Nothing screams ”summer” to me like a film about teenagers that hang out in a vacuum of nothingness. Endless summer evenings, which are simultaneously carefree play, romantic dramas and big thoughts filled with visions and ambitions. A space between finishing school and the future’s anxiety-inducing choices.

A sort of melancholy for the future. As endless as summer evenings feel, you know very well you’ll never get them back again. You know that they, and that which they represent, will be reserved for others from now on, younger people, who will undergo the same rituals.

A Danish documentary by the Swedish director Anna Erborn, ‘Transnistra’ takes place in the eponymous seceding area between Moldova and Ukraine.

It doesn’t change the story. Apart from the fact that the group of people we follow haven’t yet finished their education, and that they have no job prospects. Instead of dreaming of moving to the big city, they want to get away from Transnistria. Instead of being nervous about life’s next phase in the safe embrace of the welfare society, they are trapped in the empty space between post-communist poverty and the dreams that followed the falling of the wall. This is best illustrated in their play on the half-finished building sites from a booming past. 

But the sun shines anyway. And teenagers will be teenagers. 

The film is screened unfortunately only From Monday to Wednesday kl. 14.10 at Cafe Biografen   

For over 50 years the Danish Film School has been training Danish film directors, and there is no better event to assess the quality of the future filmmakers than a graduation screening. Here, the soul is poured out and simmered in sweat, tears, and long, long workdays.     

There is a good tradition in Denmark, that the greatest actors step down one level and agree to feature in graduation films. This happened this year as well, where, among others, we can encounter Thure Lindhart, Lotter Andersen, Sofie Torp, Nicolas Bro and Thomas W. Gabrielsson.

Tuesday evening, six short films will be shown at the BioCity cinema: 3 hours and 14 minutes worth of great performances, challenging entertainment and painful stories.  

See the trailers here:

- Hjertekvaler by Jacob Møller

- Dronning Ingrid by Katrin Björgsvindóttir

- Under bølgerne under skyerne by Katrine Brocks

- Viktor på månen by Christian Arhoff

- Forestillingen om Juliane by Mads Mengel

- Hollow heart by Emilie Marloth Frøkjær

Film directors and producers will be present, and it will pay off to be fast and pre-order tickets, since most of the tickets were already gone last weekend.

La Redada raises the summer temperatures with a free-flowing Latin-American mix. The band comes straight from the great flowing metropolis, Mexico City, to the red summer sky on the roof of Odense.

La Redada is a playful, slightly obscure danceable mix of free jazz, electronic, noise, surf, garage and certainly much more. An unmistakably clear Latin-American basic rhythm is present throughout, which calls for movement, big smiles and cold drinks. Hear them here in a robust interpretation of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves:

They’ve brought DJ Tropic Aza with them, to end the show with a tropical cornucopia of rare Latin-American music. Summernights in a Yucatan jungle meets tight ‘80s electro and disco. Hear the Boiler Room here: 

I measure my years from summer to summer. If you do the same, then Friday, the 28th of June is the last day of a long, hard and fast year. A year when you had all too little time, a little too much to do and not enough space to allow yourself to notice what things are really worth. And now, a summer break.

If this is the case, what could be more ideal than starting the summer with a vernissage for an exhibition on slowness? I mean – white wine, early evening sun, cobbled streets and artworks that forsake profit, in order to pay tribute to truth. Does it sound good?

Fyn’s Graphic Workshop has invited its members to exhibit lithography works. Ironically, the medium was invented with the purpose of reproducing works fast and cheap, but it has been overpowered today by so many fast technologies, that lithographs only sell in limited series: a little is good if it is good enough.

Vernissage from kl. 15 – 17. The exhibition runs until 30th July.