Helle Ulsteen Jensen

CV

Producer Helle Ulsteen graduated with an MA in Film, Television and Communication, Copenhagen University 1993. In 2008 she became a EAVE-Graduate.

Her creative work & portfolio includes:

Producing, directing, scriptwriting, editing, casting, negotiating, marketing and conceptual developing, strategic business planning. Has produced various highly innovative interactive art projects with internationally acclaimed artist, e.g. Peter Greenaway and Lars von Trier and his living installation Psychomobile#1: World Clock with 56 actors improvising in 19 rooms, directly ‘live-linked’ to real ants in New Mexico. Or the Open Mind performance installation in collaboration with Director Peter Greenaway involving 12 Danish Art Schools. Also acted as Consultant and/or negotiating advisor for various Film Companies, Cosmo Film, Tju Bang Film, Freeport Film, Magic Hour. 

Her major film work includes:

Smiling in a War Zone

The 2007 International Emmy® Award nominated feature Creative Doc. A personal heartfelt and hilarious road-movie following Danish artist Simone Aaberg Kaern on her personal flying crusade re-opening the sky after 9.11. Simone buys her self a 40-year old 'Donald Duck' Piper-Colt made out of canvas (the one plane she can afford) and flies at nerve wrecking heights from Copenhagen Denmark to Kabul - challenging every military authority she comes across. To finally cross illegally into Afghanistan to find young Farial – (a 16 year old afghan girl with a fighter pilot dream) to make her dream come true. But reality is not like in dreams. Prizewinning and highly acclaimed and sold to more than 30 territories world-wide.

The Purified

Feature Creative Doc on dogme95. The four Directors form a brotherhood and swear solemnly to uphold ten incontrovertible rules that made it impossible to make films in the usual way.

The Exhibited

Feature Creative Doc - witnessing and developing the artistic principles and the birth of Dogma that later fostered the award winning feature films, The Idiots and The Celebration.

D-Day

Fiction and Documentary. A New years Eve 2000 Millennium interactive film project by the Dogme Brethren - Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Søren Kragh-Jakobsen & Kristian Levring. Used 56 cameras to secure the documentations behind this Millennium idea - where the viewer themselves had to create their personal version.

Free Dogma

Arte with Wim Wenders, Jean Marc Barr, Lars von Trier, Lone Sherfig having conferences and intimate talks on mobiles and each filming with a camera to ‘investigate’ new visions and boundaries for film.

Blue Collar White Christmas (Nede på Jorden)

Feature Creative Doc & 4-part TV-series by director Max Kessner; a TV-series and film for DR TV combining Screenplay writing and Documentary methods.

Sketches of Portrait of a Painter

An interactive DVD storytelling on Danish acclaimed painter and artist Vibeke Toejner.


Her latest  film work includes:

Burma VJ

The international multi awarded - including 2009 Cinema for Peace Award by director Anders Østergaard. Co-producer and in charge of the international outreach programme and marketing, festivals, sales and grassroot strategies. The film won both the grand 2008 Jori Ivens Award and Movies that Matter Award at IDFA 2008. Sundance WINNER of best Editing. Winner of the CPH.DOX GRAND Prize and Amnesty Award 2008.

Shadow of the Holy Book

The 2008 European Film Academy Nominated  Feature Creative Doc by director Arto Halonen. A film that deals with Turkmenistan and various Western Companies supporting the brutal dictator - who runs this country like it's his own private Disney World. Selected and premieres in the prestigious Jori Ivens competition, IDFA, Amsterdam 07. Awardwinning and in competition on a number of the prestigious  A-festivals around the world. Nominated best documentary at the European Academy Awards 2008. Winner amnesty Award 2009. Co-Producer.


Bloody Cartoons

Delegate Producer on this film on the Danish Muhammad Crisis. One of the films in the Oscarwinning ‘Why-Democracy’Film-Series (sold to 45 broadcasters worldwide).


