Do you have a favourite place in Copenhagen?
”I have previously lived in Christianshavn, and I think it’s a lovely area. I like taking a walk along the embankments and remembering the time when the moats protected Copenhagen. If you are trying to imagine what life was like in Copenhagen shortly before the middle of the century before last, you must picture that the city was a fortress. All the way around the city was an embankment that slanted into a broad moat, and all access to and from the city had to pass through one of four narrow gates; Østerport, Nørreport, Vesterport and Amagerport.”
Who’s your favourite Danish artist?
”I would like to mention Bille August, my favourite film director.
He has won the Palme d’Or twice for his films ’Pelle Erobreren’ and ’Den gode vilje’. For the former, he also won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for best foreign movie.
Bille August’s choice of subjects demonstrate a classic humanism. You can see this in his film version of Martin Andersen Nexø’s novel ’Pelle Erobreren’. In it, he depicts the existence of a young person and his confrontation with the brutality of the adult world. The child is observed at eye level and with loyalty, and his emotional life is registered with the same level of seriousness as that of the adults. All told through a picturesque filmic language in which every frame in the film is as if taken out of a painting from the period it is set in.”