Swedish nature in focus at the world's leading silent film festival

The silent film With Sled and Reindeer in the Winterland of Inka Länta before and after restoration and tinting.

This year’s edition of Le giornate del cinema muto in Pordenone (October 5-12) includes a programme called Swedish Nature and Ethnographic Films in which five non-fiction films from the Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute are presented.

The programme includes The Tale of the Last Eagles (1923) and two shorts by Bengt Berg, which forms the beginning of the rich Swedish tradition of nature and wildlife films which culminated with the works of Arne Sucksdorff in the 1940’s. Also screened is the recently restored With Sled and Reindeer in the Winterland of Inka Länta (Erik Bergström, 1926) about a reindeer-herding family in one of the earliest films about the Samis, and The Island of Perils (Sten Nordenskiöld, 1930), depicting the birdlife and Man’s struggle on the barren Faroe Islands, which contemporary critics compared to Robert Flaherty’s classics Nanook (1922) and Moana (1926).

Film archivist Magnus Rosborn about the restoration work with With Sled and Reindeer in the Winterland of Inka Länta (pictured above).

- Usually when it comes to restoring Swedish silent films, we must base the process on worn prints or more or less well-made duplicate negatives, but in this case the film's abridged original negative had actually survived! And based on the information found in a fragment of a nitrate print from our colleagues at the Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam, it has also been possible to recreate the film's tinting and toning colors!

The programme is curated by Film Institute's Jon Wengström and Magnus Rosborn. Jon Wengström attends the festival.

More information: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto | Pordenone Silent Film Festival