It is a challenge* to find commentary online about Lars von Trier’s film school graduation piece, Befrielsesbilleder (translated as Image of Relief / Liberation Pictures/Photos or variants of these words). Without giving away too much of the plot—is there one?—I’ve attempted to collect as much information about the film that I could dig up. Take 57 minutes to go watch it on YouTube and then come back here to see if you can piece together this “film noir.”
“A film should be like a stone in your shoe.” – Lars von Trier (Source)
Synopsis: In this thought-provoking graduate film of student Lars von Trier, the behavior of Danish resistance fighters at the end of World War II is called into question by documentary footage of them making street arrests and by fictional enactments of crimes. In one sequence, a captive German officer escapes prison and is led into a trap in the forest by a Danish woman — she believes he was responsible for blinding a teenager, and she stabs his eyes through with a wooden blade. He is left to crawl in the very woods where as a child, he had tried to converse with the birds. Using both color and black-and-white to good advantage, the cinematography adds to the dramatic impact. – By Eleanor Mannikka on AllMovie
Read more Collecting Images of Liberation (Befrielsesbilleder, 1982)