NEW MEDIA - other formats and productions:

In spring 2008 Kamoli Films/Die Asta Experience won a major NEW MEDIA competition with €3 millions Euro to develope and deliver New Media Formats and Strategies to launch a World-class historical Military Defense Battery surrounding Copenhagen. Kamoli Films is the key joint-venture-partner together with Asta Wellejus in Die Asta Experience working with major New Media based Strategies and formats involving Viral Marketing, Alternate Reality Games, Mobile Games, Inventive Technology, Innovative Installations and products, like the world biggest Interactive Floor or Virtual Reality Monocular placed in historical environment.


Kamoli Films - The Scandinavian and International wave: 

Kamoli Films is a one woman independent company run by producer Helle Ulsteen aiming at national and international Co-productions and joint venture collaborations in the Film and New Media Bizz. She challenges new partnership constructions to develop innovative strategies on the partnership frontier and conduct her business in close collaboration with OptiNordic, established in 2006 by attorney at law, Christian Falkenberg Husum. The OptiNordic business model is based on specialized knowledge, experience and a global network. Kamoli Films has close partners in Scandinavia and is currently involved in building an Oeresund filmplatform working closely with Swedish Hepp Film by Helena Danielsson. But also Finnish Klaffi Film by Kimmo Panaanen. Both companies and producers are tightly connected to Kamoli Films within the Scandinavian community. Kamoli Films invests in long term partnership to develop scandinavian and international projects and talents and has also a strong network troughout Europe. EAVE graduated in 2008. Indie Producer Helle Ulsteen believes in potentially more creativity, more fun and funding into the independent world and create new ways and tools targeting the bigger international markets. Kamoli Films received EU-MEDIA development support in 2008 for happy consumer Family, a creative documentary taking place in India. 


Her World-Wide Partners include:

Network Movie, HEPP Fillm, Klaffi Films, Artfilms, Die Asta Productions, DR TV, TV2, SVT, NRK, TV2 Norge, YLE, BBC, ZDF/ARTE, VPRO Holland, HBO-Latin America, CBC Canada, SBS, Australia, Korea, PBS / ITVS (USA), TSR (Suiss TV), TSI Italy, MTV Hungary, TVP Poland, HBO USA and Poland, MDR Germany, Submarine.  The Danish Film Institute, Swedish Film Institute & Finnish Film Foundation, Nordic Film and Television Fund and AVEK (Audiovisual Culture Fund) Finland.

Recent Sales Partners: Film Transit Canada/Us, Trust-Nordic, DR-Sales, EU-Media and Submarine, Oscilloscope in the US.  

Current projects 2009:

Svinalängorna            

In Pre-Production

International title: TBA

Category: Featurefilm – Drama

Year of production: 2009-2010

Production budget  €: 2.156.730

Director: Pernilla August

Writers: Pernilla August & Lolita Rae

Editor: Åsa Mossberg DK

Cast: Noomi Rapace (Main Character)

Producers: Helena Danielsson Hepp Film & Ralf Karlsson SE Drakfilm

Co-producers: Helle Ulsteen - Kamoli Films /Denmark

Scandinavian distributor: Nordisk Film

International sales: TBA

Distribution territories: Sweden Denmark, Norway, Finland

Shootings: August-October 2009

Year of domestic release: Autumn 2010

Year of international release: Autumn 2010

Best Bad Boy           

In Production and Financing

International title: Best Bad Boy

Category: Creative feuturelength Documentary

Year of production: 2009-2010

Production budget  €: 1.006.900

Director: Jon Bang Carlsen

Writer: Jon Bang Carlsen

Editor: Anne Østerud

Producer: Helle Ulsteen

Co-producers: TBA

 International sales: TBA

Distribution territories: World

Shootings: April-Dec 2009

Year of domestic release: 2010

Year of international release: 2010

In development.

