BEING SEEN SEEING + MOVING MOUNTAINS + STRING THERAPY

Being Seen Seeing

Majse Vilstrup / Denmark / 2023 / 22 min / World Premiere

A flickering, fragmented observation from a street corner in Copenhagen, and a self-conscious study of the act of seeing – and of being seen.

A camera flickers in front of the iconic yellow wall at the Assistens cemetery in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro neighbourhood. From there it moves onto a person trotting down the street in a red top and cowboy boots, continues up into the trees and then out to the endless lines of cyclists. ‘Being Seen Seeing’ is an abstract and concrete observing gaze in constant motion. Down Nørrebrogade and in and out of the awkward, sporadic and fragile movements that are constantly taking place on the long paved catwalk, where there are endless possibilities but no possibility to escape. This is a street and a film filled with mistakes, intimacy, bustle, too much, too little, smiles, jovial small talk and broken promises.

Moving Mountains

Ase Brunborg Lie, Nanna Elvin Hansen / Norway, Denmark / 2023 / 30 min / World Premiere

A tableau film about blowing up mountains to extract pigment to create the colour white, in both a concrete and figurative sense.

Sokndal is the area in Norway where most mining takes place. It is here that ilmenite, the mineral used in a chemical process to make white pigment, is mined and used in everything from paint and paper to toothpaste, food and medicine. With a completely still camera and an artistic sensuality akin to Peter Nestler and slow cinema, ‘Moving Mountains’ shows the extraction of the minerals and traces both the past and present mining landscape of the Norwegian municipality. It is a film about blowing up mountains in order to export the product of whiteness to the rest of the world. A quiet, low-key film in which the landscape is allowed to play the leading role, while man takes on lesser roles.

String Therapy

Margaux Parillaud, Mie Frederikke Fischer Christensen / Denmark, France / 2023 / 16 min / World Premiere

Surreal couples therapy with two bald women and a talking blob in a three-dimensional virtual reality space that spins as the thread of life flows from the two women’s belly buttons.

In a three-dimensional virtual reality room that constantly spins, two bald women sit and talk to a couples therapist who looks like a snot blob with lips. From the two women’s navels, the therapist draws a thread that twists, and it seems that it is the thread and the personal and bodily connections between the characters that make the machine and the room and the Thread of Life twist. It is in this surreal scenario that ‘String Therapy’ unfolds as a film about relationships and the importance of the relationships we create and the existential questions they end up asking. A film that suggests we stop perceiving fate as a huge, intangible entity, but instead as something connected to bodily experiences through work, birth and genetic inheritance.