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Digitisation brings diversity to the movies - Dreyer's classics now at Europe's Finest

Carl Theodor Dreyer is besides Fritz Lang and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau considered to be one of the masters and visionaries of the silent film era. In collaboration with the Danish Film Institute four of Dreyer's greatest works are currently being prepared for DCI-compliant digital cinema screenings by Europe's Finest and will shortly be ready to be booked.

The films ONCE UPON A TIME (1922), LOVE ONE ANOTHER (1922), THE BRIDE OF GLOMDAL (1926) and VAMPYR (1931) are now available for digital cinemas throughout Europe. (For available territories please visit http://www.finest-film.com/)

Carl Theodor Dreyer was a director, producer, screenwriter and cinema operator. He was born on February 3rd 1889 in Copenhagen and died on March 20th 1968. His complete work as a director includes 14 feature films and 8 short films.

Dreyer's typical aesthetic feature was, that his actors acted very naturally, without exaggerated acting and without overly made up faces. With his many close-ups and the reduced authentic decor, Dreyer broke the back then existing conventions of silent film.

"Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from inside, and turning into poetry."

Carl Theodor Dreyer

"Carl Theodor Dreyer is the greatest filmmaker in the Danish cinema, where he was always a solitary personality. ...."

filmdirectorssite.com

VAMPYR he regarded himself as one of his masterpieces. Although the film disappointed at the time at the box offices and received bad reviews, the reputation of the film was positively transformed thanks to the constant attention it received from film critics and the audience alike. Today it is considered as one of the most artistically valuable horror films ever made.

THE GROWTH OF THE SOIL (Markens Grode), based on a novel by Knut Hamsun, is another silent film and Norwegian film treasure that is distributed by Europe's Finest

The film and its original score were long time considered lost. It was not until a copy showed up in New York and another one in the Dutch Film Museum that made it possible for THE GROWTH OF THE SOIL to be restored from both sources. The original score was found as a notation at the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and was re-recorded by the renowned conductor Frank Strobel.

Frank Strobel is one of the worlds most respected conductors in the field of film music. The son  of a media scientist and a film journalist, born in 1966, grew up in Munich, where his parents ran a cinema. It was there where his interest in film music began. Moreover, he drew a lot of attention to himself with the revival of works from Sergei Prokofiew, Franz Schreker and Siegfried Wagner and released a great number of CD recordings.

Source: http://www.frankstrobel.de/

Under the following link you'll find a "behind the scenes"-documentation of the recording sessions for the score of GROWTH OF THE SOIL.

http://blog.norway.com/2009/08/18/growth-of-the-soil-recording-sessions

With the screen adaptation of the internationally renowned novel by Knut Hamsun, which won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920, GROWTH OF THE SOIL under the direction of Gunnar Sommerfeldt was able to turn the Norwegian film into a great success. Beforehand Danish or Swedish films had been more popular than Norwegian films for a long time.

The original music played a big role in making this film a cultural sensation. It was composed by the famous violinist and former bandmaster of the National Theatre Leif Halvorsen, who as a result entered the history books as the first Norwegian film composer.

GROWTH OF THE SOIL is available through Europe's Finest along with several subtitles and has already successfully been screened digitally in the USA, Spain, the UK and Australia.

All available territories and subtitles can be found on our website http://www.finest-film.com/

Europe's Finest managing director Tilman Scheel talking about the new films in the Europe's Finest catalogue: "With these films and especially because of the cooperation with two major film archives, we took a small but very important step closer towards our goal that is making the European film heritage available for Arthouse cinemas again.