A Mocumentary Comedy based on the writers own personal story ‘growing up as a the only ‘black’ in her white family in small Scandinavia without knowing the identity of her real father. Finally meeting him in N’Gioto as a rich, loving father - when her dream transforms into a nightmare and she finds her-self trapped into the ultimate human cultural clash. How would you feel if your long missed father turned out to be one of the worlds leading dictators? And you found your brothers dressed up in a child soldier army? Written and developed with Danish and English educated comedy actor and screenwriter Anna Neye Poulsen - national acclaimed with Normalerweize a weekly DR TV satire show.  Status: Treatment available. Development and Financing. Seeking Finance & Sales Agent and Partners.

Selected for the Copenhagen Film Mentor program 2009-2010:

Producer: Helle Ulsteen

Production company: Kamoli Films in co-production with Hepp Film, SE

Contact person: Helle Ulsteen

3-line-synopsis: This Mocumentary Comedy is based on Anna’s own story growing up as a the only ‘black’ in her white family in small Scandinavia without knowing the identity of her real father. Finally meeting him in N’Gioto in Africa as a rich, loving father - when her dream transforms into a nightmare and she finds her-self trapped into the ultimate human cultural clash. How would you feel if your long missed father turned out to be one of the worlds leading dictators? And you found your brothers dressed up in a child soldier army?

Director TBA: Stefan Arsenijević, Oscarnominated, Serbia - very interested 

Writer: Anna Neye

Script Consultant: Clare Downs (UK)

Story based on: Producer’s idea

Genre: Black Comedy / Mocumentary

Length: 90 minutes

Format: 35 mm

Language: Danish and African English

Stage of development: Treatment (latest only in Danish)

Intended release: 2010-2011

Country of origin: Denmark

Country of shoot: Denmark and South Africa

Estimated Production Budget: € 1,500,000 euro

Inga from Sweden

- In Search of the Ultimate Blond!

By Inga Helgesson

A creative documentary 90 and 52 min. – Los Angeles native Inga Helgesson has spent a lifetime living in the shadow of the larger than life blond, Inga from Sweden. One of the most notorious stereotypes in the world that do not only affect her personally, but which is forever linked to Swedish women and the country. Inga sets off on an exhaustive intercontinental investigation leaving no angle unexamined in search of the ultimate blond.  Production: An Oeresund Joint Venture | Kamoli Films, Copenhagen & Hepp Film, Malmoe.

Happy Consumer Family                     

- and how to use a soap!……

 By Ulsteen & Nilsson

A capitalist documentary comedy 90 and 52 min. from amazing India taking us on a wild road-trip following a group of salesmen in their video vans driving out into remote ‘undiscovered’ places to discover ‘undiscovered’ new consumers. Happy Consumer Family will take you to the world of hard-working hilarious ‘sales-evangelists’ driving around rural India spreading their safe-hand-shampooing-soap preaches demonstrating how to face a better future with soap, toothpaste and skin-whitening crème. Highly filmic entertaining, absurd scenarios and topical to society at large. Aren’t we all part of this classic global consumer hunt or media stunt?

Current Status: Development and pre-production.

Supported by EU-MEDIA single-project development 2007.

The Beautiful Radicals                     

- who crossed The Iron Curtain

By Jenö Farkas

A creative documentary 52 min. Old ‘former Eastern European’ buddies from the early Beat generation of the 60’s decide to go on a bus tour to drive across Europe to rediscover their past and witness the fallen borders where the Iron Curtain once stood. These men – originally from Hungary and Poland and for more than 30 years living in Scandinavia - share a common destiny since they back in the Iron Curtain days illegally crossed from the Communist East into the Free West. The border that separated Eastern and Western Europe for almost 40 years was the most dangerous border in the world.

Current Status: Pre-production. Hungarian MTV and Polish TV involved (Unique Archives!!).

Co-Production: Radiator Film DK. Selected for the Cineregio Funding program 2009 through Vest Danske Filmpulje. A Danish-Hungarian Co-Production. Seeking finance, sales and distribution Partners.