Danish (media)

This article addresses the strategies that the Danish film company Nordisk Films Kompagni adopted from the early 1910s in order to satisfy the censorship demands of differentmarkets, and also the strategies of self-regulation the company practiced in order to reach as large and as culturally-differentiated an audience as possible. Nordisk’s business relied on the international markets; only a small percentage of its production was sold to the domestic market, and in order to maintain the export levels, Nordisk devised very explicit strategies for the kinds of films the companywouldmake. These strategies included among other things the creation of guidelines for scripts accepted by the company, alternative endings made for the same film to please the varying tastes of audiences in different countries, and the circulation of information that derived from the company’s branches and agents about the censorship rules in individual countries to Nordisk’s stock company of writers and direc...

Sannom was born in 1886, in Copenhagen, to Fritz Emil Sophus Sannom (1854-1935), a first mate and furnace stoker on a ship, and Johanne Kamilla Hansen (1861-1936). In 1887, the entire family immigrated to Florida where they unsuccessfully ran an orange plantation. After seven years abroad, the Sannom family returned to Denmark and settled down in Copenhagen, where Sannom's mother dreamed of seeing her daughters on the stage. According to Sannom, she made her theatrical debut as an extra at the age of nine, and her sisters, Charlotte (1884-1954), Thora (1893-1954), and Ragnhild (1896-1953), acted on the stage and in films as well (Nielsen 2003, 914). Sannom continued to perform in Copenhagen theaters, and also toured the Nordic countries before making the leap to the new medium of film.

This short subject concerns a memo from June 1916 discovered in an attic at Nordisk Film's studios in Valby, Copenhagen, written by General Manager Ole Olsen of Nordisk Films Kompagni to the company's directors. The memo is a dressing-down of the directors; contrary to the assumption that the company was blind to the quality of its films, the memo demonstrates Ole Olsen and the management's concern that quality has declined.