Cinema
Gryr i Norden
Olav Dalgard · 1939
Synopsis
Kristiania, October 1889. In the match factories, women workers, often very young, breathe the phosphorus fumes that ruin their health, for piece-rate wages that management has just cut. They stop work: it is the country's first major strike by women. Around them, the film brings in Dr Oscar Nissen, the writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, the agitator Hans Jæger and the editor Carl Jeppesen, real figures who took the strikers' side.
Context
The film was made for the fortieth anniversary of the LO trade union confederation and produced for the workers' education association; it closes the series of fiction films that Dalgard made for the labour organisations from 1938 onwards. Dalgard wrote the screenplay and himself plays the role of Hans Jæger. Historically, the strike of 1889 won only a slightly eased system of fines. The copies held by the national film archives have been restored.
Who it is for
A militant film lasting one hour and seven minutes, in Norwegian, for those interested in labour history and the early days of sound cinema.
Prizes and reception
The principal work of its author according to the historian Stig-Audun Hansen, and a film commissioned by the trade union movement.