Svensk Filmindustri
Svensk Filmindustri , or SF for short , is a Swedish film company that was formed on December 27, 1919.
history
As a result of the merger of Svenska Biografteatern and Filmindustri AB Scandia , the film company AB Svensk Filmindustri (Stock Corporation Swedish Film Industry), or SF for short , was created in 1919 ; its main owner was the industrialist Ivar Kreuger . As a result of the merger, SF had a share capital of 35,000 kronor and 70 cinemas in Sweden. The first director was Charles Magnusson and the two internationally renowned directors Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller were among his staff. Their films were exported all over the world and the company had offices in Berlin , London , Paris , Amsterdam and New York .
In 1920 SF was able to inaugurate its new film studios in Solna near Stockholm . This "Swedish Hollywood", called Filmstaden (the film city), was one of the most modern and largest film studios in Europe at the time. Around 400 feature films were produced here from 1920 to 1970. The first film was Victor Sjöström's silent film Körkarlen .
At the end of the 1920s, Svensk Filmindustri fell into an economic crisis and there were internal disputes. Unemployment and depression meant fewer and fewer people went to the cinema. In 1926 Kreuger even planned to sell SF to the German Universum Film (UFA) . A tough reorganization, a new director and the sound film saved the company. The first self-produced sound film with optical sound premiered on August 11, 1930.
In the early 1940s, the young Ingmar Bergman came to SF as a screenwriter . As a director, he made the company internationally known again over the next few decades.
Newsreel
As early as 1914, Svenska Biografteatern (the predecessor of SF) was producing weekly journal films. The model was mainly the French Pathé newsreel. Under the name SF-journalen , this Swedish newsreel regularly showed a current weekly review in the country's cinemas until television took over this role.
SF today
In 1983 SF was bought by the Swedish media group Bonnier . Today AB Svensk Filmindustri is one of the oldest still existing film companies in the world. The Bergman films of the 1950s and 1960s and the film adaptations of Astrid Lindgren's books became internationally known . The subsidiary SF Bio AB (since 1998) operates 39 movie theaters with 226 cinemas in Sweden (2006 figures). SF sells films on the Internet via video-on-demand in the Scandinavian countries.
photos
The portal to the Filmstaden in Solna around 1930
An SF camera, Filmstaden
Astrid Lindgren, behind her in the window Ingmar Bergman
Individual evidence
- ^ Hauke Lange-Fuchs: Ingmar Bergman: His films - his life, Heyne, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-02622-5 , p. 27.
Web links
- Svensk Filmindustri website (English)
- Svensk Filmindustri Bio website (Swedish)