Benjamin Christensen

Biography

A restless storyteller from Viborg, Benjamin Christensen entered the world on 28 September 1879 and spent the next eight decades upending expectations. Behind the camera he conjured stark human drama in Blind Justice (1916), courted occult nightmares with Häxan (1922), and sent audiences scrambling through secret passages in Seven Footprints to Satan (1929). Off-screen he wrote, re-wrote, and rewrote his own life, exchanging vows in turn with Karen Winther, Sigrid Stahl, and Ellen Arctander. His final curtain fell in Copenhagen on 2 April 1959, leaving Danish cinema forever haunted—and enchanted—by his singular vision.