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Treasures from the Archives

Det Danske Filminstitut:
Peter Elfelt: Danish Royal Court
Photographer and Film Pioneer

The Danish Film Institute holds a significant collection of early motion pictures by Denmark's first filmmaker Peter Elfelt (1866-1931). Elfelt shot the first moving images in Denmark in the winter of 1896/97, after having attended a screening by the Lumière Brothers at the Grand Café in Paris in early 1896. Interested in the new technology Elfelt tried to buy a cinématographe in France, but this enterprise failed. He is said to have acquainted Jules Carpentier, the French inventor who finalised the mechanics of the cinématographe, from whom he might have received enough information to work out a detailed plan of the camera and projector himself. He then entrusted the reconstruction of the machine to the engineer Jens Poul Andersen, who successfully carried out the task. With this camera he shot the first Danish film, a 30-second sequence called “Kørsel med Grønlandske Hunde” (“Driving with Greenland Dogs”) in a Copenhagen park.

In 1899, Elfelt began filming the Royal Family and as he became the official photographer of the Danish royal court in 1901, he had privileged access to the European courts. He made over 200 films, focussing on nature films, documentaries and newsreels, which featured military parades, royal visits, official funerals and baptisms. His work does not only reflect the royalty of the time, but also society, art and events. He made a number of travelogues, advertising films and moving images of street scenes and people. Peter Elfelt is also credited with making the first Danish fiction film “Henrettelsen” (“The Execution”) in 1903, a re-enactment of a famous French trial of a child murderess, who killed her ten children.

For almost a decade Elfelt was responsible for all Danish film production, until Ole Olsen founded his Nordisk Film Kompagni (Nordisk Film A/S) in 1906. It quickly became one of the most successful production companies of the silent film era and is today the oldest continuously operating film studio in the world. Although Peter Elfelt has left his mark on film history as the pioneer of Danish film, the production of film was always secondary to his main work as a photographer.

The Peter Elfelt films held by the Danish Film Institute will be made available via the EFG web portal. Many of them can already be viewed through the Danish National Filmography.

www.dfi.dk

Det Danske Filminstitut/Photographer: Peter Elfelt