CONTACT:
COMING IN FALL 2007 TO DEUTSCHES HAUS,
420 West 116th Street, New York City A NEW DOCUMENTARY ON A HOLOCAUST HEROINE,
A TALK ON SWEDEN'S COLD WAR TIES TO AMERICA,
AND A PLAY ON PIPPI LONGSTOCKING'S AUTHOR
SET FOR COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY THIS FALL
420 West 116th Street, New York City A NEW DOCUMENTARY ON A HOLOCAUST HEROINE,
A TALK ON SWEDEN'S COLD WAR TIES TO AMERICA,
AND A PLAY ON PIPPI LONGSTOCKING'S AUTHOR
SET FOR COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY THIS FALL
The first event is a screening of the film Nina's Journey (Ninas Resa), a documentary written and directed by Swedish filmmaker Lena Einhorn, scheduled for 7 p.m. on Tuesday, September 18, 2007. This remarkable 2006 documentary tells the story of a Polish woman who studied medicine while surviving the Warsaw Ghetto, then escaped to live as a Gentile and went on to become a Swedish citizen and a distinguished cancer doctor. Her filmmaker daughter�like Nina's husband and son, also an oncologist�completed this interview not long before her mother died of cancer. In this drama, filmed in Warsaw with Polish actors, Nina Rajmic Einhorn tells her life story.
Nina's Journey is the 2006 Winner of two Swedish film prizes and the Yad Vashem prize at the Jerusalem film festival. It is based on the nonfiction novel of the same title, nominated for Sweden's August Prize in 2005. The film is in Swedish and Polish with English subtitles. (Running Time: 119 minutes.) The program is co-sponsored by the American-Scandinavian Foundation and Columbia's Institute for the Study of Europe.
"Secret Connections: Swedish-American Ties in the Cold War" is the title of a talk in English by veteran Swedish journalist Roger Älmeberg, this fall a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Germanic Languages at Columbia. He will speak at Deutsches Haus at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, October 16, raising the question, Is Sweden really a neutral country? Was it neutral even during the Cold War? This journalist has examined the links between the Swedish and American governments, including agreements between military and intelligence services to provide for the defense of this "alliance-free" Nordic nation through the last half of the past century.
Roger Älmeberg has a personal reason to be curious about such matters: his father piloted a Swedish spy plane that was shot down by the Soviets over the Baltic in 1952�and not salvaged until 2004. The Swedish plane was equipped for advanced signal intelligence against the Soviet Union, and the results were put to use not only by Sweden but were also exchanged among intelligence services in Sweden, the U.S.A., and Great Britain. The Swedish government lied to or concealed the truth about what had happened from the Swedish public and the families of the eight missing crew members.
Roger Älmeberg has worked as a journalist for over thirty years as a reporter, producer and project leader at Swedish Television and chief of Swedish Radio services for several provinces. His new book, Hemliga förbindelser (Secret Connections: The Baltic DC-3 Incident, Sweden, and the Cold War), will be published in September in Stockholm. This event is co-sponsored by the Swedish Institute, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, Iceland Air, and Columbia's Institute for the Study of Europe.
The final event of the autumn is a staged reading of a new play on the early years of the Swedish children's book author Astrid Lindgren, best known in the United States as the creator of the Pippi Longstocking series. The work was written by Vladimir Oravsky and Kurt Peter Larsen and has been translated into English by Verne Moberg. Robert Greer will direct the play with a cast of professional actors.
The program, set for 7 p.m., Wednesday, November 14, 2007, at Deutsches Haus, is timed to honor the 100th anniversary of the Astrid Lindgren's birth date. As a young journalist in the province of Småland, she leaves the idyllic village of Vimmerby for a mysterious mission to Copenhagen and a secretarial career in Stockholm's roaring 1920s. The play features cameo appearances by the Swedish actresses Zarah Leander and Viveca Lindfors.
Often nominated for a Nobel Prize, Astrid Lindgren was known not only for her books about Pippi Longstocking but also for many other children's stories including Ronya, the Robber's Daughter, The Brothers Lionheart, the Emil books (about a boy who teaches his sister to swear and once gets his head stuck in a soup tureen). She wrote about 100 books, and her writing has been translated into 90 languages in more than 100 countries.
Lindgren received many awards for her work, including the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award for Pippi Longstocking in 1973; the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1958; and the International Book Award from UNESCO in 1993. She received other recognition including honorary doctorates from universities. Pippi Longstocking and other characters have been the stars of about 40 movies and TV series based on Lindgren's works.
Astrid Lindgren died on January 28, 2002, at age 94.
Vladimir Oravsky (born in 1947) emigrated to Sweden from the former Czechoslovakia but attended the Danish Film School in Copenhagen, where he met his long-time writing partner, Kurt Peter Larsen (born 1953 in rural Denmark). They have written and published poetry, articles, screenplays, and books for children and young adults, and done theater and film work together. Vladimir Oravsky has also held administrative positions, most recently as head of cultural affairs in the city of Umeå in northern Sweden.
Oravsky and Larsen are the joint winners of the 2006 award from the International Theatre Institute and International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People for the year's best children's play. My Astrid! marks the writers' debut in the United States, a country they admire.
This play reading is co-sponsored by the Swedish Women's Educational Association-New York, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and Columbia's Institute for the Study of Europe.
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