Peter Schønau Fog receives the Nordisk Film Award 2007
Since 1996 The Nordisk Film Foundation has distributed an honorary award by the name of The Nordisk Film Award. The award is given to one or more persons who have contributed in an extraordinary way to the Danish media environment.
Today, Nordisk Film celebrated its 101 year’s birthday. Two awards were given at a ceremony in Valby. The Nordisk Film Award of DKK 101.000 went to the man behind “The Art of Crying”, movie director Peter Schønau Fog. At the same occasion, cinematographer Dan Laustsen received the newly established Erik Balling travel grant of DKK 50.000.
The Nordisk Film Award 2007: Peter Schønau Fog was already hailed as Danish movie’s new talent because of his graduating movie from Filmskolen in 1999. Now, his first feature movie, “The Art of Crying”, is Denmark’s candidate for an Oscar. The Nordisk Film Fund’s prize committee write, as their reason for the selection of Schønau to receive the Nordisk Film Award, that he has “a special ability to localize a heart-rending story about the harsh conditions of life.” Dreyer once said; “The big dramas take place in quiet,” this, think the committee, proves Schønau with “The Art of Crying”, where the voice is never raised, even with incest, arson causing lose of life, three funerals and a half-hearted suicide.
Erik Balling’s Travel Grant 2007: Cinematographer Dan Laustsen received Erik Balling’s Travel Grant of DKK 50.000. He has created pictures on a long line of Danish movies – from “Rubber Tarzan” over “Night Watch” to “Just another Love Story” which is still in the theaters. About the reason given for the choice it was said “It might seem a little superfluous to give Dan Laustsen a travel grant, as he is a photographer who obviously gets to travel a lot. But the travel grant is to be interpreted as an invitation to go home, because it is here, Dan has played an important part for almost 30 years.”
The awards were given by Poul Nesgaard, principal at the Danish Film School, and Peter Schepelern, lector in Film and Media Science at the University of Copenhagen. They are both members of Nordisk Film prize committee.
Read about it at Nordisk Film.
