Norwegian DVDs

[walsgrave]

Just wondering if anyone has managed to order any titles to be shipped internationally from the National Library recently? I've tried emailing, as per the instructions on the webstore, without success. It seems that even this route may no longer be an option...

[Aunt Peg]

I haven't been able to find any sellers from Norway that ship internationally. I'm after a Norwegian title Barn (Beware of Children) which is English friendly but still after six months of searching (including eBay and Amazon) have had no luck tracking down anybody who will ship outside of Norway.

[patreig]

I haven't been able to find any sellers from Norway that ship internationally. I'm after a Norwegian title Barn (Beware of Children) which is English friendly but still after six months of searching (including eBay and Amazon) have had no luck tracking down anybody who will ship outside of Norway.

https://www.dvdoo.dk/dvd-film/barn-dvd-d502602
only danish subtitles unfortunately

[TodoModo]

Just wondering if anyone has managed to order any titles to be shipped internationally from the National Library recently? I've tried emailing, as per the instructions on the webstore, without success. It seems that even this route may no longer be an option...

They seem to offer worldwide shipping. There's only one problem. I tried to place an order of norwegian Dvds on Nettbutikk (the shop of Nasjonalbibliotek) but I'm not able to pay with my italian card. The conversion between Norsk Koroner to Euro seems to be interrupted. Hopefully they will offer Paypal option in the future.
It's unfortunate because the new 2021 releases have all english subtitles(undertexter), especially boxes on Anja Breien, Vibeke Løkkeberg and 1 movie by Laila Mikkelsen ("Liten Ida" 1981), the three female directors who made a great impact on norwegian cinema between 70s and 80s.

they also have their physical shop in Oslo, of course.

EDIT: Luckily in the end I managed to order "Liten Ida". Can't wait. Shipping costs, even towards rest of europe, are still high, but the item is quite rare

[Forrest Taft]

They also recently released a Bent Hamer-set, including all his 8 features, and one of his shorts. It's region free, has English subs and a bilingual booklet (English and Norwegian). I haven't had a chance to watch any of them yet, but Eggs, Water Easy Reach, Kitchen Stories and O'Horten are all from new 4k restorations. Some of the restoration notes I find confusing though. The soundtracks seems to have been converted from surround to stereo, and the notes for Factotum states that although it was shot on 35 mm film, "This version is based on the original digital production material[...]Blacks are adjusted, and at the director's request, artefacts and noise are removed from certain scenes for which the original camera negative has been lost". Not entirely sure what "original digital production material" means.

[magnusbe]

For the last six months there has been a successful project to crowdfund Blu-ray releases of Norwegian films that have previously only been available on DVD, VHS - or in some cases never on any home video format.

10 Blu-rays have been released so far, with 26 more in the pipeline.

All have English subtitles and English translations of the text on the covers.

Sadly they are not being sold by any shop that ships abroad.

You can see the financed films here
https://www.platekompaniet.no/serie/nor ... klassikere
and follow the crowdfunding here
https://www.bidra.no/film

[spectre]

The Norske Filmklassikere project is super impressive and inspiring, and really worth keeping an eye on for anyone interested in Scandinavian cinema. They're up to 60+ released films now, by my count, all English-subtitled, and currently in the midst of announcing another 12. I've ordered a few and am thinking of picking up some more (though as noted above, you'll have to go through a third party; I posted in the Facebook group and someone kindly offered to help), and the quality of the releases is consistently impressive even if there are no extras. The cases are beautiful too.

If there were a dedicated project like this in every country, we could be seeing a plethora of less commercially viable films coming out on Blu-ray that are currently sitting idle waiting for a distributor to take a chance on them. I wonder what makes it easier to set up in a country like Norway (perhaps fewer rights issues?) – or whether it's possible in most places, and really only requires a widespread cultural interest in national cinema and a few people willing to put their time and money on their line.

[magnusbe]

The project is in the 8th round of crowdfunding now, and there are some interesting developments. A couple of guys set up a new distribution company to acquire the rights of films that are not in the catalogues of the large distributors. They have for example gotten the rights for the 1929 silent film Laila, which will be released with the original intended soundtracks, recorded by the orchestra of the public broadcaster NRK. This recording cost about $70 000, but has never been released before. The crowdfunding platform that was used initially went bankrupt, so this is now handled by the retailer Platekompaniet.
https://www.platekompaniet.no/crowdfunding

All the films that have been published, are in production og are being crowdfunded are listed here:
https://www.platekompaniet.no/serie/nor ... _date_asc

When this current round is over 97 releases will have been crowdfunded. That is roughly 10 % of all Norwegian cinematic releases, and none of these have previously been available on Blu-ray. Many have not been on DVD, and some have never been released on home video.

