No polite literary memoir, director Morten Henriksen’s alarming portrait of author Karen Blixen (Out of Africa) is drawn from the bitter experience of his own father who was an eager young fan in Blixen’s later years.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2012
Karen Blixen – Behind Her Mask 2011
Bag Blixens maske
No polite literary memoir, director Morten Henriksen’s portrait of author Karen Blixen (Out of Africa) is drawn from the bitter experience of his own father, Aage. Morten has bones to pick with both of them. He was just ten years old when his father first told him more than he wanted or needed to know about an intimate relationship with the world-famous Blixen (also known by her pen name Isak Dinesen). A young associate professor of literature in Sweden, Aage Henriksen had written about Blixen’s work and she invited him up to her fabled lair in Rungstedlund. Thirty-five years his senior, she exercised a deep fascination for the handsome young scholar who soon found himself at her beck and call. A jealous witch to put it mildly, says Aage, she worked hard to undermine his marriage and ultimately perpetrated a shocking act of possession. Labelled precisely by the producers as “a dark, auto-therapeutic interview with the director’s father”, this is how celebrity TV might play if Ingmar Bergman had set up in competition with Oprah Winfrey. — BG