The Øresund Region on Film and Television, 1999–2014
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‘A Symptom of Something Real’: The Øresund Region on Film and Television, 1999–2014 Pei-Sze Chow University College London Ph.D. Scandinavian Studies 2015 1 SIGNED DECLARATION I, Pei-Sze Chow, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. __________________________ 2 ABSTRACT The Øresund is a transnational metropolitan region comprising Greater Copenhagen (Denmark) and Skåne (Southern Sweden), joined by the Øresund Bridge built over the strait separating the two nations. Historically a site of cultural encounter between Denmark and Sweden, the region took shape as a political-economic entity during the 1990s against a wider backdrop of European Union initiatives to encourage cross- border cooperation. One aim of the Øresund development strategy is to foster regional culture and identity; the production and distribution of audiovisual media supported by the respective national film policies and industries are key here. I explore how the Øresund region has been imagined and critiqued in popular film and televisual texts since the 1990s and provide new readings of a largely un- researched body of material related to the development of this transnational region. Drawing on a small-nation approach to cinema, I study the emergence and development of screen culture in the region and how audiovisual texts construct the sense of an ‘Øresund identity’, a cultural and geopolitical identity that is still being forged and negotiated by various actors. In particular, I investigate how the region’s spatial identity is mediated to local and international audiences through representations of postindustrial urban change and intercultural encounters. I begin with an analysis of the film-political landscape, followed by close readings of the audiovisual texts against the socio-political context of the genesis of the region and the architectural and cultural policies emerging from the larger region-building project. I argue that the texts imaginatively negotiate, and, to an extent, shape the economic, social, and material development of the region during this period of intense region- building and branding. This thesis is a contribution to scholarship in the areas of small nation cinema, Nordic screen studies, and culture and identity. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5 LIST OF FIGURES 7 INTRODUCTION 8 The End CHAPTER ONE 32 Spaces Of Theory: Counter-imaginaries Of A Small Transnational Community CHAPTER TWO 56 Spaces Of Policy: National Film Cultures And Transnationalisation CHAPTER THREE 104 Spaces Of Trans(national)formation: Documenting Social Relations Through Architecture CHAPTER FOUR 157 Spaces Of Risk And Creativity: The Usefulness And Smallness Of Short Films CHAPTER FIVE 196 Spaces Of Imagination: Traversing The Televisual Øresund CONCLUSION 229 New Beginnings LIST OF AUDIOVISUAL WORKS 238 BIBLIOGRAPHY 241 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to acknowledge the funding that has made this thesis possible. My doctoral research was partially supported by the UCL Overseas Research Scholarship, with conference and research trips made possible by the School of European Languages, Culture, and Society and the Faculty of Arts & Humanities. With wholehearted gratitude I thank my doctoral supervisor Claire Thomson, whose mentorship, trust, encouragement, and infinite kindness over the course of four years has helped me to find and develop my own voice in this project. Her impeccable commitment to intellectual curiosity and critical rigour form an important guiding light for me, and I truly appreciate the myriad opportunities she has given me to share my work with the wider academic community. I am grateful to Matthew Gandy and Lee Grieveson at UCL, whose early comments have helped me to refine various elements of my research. I also thank Andrew Higson (University of York) and Ib Bondebjerg (University of Copenhagen) for their generous feedback and for suggestions that have provoked fresh ideas beyond this thesis. Special thanks are also due to friends and colleagues across UCL for fostering a meaningful research environment in which I have certainly thrived. They include: Essi Viitanen, Nichola Smalley, Agnes Broomé, William Sayers, Jesper Hansen, Elettra Carbone, Karin Charles, and Tina Louise Sørensen. Lee Cossell—whose own brilliant explorations in the neuroscience of vision are a continual inspiration—has been instrumental in helping me complete this thesis with health and sanity intact. I thank him deeply for his treasured companionship, motivation, laughter, and selfless care. Finally, I come to my parents, Ming Jiin Wu and Kay Cheong Chow, and my brother, Hao Wen Chow, whose shared enthusiasm for art, history, technology, and languages have shaped my perception and understanding of people and the cultural life of nations. Their unquestioning love and support for my endeavours remain the most profound contribution to this thesis, and for this I thank them. 5 ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS BBC British