Asta Nielsen - Europe's first Movie Icon (2023) [Dual Audio]

Director: Sabine Jainski
Stars: Sonja Beißwenger, Barbara Beuys, Karola Gramann

Asta Nielsen (1881 - 1972) is the pioneer and first star of cinema in Europe. As a working-class child and a single mother, she works her way up from the bottom. She consciously positions herself as the first role model for modern, independent women and plays queer characters like Hamlet. The documentary traces this singular phenomenon with many film excerpts.

Asta Nielsen created cinema as we know it today: her first film "Abysses" is also one of the first feature films in film history. She enchanted the masses with her erotic gaucho dance and was soon filming entire series. In 1914, 1.5 million people around the world saw a film starring Asta Nielsen every day.

This success was not something she was born with: born into a working-class family in Copenhagen in 1881, Asta Nielsen had to fight hard to become an actress. Then at the age of 19 came the shock: she was expecting a child and refused to marry her father. She wants to remain independent.

Asta Nielsen later plays such modern, new women in her films. And the first working women who are looking for exactly these role models are sitting in the cinema. From teenager to vamp, from melodrama to comedy, “Asta” plays all roles. She appeared in trouser roles early on, and in 1922 she embodied Hamlet between the sexes. Asta Nielsen made around 70 films in Germany until 1932. But she doesn't want to work with the Nazis.

With fascinating film excerpts and a richly equipped production, the documentary traces the secret of this icon. Karola Gramann and Heide Schlüpmann from the Asta Nielsen cinema library discuss with Barbara Beuys, who wrote a biography about the global star in 2020.

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