Even that the real premiere with DJ set by famous Danish rapper / vinyl afficionado Ras Money is on Sunday, the actual world premiere of SPECTATOR RECORDS – Up in Smoke is tonight.

As always the lovely Tina Schembecker has put together a great poster for the film. We cant wait to show it to the world!

Last week of shooting. Its been 5 weeks of fast paced fun with an amazing cast and crew. Next week we are on to the editing and the series premieres in Decmber on Danish DR2. Who says it takes years to make a series 🙂

I will build up the website more up to the premiere, but you can read the synopsis here http://firstladyfilm.dk/overcooked-mens-vi-presser-citronen/

and follow our intstagram feed. Feel free to join in with you own perfect pictures of your perfect life. Its what we all want right?

I dare not say it out loud. But its seems like its true. It is true. Really. Its just hard to believe. A dream come true.

NINE ROCKS – the film about how Tor Nygår Kolding survived the tragedy at the Pearl Jam koncert 15 years ago

will premiere as a mark of remeberence and perhaps closure – on the day it happened : 30 june 2015.

We will transform the RISING scene of the festival to a cinema. We will commemorate those that passed, we will celebrate life.

This was Jonas T Bech’s dream. Sadly he chose to leave us before he could see it come true. I am so happy and proud that

I have been able to lift this – to do this. To create this little rock of rememberance in the world. We die, we live. We miss you.

To the Nine. To Jonas.

During the Financing Forum I was pitching the fabulous co-production project LETS PLAY A STORY and on the same day I was attending the Real Young workshop with my project for Shared Children: Double up!

And I won the pitch prize. So now Double Up! will be pitched at an online session with six handpicked financiers, that the great people of EDN are hosting later this year. I will be ready!

In the second week of the workshop we started sketching. Suddenly the whiteboard went from written notes to a giant beat board. All the while we discussed needs, wants, prtagonists, antagonists and everything in between.

We were also lucky to have Mette Heeno, famous Danish Scripwriter as our guinea pig for the story. So Kim Hagen pitched the story and she basically tore it apart. But in the most constructive way possible. We needed that.

There was also the day when Snorre Krogh and Jamie Holmes had decided to coordinate their hipster outfits. Its a thing they do.

For the development of our animated feature film Minna & The Dreambuilders, Director Kim Hagen Jensen and I gathered the cream of Danish animation developers for a two week intesive workshop of jamming, sketching, disussions and much chocolate.

The developers were: Kim Hagen Jensen, Nynne Selin Eidnes, Søren Grinderslev Hansen (Scriptwriter), Thorbjørn Christoffersen (Director of Terkel In Trouble and Ronald the Barbarian), Jamie Holmes (Charcter Designer) and Sune Elskær (Illustrator/Storyboarder). We also had a guest developer: Snorre Krogh (illustrator) for 3 days. All in all an Awesome crew.

In the first week we put the film up on the whiteboard in text on post its. We discussed and jammed and fought (a little) but it was an amazingly free space where everyones ideas we taken seriously and nobody felt more ownership than anyone, so the ideas flowed and creativity was high

And while we talked and talked for hours, there was much coffee, much doodling and much chocolate.

We also took a trip to the oldest theatre in Copenhagen to get that backstage feeling:

Here is a video of Thorbjørn working an oldschool theatre windmachine

And we went to the warehouse of The National Royal Theatre to see how the props are organized:

It was a truly inspiring and great week.

Today the nominations for the Danish Academy Award came and Growing Pains is nominated in the “Best Short fiction/animation” Category.

We are extremely proud and happy. It just so happens that VOID, one of the Nordic Factory films that I produced is also nominated in the same category.

So I will be competing against myself. The good thing is that I can congratulate myself either way. The bad thing is that Academy Award Winner HELIUM

is also nominated in the category, and the academy might want to follow up on that. They shouldn’t obviously. But they might. We are keeping our fingers crossed.

If you havent seen GROWING PAINS yet, you definitely should. Click Here.

Late Friday, I got at call from Director Tor Fruergaard, from The Odense International Film Festival.

Growing Pains WON:

BEST DANISH SHORT FILM (Academy Award qualifying)

and

SPECIAL MENTION (Animation competition)

see for yourself here: http://www.filmfestival.dk/en/winners/

That is just fantastic. And I am actually really thrilled that it did not just win the animation competition, but the best SHORT FILM – out of all films, both live action and animation.

oh, and the Academy Award qualifyer isn’t too bad either.

Now we are looking forward to Toronto and the International premiere.

Also we are working on a premiere for the cast and crew and friends in Copenhagen, where we will also display some of the fabulous stop-motion sets – for an invite, contact me.

Finally it is official. Vokseværk is selected for the Short Cuts International at Toronto International Film Festival.

This is the best possible start for the film. And hopefully tha beginning of a long life in the festival circuit.

Tor Fruergaard, Sissel Dalsgaard Thomsen, Kristian Eidnes and myself will be going to Toronto to meet the audience and the industry and

to see if we can create a good vibe around the film.

And hopefully I will meet some possible future collaboration partners for Minna & The Dreambuilders. A producer’s work is never done.

But it’s always a lot of fun.

I am so proud of Vokseværk. And of everyone working on the film. YAY!

read more on www.growingpains.dk

Wow. To be 1 out of just 14 animation projects to receive development funding from Creative Europe. That makes us just so darn proud.

This means that MINNA & THE DREAMBUILDERS can hold a completely awesome pixar inspired workshop where immensly talented people will pour all their great ideas

into the film and we can just paddle around in a pool of creative bliss, picking and choosing to our liking. And the best part: We will pay people to be part of our development.

Believe it or not, that is not too common these days. But now we have that possibility, and I promise you that we will take the money and do our absolute best

to get as much of it into the film, so we can make a kick-ass film that will awe the shizzle out of everyone and really cement that Danish animation is great…

So, no pressure 🙂 Just hard work.

Giant shout out to Producers Lise Saxtrup and Nina Lyng for letting me see (read: borrow from) their previous applications. I could not have done it without them. Or the invaluable help from Danish Creative Europe desk, Ene Katrine Rasmussen. You ladies ROCK!

This is a great day for First lady Film. I’ve just signed the transfer of rights to the popular danish children’s book PALLE ALENE I VERDEN (Palle alone in the world). The book is about a 5 year old boy who wakes up and finds himself completely alone in Copenhagen and does what all children do. Explore the city, the toy store, the sweet shop, even take all the money he wants in the bank. everything is his for the taking. But how great is it to have everything you ever dreamed of, if you have no one to share it with?

The author, Jens Sigsgaard wrote the book in 1942, during the war. He was a children’s psychologist and the book is based on interviews he made with children about what they wanted most of all in the world (to have everything) and what they were most afraid of in the world (that they would be completely alone) – and that is why the book resonates with us even today.

There is a film. Brilliant Danish director Astrid Henning-Jensen filmed the book in 1949. We have big shoes to fill with this reboot. The film is on the Danish national cultural canon for kids.

Astrid’s film has been cherished for 65 years. We want to make a film that is as timeless and important so it can last for the next 65 years.

It will be live action with spectacular special effects. Directed by Esben Tønnesen and written by Susan Stølsvig Skovmand

PALLE ALONE IN THE WORLD. TODAY.

We are so happy that The Danish Film Institute has chosen to take Growing Pains into their festival distribution. We hope that this can open some A-festival doors for our film – so that we can show the world how Danish animation kicks ass.