I dreamed I saw...
Joe Hill

PostED ON 01.10.2015 AT 5:20PM

RERELEASE - Joe Hill, the cult work by Bo Widerberg, personified with brio by illustrious Swedish actor Thommy Berggren, is based on the life of the famous labor union dissident whose activist songs characterized the rebellion. The restored print of the film, released after forty years, is also a hymn to the technical prowess of the restoration.

Joe Hill (1970) is the only movie that Swedish director Bo Widerberg filmed in the United States. It centers on the hopes of two young immigrants arriving at Ellis Island in 1902, soon faced with misery and unemployment. Their journey leads them from New York to the American West.

The songs of Joe Hill, a figure of social struggles, have inspired major artists like Bob Dylan, who mentions them in his memoirs, or Joan Baez, who sings the American version soundtrack of I dreamed I saw Joe Hill. Like a symbolic anthem, Baez sang the song at Woodstock.

Thommy Berggren plays the lead role. A true alter ego of Bo Widerberg, he was acting in his very first film and takes on the main male roles of his creations. Both men possessed certain hedonistic and epicurean attitudes, and a penchant for the pleasure of the moment.

A long 2K restoration, presented by Malavida Films and the Swedish Film Institute, who performed the work from an internegative.