Bang and the History of the World

BY MAJ WECHSELMANN, SWEDEN, 2008, 75 MIN, BETA, ENGLISH SUBTITLES.

IN PRESENCE OF THE DIRECTOR! SCREENED IN COLLABORATION WITH FOLKETS BIO, NOMINATED FOR THE TEMPO DOCUMENTARY AWARD 2008

The life story of Sweden´s biggest war correspondent of our time: BANG, born in 1909. All over the globe where bombs were falling and people dying, BANG was present and reported. Barbro Alving started her career as a journalist in 1929. She continued reporting for more than 40 years. As one of only three Swedish women journalists, in 1936 she realised that she was never going to make a career if she did not go abroad.

Her articles in the newspaper DN (the biggest of Sweden: liberal Dagens Nyheter (Daily News) from the Olympic Games in Berlin, became so popular, that the newspaper doubled in numbers of circulation. She is the only female journalist in the world who goes to the Civil War in Spain – and she does it 6 months pregnant. In the beginning of 1938 she becomes a single mother, when she goes public with her having a child out of wedlock, she is the first woman to do so. At home her little daughter, Ruffa, is taken care of by her partner, another wage-earning woman, Loyse Sjöcrona, with whom BANG had a life long relationship.

After the war, Dagens Nyheter sends BANG on a journey around the world including India (when 1 million people are killed), Indonesia during the war with Holland and Hiroshima in 1948 where she interviews victims of the Atomic Bomb. In the early fifties BANG and a group of intellectuals start working against the A-bomb and a crucial event is BANG going to prison for a month as she refuses to serve in the Civilian branch of the military, because of the Swedish ambition to get an A-bomb. She continues reporting, and dies in 1987.

Contact information:

Marie Steinertz 08 545 275 29 steinertz@telia.se

Eller Katrina Mathsson 08 545 275 22 katrina@folketsbio.se