People in Nuuk had a chance to attend the première of a new film at the Katuaq cultural centre on Aug. 28.
The film— the Experiment— tells the story of a group of children taken from Greenland to Denmark in the 1950's.
In 1951, 22 Greenlandic children, nine girls and 13 boys from all over Greenland, selected to come to Denmark to go into foster care. The children were selected among disadvantaged families and had to be smart because together they would form the backbone of the new Greenlandic school system.
Director Louise Friedberg made the film about the story of these children whose lives were completely changed one day in 1951, and who paid a high price for an experiment, created by Danish and Greenlandic politicians, the powerful Danish officials in Greenland and Copenhagen, and from private organizations like the Red Cross and Save the Children in Denmark.
The two screenwriters decided to tell their story around nurse Gert.
"I wanted to tell the story through Danish eyes, because that approach is obviously most available to me. So we made the Danish matron the central character in the film. She is a woman who believes in the experiment and acts with the best of intentions," Friedberg said.
Show here, Gert (Ellen Hillingsø), the Danish matron of the children's home in Greenland, keeps a tight grip on one of her children in this photo by Christian Geisnæs.
When the children returned home, however, they had lost their language, their culture and their family. The project was a failure and the children were the losers.
An Aug. 29 review in Sermitsiaq said that seen through the eyes of Greenland, there are several irritating aspects to the film.
First, the film takes place in the middle of the Greenlandic summer, so makes it implausible for children to be in school then.
First, the film takes place in the middle of the Greenlandic summer, so makes it implausible for children to be in school then.
And it was also annoying that the subtitles in Greenland disappeared so quickly that many times those in the audience were not able to read the text.
And the film has also left several unanswered questions, says Sermitsiaq.
"We are told in the beginning of the movie, the children were sent to Denmark as part of an experiment, but how did the selection of the children happen? Why is it just these children who were sent to Denmark? How did they live in Denmark? How long did the experiment continue? And what happened to these children? How long did they live at the orphanage and how did they live as adults?"