The National library makes scans available, but does no longer do the processing work to make the films ready for Blu-ray production. There are some crowdfunding projects to make films ready for release:
https://www.spleis.no/org/24073

There has only been one major distributor involved for the first seven rounds, Norsk filmdistribusjon. Now Nordisk film is also involved, and the number of possible future releases have has been massively increased.

NB: some of the releases in the current round will not get English subtitles due to licensing issues, so make sure the film actually has English subs before you try to buy.

And there is still no international distribution, which is quite disheartening as these releases have English subs and text on the covers.

[djvaso]

I believe such crowdfunding projects can only succeed in wealthy countries. I managed to pay with my credit card for the film "Laila" while having it delivered to the address of a former colleague living in Norway. This arrangement is much more comfortable for me than having her gift me a film, but she finds it strange that someone from here would pay so much money for some Norwegian film. This says something about the cultural views of emigrants.

[MichaelB]

It's not at all unusual for people to have a negative view of their own film output - the Australian critic A.A. Phillips coined the term "cultural cringe" to describe a widespread attitude that he'd encountered, and I also come across it regularly when delving into central and eastern European cinema.

My wife has a fair number of Polish clients, and this is apparently a reasonably common conversation (and I have no reason to disbelieve her).

CLIENT: You're the first British person who's pronounced my name correctly.
WIFE: My husband taught me the rules. He watches a lot of Polish films.
CLIENT: <pause> Why?

And it's just as prevalent on my home turf, of course, with British cinema invariably getting sniffily dismissed as wannabe imitations of American films. Which is of course partly true, but a very, very long way from being the whole story!

Part of the problem is that while we get to see virtually all of our national cinema, warts and all, and a pretty huge cross-section of American cinema, everything else is filtered through the gatekeeping of a small handful of boutique distributors. So we simply don't get to see crappy French comedies or terrible German thrillers - or indeed most of the good ones! - because they weren't picked up for international release, which creates a thoroughly misleading impression of the average quality of a particular country's output.

(Right now, I'm putting together an introduction to the wacky world of the bonkers 1960s/70s Czechoslovak comedy, which ran almost directly parallel with the Czechoslovak New Wave, but while those films were internationally fêted, until very recently the work of people like Oldřich Lipský and Václav Vorliček was considered strictly parochial, even though the likes of Happy End are demonstrably just as inventive and internationally accessible as anything by Miloš Forman, Věra Chytilová, Jan Němec et al.)

[Zot!]

It's not at all unusual for people to have a negative view of their own film output - the Australian critic A.A. Phillips coined the term "cultural cringe" to describe a widespread attitude that he'd encountered, and I also come across it regularly when delving into central and eastern European cinema.

Yeah, first of all, most people everywhere continue to think “movies” are whatever Hollywood is cranking out at that particular moment. And when their local knock-off of the current model is understandibly lacking money and talent they consider it an embarassment. Secondly there is a resentment that “art” movies are funded by tax dollars and are derided as self-seving, pretentious, or culturally unrepresentative. I know that my Eastern European family, who is more than happy to watch everything from Kubrick, Sukorov, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and everything in between, find their own national cinema to be undeserving of their attention.

[magnusbe]

Yet another round of Blu-ray releases are being crowdfunded now. This is the 10th batch of films. Beware: in the previous batch and in this one there are several releases that do not have English subtitles. They are included if they are available from the distributor and if there are no issues with internatiopnal rights.
https://www.platekompaniet.no/serie/nor ... _date_desc

I think that if there was some sort of international distribution more work would have been done to get English subs for all releases, but as of now the only international sales are through people in Norway shipping them out. I think that some of these titles could sell hundreds of copies abroad, but there is no infrastructure for it.

[spectre]

I haven’t seen any clear explanation in the Norske Filmklassikere Facebook group as to why this has happened, but the releases seem to have suddenly gone from 99% being English-subtitled to almost none at all around nine months ago.* Assuming the product listings are correct – and I’m holding on to the faint hope that they aren’t – nothing that’s been announced since will be English-friendly. It’s a great pity as there are a number of titles in the most recently announced slates that look really interesting.

At least the discs all have Norwegian and Nynorsk subtitles, so you can in theory watch with an English subtitle file on an Oppo player – but many of these titles are so obscure that you’re unlikely to find any online.

*Edit: I may have found part of the answer to this mystery in the Facebook group: they announced a partnership with Nordisk Film Distribution in June. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17LdiP ... tid=wwXIfr