By Tamar Baumgarten-Noort. It's spring, but still the temperatures hardly surpass the freezing point. Deep snow muffles every step, snow-mobiles dash down the slopes towards the city. It may be cold and inhospitable in Kautokeino, 450 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, but that can't stifle a vibrant film culture. Kautokeino features the (until today at least) the only cinema made out of ice worldwide. An amphitheatre made out of snow, seats covered with reindeer fur, even the screen is made of solid ice. And under the Arctic night sky there’s enough room for a lot of snow-mobiles – it's also a drive-in cinema of sorts.

Unique cinematic landscape

Norway offers a unique cinematic landscape: 72,6% of cinemas are run by the community. In other countries multiplex cinemas are erected to guarantee the high-possible gross to American blockbuster movies, whereas in Norway there is still a chance to support the domestic cinema quite practically. And it happens, too: At least since Norway has produced its own blockbuster with MAX MANUS in 2009, which broke all historic national box-office records, the Norwegian film industry has smelled blood. The movie has been the most expensive Norwegian film project of all time and has been successful all over Scandinavia – in Norway alone every fourth person has seen the wartime drama in local cinemas. MAX MANUS may tell a national story about Norwegian resistance fighters in World War 2, but it wouldn't be right to use it as a typical example of the national film culture – it was conceived as a blockbuster and follows conventional narrative structures. Sweden and Denmark have both successfully promoted their distinct national brand of filmmaking, but in Norway the question remains open, whether there is a national style of filmmaking worth exporting. Denmark and Sweden have icons like Lars von Trier and Ingmar Bergman to show for themselves, which had massive influence on European filmmaking as a whole, while the Norwegian film hardly has any big names to identify with. Liv Ullmann is internationally regarded as a screen legend, but due to her close collaboration to Bergman this Norwegian national is usually rather counted as part of the Swedish film culture. It has been mostly Norwegians that were interested in Norwegian cinema, creating a rather isolated film culture. Thor Heyerdahl won the Oscar for his 1951 documentary about his “Kon-Tiki” expedition, but on the whole the most important market for Norwegian films remained Scandinavia.

Recent festival success

For the last couple of years the Norwegian Film Institute has made an effort to internationalize the domestic films. Major productions like MAX MANUS, who are designed for a big audience, present one possible solution – but there are also efforts under way to strengthen the domestic film culture and to promote it abroad. The film school in Lillehammer (in the former medical centre of the Olympic village), several festivals and the film award AMANDA, which is given out in several categories to domestic movies, are all steps towards a sharper profile for Norwegian film culture.

And indeed – Norwegian cinema seems to become more visible abroad: Lise Lense's documentary BURMA VJ has won several international awards and was nominated for the 2009 Oscars as well as the European Film Award. And Torill Kove's animated short film THE DANISH POET bagged the second Oscar of Norwegian history in 2006. It remains to be seen if Norway can step out of the shadow of its Scandinavian siblings.

Links

• TO SERVE AND PROTECT (N 2009. Maria Askedal)