Dream weaving and sonic metalepsis in Jan Troell’s Land of Dreams

Jan Troell’s Sagolandet (Land of Dreams) (1988) presents itself as a documentary about 1980s Swedish society, but is also a film about filmmaking, the imagination, memory and autobiography. The film has multiple narrative levels: interviews, home movie footage, autobiographical anecdotes and imaginative sequences. Commentary and guiding themes are drawn from the theories of psychoanalyst Rollo May. These strata and themes have associated musical motifs and/or sound effects, which, as the film progresses, serve as an ontological bridge between the different strata. Land of Dreams is structured as both a multistrand and multiform narrative with the intercutting of multiple stories with multiple protagonists (multistrand) mixed with dream worlds and internal-subjective perspectives of Troell (multiform). The different narrative strata invite metalepsis, a type of narrative ‘transgression’ that occurs across the boundaries of distinct narrative worlds. In Land of Dreams, voice, music and sound effects act as metaleptic agents, transgressing different strata through four interrelated techniques: (1) metaleptic ‘i-voices’; (2) musical structures made up of ironic and disjunctive musical textures; (3) musical motifs transgressing narrative and ontological boundaries and (4) musical metaleptic warps. Musical metalepsis in Land of Dreams functions in a way that is emblematic of how political decisions and public policy infiltrate the private sphere, human consciousness and even dreams of the future.

Featuring Monica Zetterlund: Jazz in early Swedish television

Following Miriam Hansen’s writings about the popular cinema, this study presents a hypothesis that the new medium of television in 1960s Sweden may be a form of ‘cultural horizon’ that enables multiple understandings and thus contributes to the popularity of the medium. The study focuses on a number of programmes where one of the most popular Swedish artists of the period, the jazz singer Monica Zetterlund, appears in performance. When these programmes are juxtaposed, contradictory features emerge that I suggest are pieces of a cultural horizon described by Hansen – high/low, modern/traditional and international/vernacular – that contributed to the evolution of Swedish television.

Being ordinary as a female pop star: Behind the scenes in musical documentary portraits of Jada and Beyoncé

By comparing two contemporary musical documentary portraits, the Scandinavian newcomer Jada in Jada – lillebitte kæmpestor (‘Jada – super tiny mega big’) (2019) and the global pop artist Beyoncé in Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé (2019), the article examines how ‘being ordinary’ in behind-the-scenes sequences can be used as a marker of authenticity.

Between Sweden and the world: Documentary films about ABBA’s international success

This article examines the phenomenon of ABBA, the most popular band ever to originate in Sweden, as accounted for in four documentaries, used to compare domestic and foreign responses to ABBA. Discussion draws on the concept of authenticity as formulated by Allan Moore, arguing that authenticity is not located in the music itself, but in the relationship between the artists and their audience. Analysis also considers the authenticity of the documentary form.

Documentary filmmakers confront trauma: An interview with Marianne Hougen-Moraga and Estephan Wagner

The article features an interview with Copenhagen-based filmmakers Marianne Hougen-Moraga and Estephan Wagner, directors of Songs of Repression (2020), the latest documentary film to tackle Colonia Dignidad, a sectarian German enclave founded in Chile in 1961. The dialogue revolves around the film, but it also illuminates some general problems documentarians must face when encountering trauma, among them ethical responsibilities towards protagonists and narrative strategies to employ. The interview is preceded by an introduction that sketches background information on the notorious colony, explains how the film originated, examines the role of music – a central motif of the film – for Colonia’s functioning and situates the work in a wider context of documentaries that confront human rights abuses. The political, religious and moral complexities of Colonia Dignidad are salient because they point to the way the inadequacy or total absence of processes of redress and reconciliation may ultimately prompt the re-emergence or re-establishment of sinister practices.

Sonja: The White Swan: Music as narrative device

Anne Sewitsky’s biopic Sonja (Sonja: The White Swan) (2018) is an example of authorial intervention that prioritizes a character-centred narrative rather than historical context. The article focuses on the musical score and the contemporary pop songs that contribute to building the psychological–emotional portrait of Norwegian-born Sonja Henie, champion figure skater and Hollywood star. In Sewitsky’s narrative strategy, non-diegetic music, sometimes deployed anachronistically, is used both to comment on the protagonist’s motivations and behaviour and to express her inner states of mind. By foregrounding Henie’s psyche through music, the film balances her negative and positive sides and presents her as complex and sometimes contradictory individual.

Elements in the biographical discourse of the documentary Ole Bull

The article discusses how the biographical is represented in the documentary Ole Bull (Aarhus 2006), a film about the world-famous Norwegian composer and violin virtuoso (1810–80). It focuses on the biographical discourse – that is, by what kind of stylistic devices his life story is told and the audio-visual strategies the film employs to make the past present.

Rewriting Ibsen for the big screen

Henrik Ibsen is regarded as the champion of realist theatre. In the early days of cinema, there were several silent film adaptations of Ibsen’s plays. One would think, given his standing as a playwright, that there would be a continuous interest in Ibsen’s work after the conversion to sound. This article examines how the realist theatre – heralded by Ibsen – relates to classical (Hollywood) cinema and how Ibsen in various ways has been rewritten and has recently re-emerged within contemporary cinema.