Short Films from a Small Nation

Dr C. Claire Thomson is Professor of Cinema History at University College London (UCL), where she is the Director of Film Studies and teaches Nordic cinema and cultural history, as well as translation from the Scandinavian languages. Her previous publications include the monographs Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (U Washington P, 2013) and Short Films from a Small Nation: Danish Informational Cinema 1935–1965 (EUP 2018), the edited volume Northern Constellations: New Readings in Nordic Cinema (Norvik, 2006), and numerous articles on short films, film and public health, multisensory cinema and the work of Carl Th. Dreyer and Thomas Vinterberg. She is an editor of the journals Scandinavica and Kosmorama.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter One - Enlightenment and utility: Informational film as useful cinemaChapter Two - ‘We are a little land’: Informational film and small-nation cinemaChapter Three - Mapping Messiness: The informational film archive & Actor-Network TheoryChapter Four - ‘The film world’s cooperative store’: Institutions and films of the 1930s and 1940sChapter Five - ‘A film-progressive nation’: The Social Denmark series and the British documentary movementChapter Six - ‘Somethin’ about Scandinavia’: Danish shorts on the post-war international sceneChapter Seven - ‘Citizens of the Future’: Informational film and the welfare stateChapter Eight - ‘A free hand’: The art film versus the art of documentaryChapter Nine - Symphony of a short film: A City Called CopenhagenConclusionReferences

Focusing on the institution known as Dansk Kulturfilm, Claire Thomson provides an intriguing account of Denmark’s rich contributions to ‘useful cinema’ across three decades. Thomson’s sophisticated study offers rich findings based on impressive archival research, astute institutional analysis, and concept development relevant to the study of film and small nations. A powerful articulation of the public value of film, Short Films from a Small Nation is compelling.