Transnational Screen Culture in Scandinavia: Mediating Regional Space and Identity in the Øresund Region

Since the global appeal of the Nordic noir television series Bron/Boren (The Bridge) which is a Swedish-Danish co-production, several Nordic cinema scholars have been drawn to study on-screen representations of the Øresund region. This body of work has spanned studies in screen tourism and location, production, and reception studies in either an international or transnational context (Bondebjerg and Redvall 2015; Hansen and Waade 2017; Bondebjerg 2020). However, the cinematic mediations of the Øresund region beyond the mainstream popular media texts have not been well explored. By looking at some less well-known urban documentaries and short films, Pei-Sze Chow’s debut monograph, Transnational Screen Culture in Scandinavia: Mediating Regional Space and Identity in the Øresund Region offers an important addition to this body of work, that challenges the dominant narratives and images about the transnational region as constructed not only by well-known films and television series but also those envisioned by the Øresund regional planners and administrators.

This book explores the imaginings, representations and critiques of the Øresund region on-screen throughout the period 1999–2009; Chow employs a conceptual lens called regioscape, interposing geopolitical, economic, industrial and cultural perspectives. The judiciously selected film texts and their rich analysis provide a fresh reading and an alternative perspective of an imagined transnational space. Her study is concerned with Nordic architecture, the urban built environment, and relations between society and the state, as well as local, regional, and transnational identities. The book is divided into three parts: Part I, ‘Regions and Regioscapes on Film’, including Chapters 2 and 3, outlines the theoretical approach and geopolitical context; Part II, ‘Urban Documentary Interventions’, consists of Chapters 4 and 5 and deals with the urban space of Malmö and Copenhagen, as mediated by documentaries; and Part III, ‘Short Films in a Maritime Region’, where Chapter 6 explores the maritime environment as seen in short films.

The opening chapter, ‘Introduction: An End’, begins the study by discussing the historical closure of using ‘Øresund Region’ as the brand for the transnational region, which was renamed ‘Greater Copenhagen and Skåne’ in 2016. Chow then lays out her motivation to carry on this research and the reason why she decides to focus on a group of peripheral films about the Øresund region.

In Part I, Chow explicates the regioscape concept as the methodological backbone of her study. Chapter 2 illuminates the processes by which regions are shaped, produced and imagined by both individuals and community; Chow’s readers benefit from her careful discussion here of the interactions between ‘physical elements of territory’ (for example, urban space and landmark), a territory’s ‘imagined layers’ (such as film and cultural policies, or urban designs), and ‘negotiated spaces’ (such as audiovisual productions) (14). The final section of the chapter elaborates on the theoretical foundations that primarily informed her research, including imagined communities, national and transnational cinema studies, as well as place, space, and identity. Chapter 3 offers a brief overview of the historical, political, and cultural contexts to the development of the Øresund region; this includes a discussion on Denmark and Sweden’s film policy and institutional initiatives related to the Øresund region.

In Part II, Chapter 4 examines three films by the Swedish documentary filmmaker Fredrick Gertten, and their representations of contemporary architectural transformation in the Øresund region: Gå på vatten (Walking on Water, 2000); Bye Bye Malmö (2002); and Sossen, arkitekten och det skruvade huset (The Socialist, the Architect, and the Twisted Tower, 2005). Chow’s analysis highlights the tensions between the real memories and lived experiences shaped by local individuals, and the speculative futurity of visions constructed by transnational urban planning policymakers. In Chapter 5, taking Danish filmmaker Max Kestner’s documentary Drømme i København (Copenhagen Dreams, 2009) as her example, Chow then explores the image of urban Copenhagen and the city’s identity, by considering people’s everyday lives, personal spaces, memories, time, sense, dreams, and the city symphony as her topic.

In the final part, Chapter 6 analyses two short films, Daniel Dencik’s Out (2006) and Kolbjörn Guwallius’s Valrossarna (Walrus, 2006), both of which feature the Øresund strait (the body of water) as an important visual motif. It serves to represent the social relations interrelating people and space, as well as real and imaginative border-crossing social identity. Chow argues that short films are a useful tool for emerging filmmakers in small nations to embrace risk and diversity. Chow concludes her study with a discursive flourish by returning to the 2016 event of her introduction and inverting her gaze upon the new life of the transnational region as ‘Greater Copenhagen and Skåne’. She suggests that novel spatial imaginaries distinctive to its new era may be produced in the Nordic film industry’s future.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Chow’s book is the conceptualisation of the Øresund region she achieves by her methodological focus on the regioscape concept. It offers a new insight for further investigation of a particular region in a complex screen network. The main limitation of this book, in my view, is the relatively cursory treatment afforded to the reception of these films. Film reception is considered an important factor when considering a regional film-political ecosystem. However, Chow’s varied insightful commentary in other respects makes this book a welcome and important new contribution to Nordic cinema scholarship and will be of interest particularly to researchers of regional film production, transnational cinema, Scandinavian cinema studies, and small-nation cinema.