The Guldbagge Award is an official Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 award

Award

An award is something given to a person or a group of people to recognize excellence in a certain field; a certificate of excellence. Awards are often signifiedby trophies, titles, certificates, commemorative plaques, medals, badges, pins, or ribbons...

 awarded annually since 1964 by the Swedish Film Institute

Swedish Film Institute

The Swedish Film Institute was founded in 1963 to support and develop the Swedish film industry. The institute is housed in the Filmhuset building located in Gärdet, Östermalm in Stockholm...

.

Etymology

Guldbagge is the Swedish name for Cetonia aurata, a beetle also known as rose chafer

Rose chafer

Cetonia aurata, known as the rose chafer, or more rarely as the green rose chafer, is a beetle, 20 mm long, that has metallic green coloration with a distinct V shaped scutellum, the small triangular area between the wing cases just below the thorax, and having several other irregular small...

. The name of the award could also be interpreted as a play on the Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

 word skalbagge, which means beetle

Beetle

Coleoptera is an order of insects commonly called beetles. The word "coleoptera" is from the Greek , koleos, "sheath"; and , pteron, "wing", thus "sheathed wing". Coleoptera contains more species than any other order, constituting almost 25% of all known life-forms...

. The compound

Compound (linguistics)

In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...

 part skal, (meaning carapace

Carapace

A carapace is a dorsal section of the exoskeleton or shell in a number of animal groups, including arthropods such as crustaceans and arachnids, as well as vertebrates such as turtles and tortoises. In turtles and tortoises, the underside is called the plastron.-Crustaceans:In crustaceans, the...

or shell), has in the name Guldbagge been changed into guld (gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

), giving the award a name that could be roughly translated into Golden Beetle or Golden Scarab.

Categories

The award is given out to the best film-related efforts in the following categories:

• Best Film (List of Guldbagge Award winners for Best Swedish Film)
• Best Directing
• Best Screenplay
• Best Cinematography
• Best Actress in a leading role
• Best Actor in a leading role
• Best Supporting actress
• Best Supporting actor
• 3 X Best Achievement - Three awards are given for technical efforts without their own category, such as original music, costume design etc.
• Best Foreign Film (In which the country of production, not the language of the film, is what makes the film a potential nominee)
• Best Short film
• Best Documentary
• Honorary Award

Description

The prize itself, a small statue in the shape of a beetle, is made from copper which is enamelled and gilded. It was designed by the artist Karl Axel Pehrson. An inscription of the name of the award's winner, and the category in question, is glued to the underside of the beetle.

Criticism

In early 2005, the award received some criticism, since only three of the 33 Swedish feature films that premiered in 2004 received nominations in seven main categories (film, direction, actor, actress, supporting actor, supporting actress, screenplay) and it was made public that some of the jury members had not seen all 33 films.

External links

• Official website
• Guldbagge Awards at the Internet Movie Database
  Internet Movie Database
  Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...