Public Programs @ The Institute
Series: Conversations in Modern European Art
Prima Donnas: Asta Nielsen and Urban Gad’s Autofictional Cinema
Speaker: Bridget Alsdorf, Professor of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University
Thursday, November 5, 2026, 6:00pm
Between 1910 and 1914, the Danish writer and film director Urban Gad and the Danish actor Asta Nielsen made thirty-one films in one of the greatest creative partnerships in the history of cinema. Their romantic involvement was hardly incidental, for they made its complexity the subtext of multiple screenplays. Together, they mined the cinematic potential of their relationship in works that explore love and artistic collaboration, shifting between playful humor, tragic drama, and winking references to their off-screen selves. As pioneering filmmakers of the silent era committed to making cinema a respected art, Gad and Nielsen orchestrated almost every aspect of their films’ production and reception. In doing so, they developed novel ways to redirect their creative, professional, and emotional lives.
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