07/06/2006

Just back from Cannes where he received the ACID Prize for his dark comedy The Bothersome Man [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jens Lien
interview: Jørgen Storm Rosenberg
film profile], presented in the Critics’ Week, Norwegian filmmaker Jens Lien was awarded the prestigious Arne Skouen Award last Thursday with a NOK150,000 (€20,000) cash prize from a jury comprising Vigdis Lian (Head of the Norwegian Film Institute), Tore Kopseng (Kodak Norway) and Espen Sketne (Nordisk Film Post -production).

The jury found that, “with his last feature film and his two earlier short films selected at Cannes (Shut The Door in 2000 and Natural Glasses in 2001), Jens Lien presents an absurd and surrealistic film universe shown with a distinctive film style. This makes Lien a filmmaker with international appeal, totally in the same line as Arne Skouen’s spirit and work.”

Created in 1991 at the instiguation of Oddvar Bull Tuhus, in collaboration with Norsk Film, Kodak Norway, Filmteknikk and the Norwegian Film Institute, the Arne Skouen Award is given each year to a Norwegian who has had a particular influence on his or her country’s film culture. Previous award winners include filmmakers Hans Petter Moland, Bent Hamer, Anja Breien, Marius Holst, Knut Erik Jensen and the former Norwegian Minister of Culture and head of the Swedish Film Institute, Åse Kleveland.

The award to The Bothersome Man was handed out on June 1, during the 50th anniversary celebration of the Norwegian Film Institute, which included the screening of the first Norwegian feature film Under the Law of Change (1911) by Halfdan Nobel Roede, an exhibition of Norwegian cinema of the mid-1950s and the screening of Bobbie Peers’ short film Sniffer, winner of the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.