Per Johan Axel Åhlin (7 August 1931 – 1 May 2023) was a Swedish artist and director of animated films.
He is known for his collaborations with the comedy duo Hasse & Tage and for his own projects such as the animated short film and television film Sagan om Karl-Bertil Jonssons julafton and the feature film Voyage to Melonia.
Åhlin started his career as an artist for the Hasse & Tage production Svenska bilder from 1964.
After that he worked on several other Hasse & Tage films, including the largely animated Out of an Old Man's Head from 1968, and The Adventures of Picasso from 1978, where he provided and animated Picasso's paintings.
In 1970 he started his own animation studio, PennFilm Studio AB situated in Hököpinge, and directed many feature-length films and several shorts, including Sagan om Karl-Bertil Jonssons julafton which is shown on television every Christmas Eve in Sweden, Norway, and Finland.
In 1975 at the 11th Guldbagge Awards, Åhlin won a special achievement award for Dunderklumpen!.
In 1990 at the 25th Guldbagge Awards he won the Creative Achievement award.
Although eventually best known for his work on children's film, Åhlin was always more interested in films for adult audiences.
He has commented on the difficulties of making animated films with adult themes: "I don't know whether the problem lies in the audience or the marketing.
But think like this: if you draw like Picasso, Doré or Sergel, then those are images that have no connection to film.
If they then would be animated and suddenly started to move – would they become children's film then? I can't understand this!"
Åhlin died on 1 May 2023, at age 91.
A portrait of Per Åhlin, who has been called the father of Swedish animation.
‘E-e-emil!’ shouts father across the small farm in Katthult, the boy is up to his old tricks and will have to be banished to the woodshed. Except that Emil doesn’t see this as punishment – on the contrary: he locks the door from inside so that he can continue undisturbed to carve another of his wooden figures, of which he has a whole collection. His little sister Ida also wants to sit inside the shed, but she’s too well-behaved. This new adaptation of Astrid Lindgren’s beloved tales from her book ‘Emil of Lönneberga’ portrays the sunny side of life in the country at the beginning of the twentieth century.
No two friends are more different than Little Anna and the Tall Uncle. She is short, he is very tall. Little Anna is brave, the Tall Uncle is a scared cat. And yet there is nobody who Little Anna would rather go swimming with, build a tree house with or ride a motorcycle with than the Tall Uncle. And there is nobody the Tall Uncle would rather bake a yummy cake for than his best friend Little Anna.
För fjärde gången så är det nu spökdags igen på slottet Gomorronsol där vi får följa Lilla spöket Laban, världens snällaste spöke som är rädd för mörker. Tillsammans med Lillprins Bus och Labolina så väntas nu många superläskiga äventyr för Laban.
Ronny Svensson and Markus Strömqvist have produced a documentary "Svenska Ord i bild och tal", which gives us background stories and facts about the movies included in the box set "Svenska Ord".
Pappa spöke gör sig redo för en natts spökarbete. Han visar Laban sina hemskaste spöktongångar. Det lilla spöket vill låta skrämmande, men oavsett hur han försöker, låter han söt. Problemet är att Laban är rädd själv när han går i de mörka korridorerna.
A retelling of E.T.A Hoffmann's gothic story "The Sandman" and the opera "Tales of Hoffmann", ever since childhood, Hoffmann has been haunted by The Sandman and believed that a visitor to his father was really The Sandman, while traveling to Veneice he encounters a strange glass vendor who reappears through out his life. This film was never completed.
Documentary about the production of Per Åhlin's feature film Resan till Melonia
Ronia lives happily in her father's castle until she comes across a new playmate, Birk, in the nearby dark forest. The two explore the wilderness, braving dangerous Witchbirds and Rump-Gnomes. But when their families find out Birk and Ronia have been playing together, they forbid them to see each other again. Indeed, their fathers are competing robber chieftains and bitter enemies. Now the two spunky children must try to tear down the barriers that have kept their families apart for so long.
One Monday morning, a thousand children leave the suburb of Farsta and go to Stockholm to occupy the Royal Castle. The children have formed a group called S.O.P.O.R. as a protest against the way adults treat them and have destroyed their future. They demand that the robots in the industry are replaced by humans to create job opportunities. They take the royal family as hostages.
Bosse works at an advertising agency while working on the novel of the century. At a burger restaurant he meets Lena, and before he knows it, she is pregnant. Bosse starts thinking that his life is all over, he won't get any more career opportunities, and never again will he have time for late night parties.
After being admitted to a residential home starts the retired bricklayer Johan to dream back to his childhood - the safe upbringing with his parents, the first love, and how he with a broken heart ran away from home, and was forced to fend for himself. How he got married, had a son, barely managed to scrape together enough money for food and shelter, the son ran away from home and his wife died.