It is time for the written examination. Everybody is waiting for the exact time to come where they can turn the paper and start the examination. All the tables are placed in lines in the assembly hall. Not a sound is being made and the atmosphere bears the marks of excitement, anticipation and nervousness.
A drama-documentary film about the fatal effect of poor living conditions on health – the so-called "social inheritance." The principal characters in the film are two fourteen or fifteen-year-old children, Carl and Hanne. Covering a hundred-year period and drawing on case stories recorded by actual hospital staff, the film illustrates a number of variations of "the same old story."
The intention of the film is to give an impression of what small exotic Denmark looks like, what the strange Danes look like and how they are. Nearly 100 Danes are presented in the film, amongst them a racing cyclist, a Minister of Finance, a popular actor and 13 unmarried women from a provincial town. "There is too much fogginess and rain and melancholy in most of the pictures of Denmark," says Jørgen Leth. "But not in my film. I would like to show you some authentic, clear and beautiful pictures from this strange country."
12-year-old Martin finds the going tough. Manhood is approaching, but so far mostly as aches and pain. His mother's men friends are definitely nothing like the father he does not have. So some kind of male bonding is inevitable when he meets Funder, a juvenile droput on the run from the police. There is also girl-friend Rikke to consider. Who needs Martin the most? Coming of age isn't so easy.
The boy Kim moves with his family from the countryside to a ghetto in a big city. He does not do too well in school, and that makes him an easy victim for the hard core bullies in the new school. When the group leader is moved to a private school, Kim is accepted in the gang - as long as he provides cigarettes for the other members. This of course leads to a confrontation with the school teachers, his family and eventually the gang members.
The race against time ... Water, blooming life/suffocating death. Fighting back to life despite an irreversible loss is the greatest victory over death.
What happens when Adam and Eve have borrowed money for everything they own and have? Then they end up in the hamster wheel, like everyone else, who consumes beyond their means. Humorous fable about the blessings of the installment system - and its consequences. (DFI)
A satirical presentation of the public school debate, exhibiting three different teaching methods. First, the authoritarian education system of old; Second, a more modern form, combining theory and practice; and finally, the teacher's nightmare, where children are taught only the necessities for modern life: sales techniques, status symbols, and how to (quite literally) elbow your way to the top.
An existential pictorial poem about human life. "Can they stand it? Do they never feel?" (DFI)
In a culture where cremation is unusual, cemeteries fill up rapidly. In Latin America and in some other places, to solve the problem, remains are frequently exhumed. In Cuba, two year after interment. Relatives are invited to observe the little ritual. The music of the film is drawn from requiems from different periods. Twelve pieces by seven different composers are quoted. Together, they make up a traditional requiem, although only a few passages from the "dies irae" have been included, and other sections are slightly abbreviated.
The block constitutes the common denominator of all symbols. It is offered for sale by the Minotaur to all people in the labyrinth of life and causes both grave attention and hilarity, distress and delight in a highly informal way. (DFI)
A cinematic experiment that moves in several planes. Four people act out a human course, seen with white silhouettes on a black background. 'Inside' them - or behind them - a different process plays out, supported and contradicted by the sound side. (DFI)
A staged documentary about an American ex-Vietnam soldier who teaches other Americans - men, women, children - to use weapons to defend themselves and obtain the possibility to say: "NO".
From both a scientific and an artistic point of view, the film seeks to answer the question, 'what is light?'.
A film about the Nordic countries and the possibilities for cooperating. Based on an idea by Danish film auteur Carl Th. Dreyer. (DFI)
Klaus Rifbjerg is a portrait that has the author talking about his work in a series of tableaux.
A cartoon film about a little boy who decides to see the world. He leaves home in search of the characters in his favourite books: the Lion, Phantomas, Tom Thumb and others. (DFI)
A take it or leave it auteur-experimental fiction exercise: two women are monitoring their dreams, dreams that may of course also be stark naked reality, at least to the dreamers, as they come and they go like bubbles, rising, floating, bursting. A man appears out of nowhere. Poet Peter Laugesen co-wrote the script with Tom Elling, who was Lars von Trier's director of photography on "The Element of Crime".
A paraphrase of H.C. Andersen's fairy tale of the same name. Visual acid for the eyes. (DFI)
Psychedelic music film in shapes and colors. (DFI)
