03/10/2013 - Films by Swedish directors Gustaf Molander, Alf Sjöberg and Karin Swanström selected for the world’s largest showcase for silent films

“We are delighted to be given the opportunity to present an undeservedly forgotten period in Swedish film history at the world’s most prestigious silent movie festival,” said Jon Wengström, head of the Film Archive at the Swedish Film Institute, who has programmed Sealed Lips: Sweden’s Forgotten Years 1925-1929 for the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in northern Italy.

The Swedish selection includes four titles by Swedish director Gustaf Molander (photo), among others The Smugglers (1925), with Danish comedy duo Pat and Patachon, and his international co-production Sealed Lips (1927); the later twice Grand Prix winner in Cannes, Alf Sjöberg’s first film, The Strongest (1929); Karin Swanström’s comedy, The Girl in Tails (1926).

Also Swedish directors Ivar Johansson and Gustaf Edgren are represented in the focus, which is concluded by UK director Anthony Asquith’s A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929), co-produced by Sweden’s Svensk Filmindustri. Several of the films have been restored by the Film Archive, including French director Eugène Pirou Le coucher de la mariée, also at the festival, regarded as the first ever erotic film.

According to Wengstöm, “it is the first time Swedish silent movies have been given this level of recognition at the festival.” In 2006 the Danish Film Institute was in Pordenone with 28 works from Danish major, Nordisk Film – the world’s oldest film company – produced between 1903-1926, including Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Leaves Out of the Book of Satan (1920).