The Cultural of Production and Career in the Danish film Industry: The Ideological Symbiosis of ‘Auteur’ and ‘Craftsperson’

This chapter explores some of the central cultural tenets of career and film making among elite members of the Danish film industry, or what is less than elegantly and somewhat grammatically incorrectly referred to as ‘the cultural of production and career’ in the title of this chapter. The theoretical reasons for this formulation is to train focus on the ideational dimensions of culture in the Danish film industry, especially as refracted through reflections on work and career by film workers. In this sense the approach, though less inclusive and ambitious, resembles Caldwell’s interest in ‘indigenous interpretive frameworks in Production Culture.i The chapter also argues that production and career decisions and actions are inextricable intertwined. Sometimes the two are consciously and manifestly related to each other, in terms of deliberating the implications that working on a given film, with given persons, in a given manner, etc. will have on one’s further work possibilities; or the reverse, how career considerations impact how films get made in terms of who works on them and what resources, skills, tastes, and perspectives are brought into and realized in a production. Sometimes the interrelation of these considerations remains latent. This chapter explores how certain cultural underpinnings support these mutually intertwined considerations.