Dilemme / Dilemma

Henning Carlsen

Born in 1927 in Aalborg (Denmark), Henning Carlsen had to interrupt his studies because of the war. He opted for cinema and became the assistant of Theodor Christensen, the founder of the post-war Danish documentary movement. In 1958, he made a documentary about a Danish company that manufactured heating units for South Africa. Four years later, he returned to Johannesburg to film his first feature length film clandestinely, A World of Strangers, based on an anti-apartheid novel by Nadine Gordimer. The film won First Prize at the Manheim Festival in 1962. He then collaborated with independent producer Lorens Marmstedt to direct The Cats in 1965. Hunger (Sult, 1966), an adaptation of the Knut Hamsun novel, won an award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1966. In 1982, Henning Carlsen directed Your Money or Your Life, and then in 1986, Gauguin, The Wolf at the Door (Oviri), written with Jean-Claude Carrière. In 1995, he adapted for the cinema another Hamsun novel Two Green Feathers. From 1968 to 1981, Henning Carlsen managed the prestigious cinema Dagmar Theatret in Copenhagen, succeeding Carl Theodor Dreyer. He taught at the National Film School of Denmark and was at the origin of the creation of the European Film College in Ebeltoft in 1993. Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2012), based on a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novella, was his last film, and was shot in Mexico.