Start of the Ibsen commemoration in Bangladesh

The Ibsen commemoration 2006 is quite extensive in Bangladesh. Activities started already last year with the staging of Brand, the publishing of the first Bangla translation of Brand, and a number of Ibsen articles in the local press (see link in the left hand column). The Royal Norwegian Embassy in co-operation with Centre for Asian Theatre (CAT) has organized a wide range of activities throughout Bangladesh this year. The first events were a lecture by Ketil Jensehaugen and screening of  Erik Skjoldbjærg's film An enemy of the People  during the 9th Dhaka International Film Festival.

An Enemy of the People, produced in Norway in 2005, is a modern version of Henrik Ibsen's stage play with the same title. Moving Ibsen's story to our days means the characters have different jobs, and the location where most of the narrative evolves is changed. However, the basic plot remains the same. The film was screened at Star Cineplex, Bashundhara City during the 9th Dhaka International Film Festival 17 - 25 January 2006.

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Henrik Ibsen and the Dramatic Media is the title of a lecture given by Ketil Jensehaugen during the 9th Dhaka International Film Festival. You can read the lecture here:

“But Ibsen is far from being a film man. The majority of Ibsen films are bad or lacking in interest and only of one Ibsen film can we say with certainty that it has made film history”  This quote from Norwegian writer Karsten Alnæs from 1975 is in reference to the silent film made in 1916 by the Swedish film maker Victor Sjöström, of the poem “Terje Vigen”, and it is not an uncommon observation made by scholars both of Ibsen  and of filmmaking.  As the Director of the Ibsen Centre, Astrid Sæther asked during the seminar “Ibsen on Screen” in 1998: “Why has nobody succeeded in creating artistically good films out of these [Ibsen’s works] in the same way as people have succeeded with the works of Shakespeare?” Read more


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