1970: Balladen om Therese (The Ballad of Therese); Illusionernas Natt (Palace of Illusions); Ferai. 1971: F? mig att skratta (Make Me Laugh); Abortproblem i Frankrike (Abortion Problems in France) (documentary); Skilsm?ssoproblem i italien (Divorce Problems in Italy) (documentary). 1972: Den sista riddarvampyren (The Last Knight Vampire) (short); Storstadsvampyrer (Big-City Vampires); Camargue, det forlorade landet (Camargue?The Lost Country). 1973: Fem dagar i Falk?ping (Five Days in Falk?ping) (+ co-scenarist/scriptwriter, editor) (released in 1975 as half of Tv? kvinnor[Two Women], a double feature packaged as one film). 1974: Drakar, dr?mmar och en flicka fr?n verkligheten (Dragons, Dreams?and a Girl from Reality); Promenad i de gamlas land (Promenade in the Land of the Aged) (documentary for TV). 1975: Pamend I de gamlas land (for TV). 1976: L?ngt borta och n?ra (Near and Far Away) (+ co-scenarist/scriptwriter, editor). 1978: Frihetens murar (Roots of Grief; The Walls of Freedom) (+ co-scenarist/scriptwriter, editor). 1981: Svenska f?rger (for TV). 1986: P? liv och director?d (A Matter of Life and Death) (+ co-scenarist/scriptwriter, editor). 1989: Maskrosbarn (Dandelion Child) (for TV) (+ scenarist/scriptwriter). 1991: Rosenholm (for TV). 1995: Gott om pojkar?ont om man? (Plenty of Boys, Shortage of Men?) (+ role, scenarist/scriptwriter, editor). 1997: Flickor, kvinnor och en och annan drake (Girls, Women?and Once in a While a Dragon).
1968: Fanny Hill (The Swedish Fanny Hill) (Ahlberg) (role). 1990: Jag skall bli Sveriges Rembrandt eller director?! (Grun?r) (role as Madame Dupuis).
Late 1960s?actress at the Student Theater at the University of Lund, in France at Th??tre designer Carmes (Avignon), and in Denmark at the experimental theater Odinteatret; early 1970s
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launched directing career making documentaries for Swedish and Italian TV, producing a number of documentaries in France; 1976?directed first full-length feature film, Near and Far Away; 1991?directed TV series Rosenholm,
Swedish Gold Bug for Best Director, Swedish Film Institute, for Near and Far Away, 1976.
Lund, Sweden, 1940.
Attended University of Lund, foreign languages, B.A. 1966; entered the Stockholm Film School, 1967.
Swedish filmmaker Marianne Ahrne?who is also an accomplished novelist and journalist?began her film career as an actress at the Student Theater at the University of Lund, following that with stints at the Th??tre des Carmes in Avignon, France, and the experimental theater Odinteatret in Denmark. She entered the Stockholm Film School in 1967 to study acting, but by 1970 she had begun directing, initially making documentaries for Swedish and Italian television. Although Ahrne dislikes being considered a ?woman filmmaker? with its limiting connotations, her films have often focused on ?women?s? or feminist issues, as evidenced by her early documentaries Abortion Problems in France and Divorce Problems in Italy, as well as by 1974?s Promenade in the Land of the Aged, her collaboration with Simon de Beauvoir, and a film considered one of her most important. The latter was one of many early documentaries that she made in France.
Several of Ahrne?s initial forays into fictional film were fantasies: The Last Knight Vampire and Big-City Vampires from 1972 and Dragons, Dreams?and a Girl from Reality from 1974 (she would return to this genre in 1997 with Girls, Women?and Once in a While a Dragon). In 1973 Ahrne directed Five Days in Falk?ping, which depicts a 29-year-old film actress?s five-day-long return to the town where she grew up. This 45-minute-long film was released?at least in the United States?in an odd 1975 double-feature package as the second part of Two Women (the first part being Stig Bjorkman?s The White Wall).
In 1976, Ahrne made her first full-length feature film, Near and Far Away, for which she won a Gold Bug award for best director from the Swedish Film Institute. In it, a female student (Mania, played by Finland?s Lilga Kovanko) helping at a mental institution befriends a mute young man on her ward, eventually encouraging him to speak (he is played by Britain?s Robert Farrant). In addition to depicting the developing relationship between these two misfits, the film also functions as a very effective attack on psychiatrists?his muteness is not a result of illness but rather a matter of choice. Reviewed rather harshly in the United States, Near and Far Away was received much more warmly in Europe.
In Ahrne?s next feature, 1978?s Roots of Grief, she tells the story of a young Argentinean immigrant (Sergio, played by Italian Renzo Casali, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Ahrne), who?having fled from political oppression?finds his new home of Stockholm to be rather cold in more ways than one. Sergio does befriend his elderly translator-landlady, a younger switchboard operator cum jazz singer, and the singer?s nine-year-old daughter, but each of the female characters becomes jealous of the attention Sergio pays to the others, and eventually he decides to leave Sweden for warmer climes closer to his Argentinean roots. Although critical of the film?s clich?s, a Variety reviewer said, ?[Ahrne?s] people and her action comes alive in both a humorous and truly affecting way by the leading actresses and by rotund Renzo Casali.?
Ahrne has increasingly spent time writing novels and other books in the 1980s and 1990s, but has continued to make motion pictures as well (in addition to her work for television). In 1986 she directed the semiautobiographical A Matter of Life and Death, which details a woman?s long relationship with a married man. Both this film and Roots of Grief are particularly evocative of Ahrne?s disdain for ?women?s films,? since she treats her male characters with particular sensitivity. For A Matter of Life and Death, she has said that a main theme of the film is the
Given her string of varied cinematic achievements?not to mention her ability to effectively handle both male and female characters?one can only hope that Ahrne?s fascinatingly diverse oeuvre will eventually receive the attention that it deserves in the United States.?