Coming from a family full of engineers, new Society member Martin Ahlgren was expected to attend KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. But the young man, who was born in Scotland to Swedish parents and grew up in Stockholm, instead chose to attend a 16mm film course. “From a young age I was always working on some creative project: drawing comic books, writing long serial stories [or] editing a role-playing fanzine,” Ahlgren says. “As a teenager, I started making short films on the family’s Hi8 camera, and this soon consumed me.”
During his film course, the young man directed a short film that took him to festivals in Italy and the Czech Republic. Following this, Ahlgren served in the national military and attended Stockholm University for a year before attending School of Visual Arts in New York. It was there that he realized he was most interested in the visual aspect of storytelling and decided to focus on cinematography. He photographed some 25 student films during this time, which led to an ASC Karl Struss Heritage Award honorable mention.
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