Festival 2008 - Copenhagen OF the 1920's and 1930's

Get ready for some action when Golden Days this fall welcomes you to Copenhagen of the 1920’s and the 1930’s. Silent movies, revues and jazz music are going to be the talk of the town when the festival in September 2008 puts the spotlight on this era whose architecture, visual art and design today are more modern than ever. These two decades were much more than just ‘an interwar period’ – it was a decisive period with a blooming cultural life, in which vital inventions and proliferations saw the light of day.

Roaring Twenties
At the start of the twenties people were relieved after the First World War and the terrible influenza pandemic known as the Spanish Disease. The modern times were fuelled by speed and noise from motorcycles and aeroplanes. Radio waves filled the air and jazz music ruled the streets of Copenhagen. The banana skirt of Josephine Baker caused both joy and outrage in the Dagmar Theatre. The hair- and skirt-length of the women became shorter and shorter, and the lips were a glowing red – even in the everyday life.

Ornament and Crime
The architects of the times replaced the heavy air in the living rooms of past eras and passed a harsh sentence on the ornamentation: This was an architectural crime! Arne Jacobsen designed Bella Vista, a Functionalist’ fantasy situated in Klampenborg. Functionalism’s call for objectivity was heard far beyond the borders of the architectural realm. It could be traced in the lamps of Poul Henningsen, in the child care’s motto of ‘quietness, cleanness and regularity’ – and even in the sounds of the church music of the times. The radical breach with the habits of former times was a revolution – both in space and in minds!

Times of Crisis
The thirties are on the other hand known as the decade of crisis. The hedonism of the past decade was gone and a world wide economic depression created mass unemployment and social unrest in Denmark too. People poured into the cinema to get away from the problems of everyday life accompanied by the comedies and dreamy visions of the new sound films. The revues echoed of romance and familiar songs but also here a new, more serious and political tone was starting to sound in the halls. The political evolution in the whole of Europe gave a darker hue to the domestic cultural battle and the fear of a new war could be sensed everywhere.

A New Copenhagen
The pulse of Copenhagen went up in the twenties and thirties. The traffic gained speed and traffic lights had to be installed to control the increasing number of cars and busses roaming the city streets. The Functionalistic architecture entered the capital and well-known buildings like the Radio House, the Central Police Station, the Grundtvig church and ‘Lagkagehuset’ were erected. Amusement centres, nightclubs and cinemas became part of the city’s nightlife and the people of Copenhagen were moving to the hectic pulse of the nocturnal metropolis. You can also read about the architecture of Copenhagen in “Industriens huse” which is published by Golden Days.