Questions and Answers with Torill Kove, Director of The Danish Poet - Page 2

The music is all original and was composed, arranged and largely performed for the film by Kevin Dean, a brilliant jazz musician and composer. He is also very familiar with Scandinavian folk music and we agreed that he would create a score that would sound Scandinavian without using existing music. The music ended up playing a very important role in setting the tone for the film.

The Danish Poet has won many awards ranging from the Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto, Ontario to the International Animated Film Festival in Portugal. What was your reaction when your film was selected for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short?

There’s no question that getting nominated for an Oscar is very exciting. Not just for me, but for everyone who worked on it here at the NFB and in Norway. So, I was of course very pleased. But I was also quite surprised. There were many really wonderful films on the short list and I was not at all confident that mine would be among the five nominees.

Have you seen the films that you are competing against? How does it feel to be matched up against some of the best animation studios in the business like Pixar, Disney Studios and 20th Century Fox?

Yes, I have seen all the other films and it would be quite easy to feel intimidated in this company. But at the end of the day, because of the fairly insular nature of the animation community, I think animators are probably each others biggest fans. I look forward to meeting the other nominees and maybe finding out something about how they work and what makes them tick. The nomination gives me an opportunity to do that and that is a real bonus.

Are there any new projects that you are working on for the near future?

Right now I’m making a picture book of The Danish Poet for a Norwegian publisher. Afterwards I hope to make another film, but it’s too early to tell what that’ll be.

Thank you very much for your time, and I hope that by the end of February you can add Academy Award Winner to your list of achievements.

I’m not banking on it, but thank you anyway!

For more information, visit the National Film Board of Canada’s Webpage and the Danish Poet Webpage.

Article Author: Danny Smooth

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