Europe Endless - Scandinavia: Europa (Dir Lars Von Trier, 1h58m, 1991)
This is a journey into the heart of Europe, an odyssey across European cinema. Over the next four months we will criss-cross the continent, from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, and from the border of Asia to the Atlantic, consider directors who need to be better known outside their nation and titans of cinema, and films ranging from the Post-War period to recent releases. I hope you'll join me on these travels across cinema, and what it can tell us both about Europe, and how it views itself through a camera lens. What better place to start than in Denmark, with Lars Von Trier's blackly comic noir descent into 1945 Germany - on rails - in the final of his Europe Trilogy, 1991's Europa. Part of the aim of this season is to consider national cinemas that I've previously left uncovered; thus, Danish cinema has an early dominance in silent cinema, with Theodore Dreyer, previously discussed with The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), and early horror pioneer, Benjamin Chr...
