a presentation of films from the 25 years that I liked, I called it ”from ”1700 Metres from the Future” till ”Belleville Baby” by Ulla Boje Rasmussen – and Mia Engberg. I ended the talk by showing a clip from ”3 Rooms of Melancholia”, for me the best Nordic documentary in the last 25 years.

http://made.fi/gardenloversmovie/

http://nordiskpanorama.com/en/industry/

 

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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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