Bodil Joensen
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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An icon and celebrity for a time, with her own successful business, she failed to make the transition to movies when market sentiment changed, and became impoverished, dependent on alcohol, stopped being able to care for her animals, and died some few years later. The love of her life was her dog, but friends comment she was very close to all animals, and before her decline cared deeply and affectionately for every type, from rabbits to pigs.
The documentary A Summer Day (1970) by Shinkichi Tajiri, shows her living with her animals on her farm during this era, including their care, her affection for them, and her sexual life, to the tune of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. At the time, she lived with "two rabbits, seven dogs, a dozen pigs, some cats, a guinea pig, a mare and a beautiful black stallion named Dreamlight."<ref name="danishbio"/> He commented later<ref name="AF"/> that she seemed a very open warm hearted person "very at home with nature" and that "when she plays her erotic game with the dog or horse, it is not only a sexual curiosity, it is an erotic play with animals she loves and who are devoted to her."<ref name="danishbio"/> It was the surprising winner of the Grand Prize for the X rated film festival at which it premiered, winning Joensen immediate underground celebrity status and drawing attention from other documentary makers as well as tourists towards her expanding farm. She became for a short time, a social and political icon of free love and unity with nature among the left.
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