Broadcasting Company CFF Copenhagen Film Fund DFI Danish Film Institute (Det Danske Filminstitut) DKK Danish Krone (currency code) DR Danmarks Radio EBU European Broadcasting Union EC European Community EEC European Economic Community EU European Union EUR Euro (currency code) FiS Film i Skåne GBP British Pound (currency code) Mesures pour Encourager le Développement de l’Industrie MEDIA Audiovisuelle (an EU programme) NFSD National Film School of Denmark NFTF Nordisk Film og Television Fond OFC Oresund Film Commission SEK Swedish Krona (currency code) SFI Swedish Film Institute (Svenska Filminstitutet) SVT Sveriges Television USD US Dollar (currency code) ZDF Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen 6 LIST OF FIGURES 1. Map of the Øresund region. Map data: GeoBasis-DE/BKG 2009, Google 2015. 7 INTRODUCTION The End From 1 January 2016, the Øresund region will cease to exist. That is, the region will be renamed ‘Greater Copenhagen and Skåne’ or simply ‘Greater Copenhagen’ when marketing the region in international contexts (Amnell 2015). Clearly this is a matter of rebranding. The immediate impact will only be a change of wording on official documents and the renaming of the relevant administrative bodies in charge of political and business affairs in the region. But what motivated this change, and what will the impact be on the region’s supposed ‘Øresund citizens’?1 Already, skeptics in Skåne have argued against the Danish ‘invasion’, insisting that Skåne will be all but invisible, forever reliant on its more powerful Danish partner for recognition and access (Laasby 2015). Others in Skåne are positive about this, acknowledging the benefits of using the Copenhagen brand that is more internationally recognised — and that can be more easily pronounced by foreigners (Qvist 2015). To an extent, this renaming of the region involves obliterating the former association with the Øresund strait, the body of water that forms a large part of the visual identity of the region. This then raises the question: What happens next? How will the ‘new’ Greater Copenhagen be reimagined? Will the metaphoric significance of the Øresund Bridge to the region’s identity change, and how? News of a possible change in name was first reported in March 2015 when the mayor of Copenhagen proposed the initiative (Crouch 2015).2 This was followed by an official announcement at the end of June 2015 (E. Löfgren 2015), at a late stage in the writing-up phase of my PhD where I had already formulated the key contention that the audiovisual milieu in the Øresund region is marked by an asymmetrical 1 An OECD report stresses the significance of international branding: ‘Efforts to brand the region in a way that contributes to its visibility on a global scale are important, and any international brands should prioritise international audience recognition to go beyond internal political issues’ (Nauwelaers, Maguire, and Marsan 2013, 51). 2 In this article (Crouch 2015), Frank Jensen, mayor of Copenhagen, is reported as saying that ‘size matters’: ‘As Greater Copenhagen we can show it is something special – it is about creating a common identity that the entire region can get behind, and the Skåne region will also strengthen its position by profiling itself in this way.’ 8 relationship between its Danish and Swedish constituents.3 In some ways, the official announcement was a shock in terms of how it confirmed my findings (and it also provoked minor anxieties about the naming and scope of my project), but most of all, this event makes clear the exigency of my project in analysing how the cultural narratives of the Øresund region were imagined before it becomes Greater Copenhagen.4 In this thesis, I tell the story of the Øresund region from its birth to its rebirth, covering the period from 1999 to 2014, examining the ways filmmakers mediate the region as planners and administrators progressively style the region as an important transnational hub for audiovisual production in Scandinavia. 3 My observations of the asymmetry and that the Øresund brand is increasingly co-opted by Danish interests were presented in a course on Scandinavian Fiction Film and Television at the University of Copenhagen in March 2014 and again at the Nordic Research Network conference in Edinburgh in February 2015. 4 I do express scepticism as to whether the change in name will slow down the dynamic of regional integration, or whether Scanian identity will take on a more Danish colour. My speculation is that it will not dramatically affect the way people practise the region at a quotidian level. 9 1. Planning A Region Figure 1. Map of the Øresund region. Map data: GeoBasis-DE/BKG 2009, Google 2015. The Øresund region, a relatively newly-formed transnational region, spans the southern region of Sweden, Skåne (Scania), and the eastern region of Denmark, Sjælland (Zealand) (Figure 1). As a result of several wars between the two kingdoms in the seventeenth century, contact across the Øresund strait diminished and the body of water came to be perceived by politicians as an iron curtain rather than a space to be traversed (O.