Roy Andersson (born March 31, 1943) is a Swedish film director, best known for his films A Swedish Love Story and Songs from the Second Floor . More than any other, Songs from the Second Floor succeeded in cementing his personal style -- a style characterized by long takes, absurdist comedy, stiff caricaturing of Swedish culture, Felliniesque grotesques, sight gags, and heavy anti-capitalist themes. He's spent much of his professional life working on advertisement spots, directing over 300 commercials and 2 short films, but only directing 3 major, feature-length films in as many decades.

Early years

Later described by the Village Voice as a "slapstick Ingmar Bergman”, Roy Andersson was born in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1943. A year after graduating from the Swedish Institute of Film in 1969, he directed his first feature-length film, A Swedish Love Story . The film, awarded four prizes the same year at the International Film Festival in Berlin, looked at the the nature and nuance of young love and turned out to be a major critical and popular success for Andersson. Riding on this success, Andersson directed the film Giliap which was released in 1975. The film was financial and critical disaster, went wildly over budget, and suffered lengthy delays in post-production. Giliap went in a decidedly different direction than A Swedish Love Story -- replacing crowd-pleasing joy and soft humour with dark comedy and unforgiving deadpan. After Giliap, Andersson would take a 25-year break from film directing, focusing his efforts mainly on his commercial work.

Later years

In 1981 he established Studio 24 , an independent film company and studio located in central Stockholm. Later, he directed a short-film commissioned by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare entitled Something has Happened . Made in 1987, the short was meant to be played at schools all over Sweden as a public service announcement about the AIDS virus, but was canceled when it was three-fourths complete because of its overly dark and controversial nature. The official explanation was that it was " too dark in its message," and it wasn't officially shown until 1993. His next short film, 1991's World of Glory , developed this style even further and was a critical success, winning both the Canal Plus Award and the prestigious Press Prize at the 1992 Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival.

In March 1996, Andersson began filming Songs from the Second Floor , a film that was to be completed four years later in May of 2000. After its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival the film also became an international critical success. It won the Special Jury Price in Cannes 2000 and five Guldbagge awards in Sweden for best film, direction, cinematography, screenplay and sound. The film was made up of forty-six long tableaux shots, marrying tough, bleak social criticism with his characteristic absurdist dead-pan and surrealism.

Roy Andersson continues his commercial work at Studio 24 and, as of 2005, has another feature-film in pre-production, entitled “You, the living”.

Works

External links

• royandersson.com - Official site
• thecontext.com - Interview with Roy Andersson