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CULTURE

From Sweden with love: unique Bond movie to hit big screen

A movie likely to be one of the most incredible James Bond movies ever made will premiere this spring.

Published: 27 January 2017 16:20 CET
From Sweden with love: unique Bond movie to hit big screen
Anders Cöster as James Bond. Photo: Mats-Ola Pålsson/Lars Gahlin

As The Local reported last year, two Swedes may have made “the last real Bond movie”.

When Mats-Ola Pålsson and Lars Gahlin found themselves disappointed with some of the recent movies of the franchise they decided to make their own feature-length film of their own, without budget or experience.

READ ALSO: Have two Swedish amateurs made the last real Bond film?

'Black Light', as ambitious as any Hollywood blockbuster, is now finally set to hit the big screen.

But instead of Los Angeles, the grand premiere will be held in the directors' home town of Strömsnäsbruk, in Småland county in southern Sweden, at the end of May, newspaper Smålänningen was first to report.

“The whole premiere will be a miniature 'Oscar gala' with the red carpet, limousines and everything. The entire municipality is helping out and businesses are supplying champagne and food to make it a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” Gahlin told The Local, saying it would be held at the town's community cinema.

“My mum worked there as a projectionist in the 70s, so that makes it especially nice,” he added.

He and Pålsson are not the only amateur enthusiasts involved in the project. In fact, because the movie had to be non-commercial in order to get permission to do it, the directors relied on any contributors doing so without remuneration.

They still managed to find hundreds of Bond fans who wanted nothing more than to be part of the unique story. Bond himself is played by Anders Cöster, a 58-year-old teacher from Landskrona. The obligatory Bond villain is played by the business director of Markaryd municipality, Bengt-Göran Söderlind.

Despite being a Swedish creation, the dialogue is, just like the original Bond movies, in English. And the plan, which is not yet set in stone, is to somehow make it available internationally.

“Because the film is completely non-commercial and will not and may not generate money, we will come up with an arrangement to let those who have expressed interest show it abroad. We have contacted a charity and will encourage all visitors to donate a sum to them instead as the movie will be shown for free,” said Gahlin.

He and Pålsson are still putting the finishing touches to the movie (“we have one last explosion left to film”), which is called 'Black Light' and will also have its own Bond theme, performed by Swedish star Mariette.

Read more about the plot of the movie here and check out the latest news on the Facebook page.

HISTORY

Do Taylor Swift’s ancestors really come from a small parish in rural Sweden?

A community history group has tried to get to the bottom of a persistent genealogy rumour surrounding US mega star Taylor Swift and a small parish in north-central Sweden.

Published: 15 May 2024 11:49 CEST
Do Taylor Swift's ancestors really come from a small parish in rural Sweden?

Lodged in the mountains between Östersund and Norway, Offerdal in the region of Jämtland is home to some 2,000 people. It may also be the ancestral home of Taylor Swift.

Or maybe not. It’s not entirely clear. Bear with us.

“It’s been written about in several newspapers since as long ago as 2014. Because specifically Offerdal and a village called Söderåsen are mentioned in those articles, we’ve been curious about this for a while,” Sara Swedenmark, chair of the Offerdal Community Association, told The Local.

READ ALSO:

When Swift decided to launch her Eras Tour in Sweden (she’s set to perform in Stockholm on May 17th-19th), the group decided to look into her possible connection with Offerdal, which is mentioned on several American genealogy sites, but always without reference to a source.

During their research, they found two people from the area who could possibly be related to Swift. One of them is Olof Thorsson, who is the main person rumoured to be one of her ancestors.

“We can see that there are people who connect them, but in one place the line is broken because there’s a man who married several times. So we haven’t found a direct line of descent, but we’re not saying it doesn’t exist. Because we’re talking about around 1,200 people in 400 years, there could be other possibilities,” said Swedenmark.

A church in the parish of Offerdal. Photo: Offerdal/Wikimedia Commons

Thorsson travelled with his family in 1641 to New Sweden – a Swedish colony in what today are Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland – on board the ship Kalmar Nyckel. He is said to have committed a crime in Sweden and was sent abroad for penal labour.

“We haven’t found which crime he allegedly committed, even though there are conviction records from this time, which makes us doubt whether he actually lived here,” said Swedenmark.

“Another person who was banished from the country around this time in Offerdal received it as punishment for having put witchcraft on the neighbour’s cattle.”

An oil painting by Jacob Hägg, depicting the ship Kalmar Nyckel. Photo: Sjöfartsmuséet/Wikimedia Commons

But they also found another possible connection with Swift: a man known as Jöns The Black Smith Andersson, his wife Maria and their daughter Brita, who travelled to New Sweden in 1654.

“There seem to be certain relations here via half siblings in the early 18th century,” said Swedenmark, urging readers to reach out if they have more information. “The Church of Sweden started keeping population records in the later half of the 17th century, so it’s not completely straightforward to track down roots from this time.”

So in other words, nothing concrete that confirms that Swift does indeed descend from Offerdal, and the parish is not the only place in the world that’s purportedly connected to the artist. Genealogy company Ancestry claims she’s related to the American poet Emily Dickinson, and according to My Heritage she’s also related to France’s King Louis XIV and US actor Johnny Depp.

Offerdal, by contrast, is rather less grand. But what might life have been like at the time?

“Offerdal in the 17th century was an uneasy place, because Jämtland was being torn between the Swedish king and the Danish-Norwegian king,” explained Swedenmark. “There were a lot of wars in close succession and farms were seized if the owner swore their allegiance to the ‘wrong’ king. There were around 30 villages and 600 people in the parish.”

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