SCREENWRITING AS AN OFFICIAL DEPARTMENT OF ITS OWN

According to Lars Kjeldgaard (graduated 1987), there were numer-ous problems with the screenwriting courses up through the 1980s (Kjeldgaard 2007). Indeed, one possibility was eliminating them all together, since they did not have much to do with the teachings at the rest of the School. However, it was decided to dramatically re-think the design of the courses before the decision was made to establish an independent department for screenwriting in 1988, based on an eight-een-month curriculum of full-time studies. Lars Kjeldgaard was hired as an assistant for Mogens Rukov and together with Henning Camre they decided to make a conscious effort to fight the strong focus on literature in Danish film, to which they attributed the depressing state of Danish films made in the 1980s.⁷

Until the establishment of the Screenwriting Department in 1988 there had been many novelists among the students in the writing courses, but now a deliberate attempt was made to attract new peo-ple from advertising agencies, artists or actors. The basic idea was to

‘teach people to surrender themselves to film’ instead of having a

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shown in De Unge År/The Early Years – Erik Nietzsche Part 1 (2007) – directed by Jacob Thuesen, from a screenplay by Lars von Trier that was inspired by his time at the School – a circular dramaturgy was on graduate of the first intake has stated, considered to be more

‘round’ and ‘female’

while ‘all the others just thought that dramaturgy

literary approach to writing films (Kjeldgaard 2007). ‘Show, don’t tell’

became a mantra and, as a supplement to in-house lecture notes about directors ranging from Buñuel to Cassavetes, American screenwriting manuals like Syd Field’s Screenplay (1979) were introduced. Kjeldgaard calls the approach a continuation of ideas from the French New Wave and Italian neo-realism, but a fundamental principle was to identify with ‘great storytellers, no matter where they were’ (Kjeldgaard 2007).

However, because of the introduction of terms like ‘acts’ and ‘gen-res’ some people in the film establishment, according to Kjeldgaard, felt that the teaching was too influenced by thoughts from Hollywood film-making.⁸

The Screenwriting Department launched in 1988 by letting 30 applicants participate in a four-week introductory course, before accepting 12 students on to the eighteen-month programme. Nikolaj Scherfig, screenwriter and later film consultant from 2003 to 2006, was among the first 12 students chosen. He found being introduced to basic and concrete thoughts about elemental storytelling concepts like plot, character, scenes and conflicts to be a great revelation, but he also states that the notion of a real director at the time was still that he wrote screenplays himself, or wrote them together with a famous novelist (Scherfig 2006: 158). In tongue-in-cheek fashion Scherfig has described how directors felt threatened by screenwriters, since they were convinced that they in fact wanted to become direc-tors; the idea of anybody actually wanting to be a screenwriter was too absurd (Scherfig 2006: 159). Scherfig managed to start working with the director Søren Fauli on his graduation film, and then later wrote films for the students of 1989–93; he himself started teaching at the Screenwriting Department in 1995. He is convinced that the graduating students of 1988–89 were the starting signal for something crucial in Danish film in the 1990s and onwards, because they devel-oped into a whole new professional grouping in Danish film, whose primary focus was on film story. Nowadays the members of this group are popular as collaborators with directors (Scherfig 2006: 162).

The so-called ‘golden year’ directing students of the class of 1993 have been highlighted as being the first to be interested in the screenwriters (Philipsen 2005). Director Thomas Vinterberg had the impression of the School having previously been dominated by the cin-ematographers, while he and his directing colleagues now had a new focus, that of putting the actors and the story around their characters at the centre of attention (Vinterberg and John 2006: 180). Producer Bo Ehrhardt who, together with Birgitte Hald, started the production company Nimbus Film as a base for a number of directors from this

‘golden’ year, believes that the collaborations between directors and screenwriters at the School did not seriously take off until their year (Philipsen 2005: 230).

The Dogma 95 Manifesto (von Trier and Vinterberg 1995) and Thomas Vinterberg and Mogens Rukov’s collaborative writing of Festen/

The Celebration (1998) are among the events that, in the late 1990s,

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9. The Bodil award is the Danish film award given by Jensen and Kim Fupz Aakeson.

started to make people outside the NFSD aware that something interesting was happening in the Screenwriting Department.

Vinterberg remembers that as a student it was a great insight that there was inspiration to be found there with Lars Kjeldgaard and Mogens Rukov doing interesting research and coming up with con-cepts like ‘the natural story’ (Vinterberg and John 2006: 184). The concept of ‘the natural story’ can be described as – in its utter banal-ity – stating that the physical contexts, plots and rituals that make up every moment of every day are the basic building blocks of film drama (Wiedemann 2005: 24). According to Vinterberg, the concept worked very well with the desire of the directors to give the actors more room for creating living characters, and together with a hand-held camera this created the framework for telling stories that gave actors the opportunity to show what they were worth (Vinterberg and John 2006: 184).

This concept of the natural story has been influential in Danish film since its introduction at the School. The former film consultant Vinca Wiedemann highlights it as important for a change in how to approach writing stories and finds that by leading to films like The Celebration it raised the bar for Danish films in general and Danish screenwriting in particular (Wiedemann 2005: 24). Rukov’s impor-tance has been acknowledged in Danish film by an honorary Bodil award in 2003 and he has also become known abroad.⁹ When the script tutor Dick Ross in 2002 counted NFSD among the leading film schools in the world he credited Rukov for a lot of the School’s success (Ross 2002: 47).

The films made by the directors of the class of 1993 show an inter-est in writing stories in close collaboration with others. While still at the School, Vinterberg started working with the screenwriter Bo hr.

Hansen (graduated 1991). Together they wrote his graduation film Sidste Omgang/Last Round (1993), the much-acclaimed short Drengen der Gik Baglæns/The Boy Who Walked Backwards (1994) and Vinterberg’s first feature De Største Helte/The Biggest Heroes (1996). Then Vinterberg turned to collaborating with his old teacher, Mogens Rukov, with The Celebration (1998), It’s All About Love (2003) and En Mand Kommer Hjem/A Man Comes Home (2007).

After having worked with screenwriter Ole Meldgaard (graduated 1991) on his graduation film, director Ole Christian Madsen worked with Lars. K. Andersen (graduated 1996) on Pizza King (1999), the TV series Edderkoppen (2000) and the recent box office hit Flammen og Citronen/

Flame & Citron (2008). He also directed screenplays by Mogens Rukov (En Kærlighedshistorie/Kira’s Reason (2001)), Bo hr. Hansen (Nordkraft/Angels in Fast Motion (2005)), and Kim Fupz Aakeson (Prag/Prague (2006)). All screenplays have featured Ole Christian Madsen as co-writer.

Peter Flinth, another director from the same class of 1993, directed Nikolaj Scherfig’s screenplay for Ørnens Øje/Eye of the Eagle (1997) while Per Fly, after having directed the puppet film Prop og Berta/Prop and Berta (2000) from a screenplay by the author Bent Solhof and

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screenwriter Mikael Olsen (graduated 1987), became famous for his much acclaimed trilogy Bænken/The Bench (2000), Arven/The Inheritance (2003), and Drabet/Manslaughter (2005). All three films were developed in close collaboration with several writers and consultants, among them Rukov, Kjeldgaard and Kim Leona (graduated 1997).