Harstad Cinema / screen 2

THE GREEN LIE

by WERNER BOOTE

A | 97 min | Original version with subtitles

Environmentally friendly electric cars, sustainably produced food, fair production: Hooray!
The big companies would have us believe that we can save the world just by buying the right stuff. But this is a widespread and dangerous lie. In his latest documentary, Werner Boote (PLASTIC PLANET, EVERYTHING'S UNDER CONTROL) joins forces with Katharina Hartmann, an expert in greenwashing, to explore how we can fight back against this lie.

Cooporations and governments exploitation of indigenous peoples in both Brazil and Indonesia emerges in the film as a parallel to the destruction of nature in these countries, as a modern form of colonization. Here similarities can be drawn to Norwegian conditions, which is why we have chosen to show the powerful art film The Sami Have Rights by Elle Marja Eira and Mai-Lis Eira, as a pre-film for The Green Lie.

Director: Werner Boote WIth: Werner Boote, Kathrin Hartmann, Noam Chomsky Original title: Die grüne Lüge, Vienna / 2018/ 1 t. 33 min. Language: English/German. Subtitles: English

Harstad Cinema / screen 2

Pre-film to The Green Lie

Directors: Elle Márjá Eira og Mai-Lis Eira

A trilogy about Norway's shame.

FEBRUARY 6TH 1981/THE SÁMI HAVE RIGHTS/ DON`T FUCK WITH ME

Short film and art project. This project is growing and evolving over time. It started in 2018 with an art exhibition "Let the river flow" by Office for Contemporary Art Norway. The premiere of the film “The Sámi have rights” was at Tromsø International Film Festival 2019. Opening of the art exhibition "The Sámi have rights" takes place in spring 2019.

The filmmakers behind this project are reindeer owners and they tell about the situation that the Sámi reindeer herders are in today. “It`s about our rights and survival of reindeer husbandry. Many reindeer herders have to go to court to defend their reindeer herding pastures and land. In order for us to discuss this, we must also look back at the Sámi history”.

Orginal title: SÁMIIN LEAT RIEVTTIT, Producers: Ken Are Bongo og Elle Márjá Eira, Sapmi 2019. Length: 11 min. Language: Norwegian / Sami. Subtitles: English

About the directors:

Elle Márjá Eira (b. 1983) is artist, director, musician and producer from Kautokeino. Mai-Lis Eira (b. 1991) is director and artist from Kautokeino. Elle Márjá and Mai-Lis are sisters and belong to the reindeer herding district 26 Lákkonjárga in Northern Norway.

Harstad Cinema / screen 1

In the middle of the 19th century, Kristina and Karl-Oskar live in a small rural village in Smaaland (southern Sweden). They get married and try to make a living on a small spot of land. However, the small size of their land, the infertile soil, and some bad harvests make it tough. One of their children even starves to death. Thus, they decide to emigrate to the U.S. They meet a group of farmers with their families planning the emigration under the leadership of a banned priest. They sell everything and embark for the U.S. The journey on the sailing ship is long and tedious. Some of the emigrants will never reach the New World.

Dir: Jan Troell. Actors: Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann og Eddie Axberg. Sweden, 1971. 3 hours, 11 min. English subtitles.

Harstad Cinema / screen 1

Introcution by Jan Holmberg, phd in cinema science and director of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, Stockholm.

Persona is a 1966 Swedish psychological drama film, written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. The story revolves around a young nurse named Alma (Andersson) and her patient, well-known stage actress Elisabet Vogler (Ullmann), who has suddenly stopped speaking.

Director: Ingmar Bergman. Sweden, 1966. Length: 80 min. English subtitles.

About the introducer:

Jan Holmberg, PhD in film science and director of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, Stockholm.

Harstad Cinema / screen 2

Røveren (The Robber), 2016, format: 35mm to HD video, 23 min

Politiarbeid, (Police work) 2019, format: 16mm to HD video, 27 min

Valuta (Currency), 2019, format: 35mm og 4k video to DCP, 35 min

Kopperud works with filmatic staging that in various ways creates and breaks connections between body and language and between sound and images. He has produced a new cinematic art project, Valuta (Currency), in Harstad and Oslo for AMIFF 2019.

Premiere at the opening Thursday 17 Oct, 19:00 hrs, Harstad Cineam, screen 1.

About Valuta (Currency):

The film Valuta takes place in a parking garage and a hotel room. Three unidentified bodies are brought forward, while they bring forward excerpts from the book Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion from 1688 by the French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche.

The film was shot in Oslo and Harstad during the summer and fall of 2019. It is being presented for the first time under AMIFF.

About the artist:

on Eirik Kopperud (born 1981, Kongsberg, Norway) lives and work in Oslo, and has his education from Statens Kunstakademi. He has prevously exhibited in institutions and galleries which incluedes amongst other Henie Onstad Kunstnersenter, Høvikodden (2019): Plum Trim, Nesodden (2019); Gustav Vigeland Museum, Oslo (2017); Come Over Chez Malik's, Hamburg (2016); Oslo Kunstforening (2014), Noplace, Oslo (2013); Malmö Kunsthall (2013); The Armory Show, New York (2013) and Galleri Christian Torp, Oslo (2012).

Harstad Cinema / screen 2

Artist in conversation with curator Kristian Skylstad after the screening programme.

Wearing the Fog
2-channel with sound
Duration: 13 mins 38 seconds,
2016 April，China

Brief synopsis:

‘Wearing the Fog’ is a double-screen video with a non-linear narrative structure. It circles around the cold of the industrial world and the indifference of a family. The video consists of multiple narratives that are told in a non-linear fashion.

It’s tragic that a lot of children are stuck in the deep influence from theirs parents and there is no place to hide. In the small Chinese town, the confrontations between two generations and rebellions of adolescences always happen under a very peaceful surface, though severe enough to separate a family. The way that the director approached it was to put two cameras in her home, through the re-enactment and record of contradictions within the family, to explore the impact of High-speed Urbanisation development on individuals. The director mix the feeling towards this severe reality and the understanding towards family life to show the gap between two generations, the estrangement between the father and the mother and the clash between individual and social development, all of which is enhanced and manifested through the use of double-screen.

Life tells lies
Duration: 11 mins
2017 July, China

Brief synopsis:

Performance & video, featuring an interaction between the artist and her mother over the course of several hours.

The work focuses on the social status of women and the wave of feminism surfacing in contemporary China in recent years. It discusses the conflict between traditional ideas of femininity and woman-hood, carried on from generation to generation in China, and contemporary feminism amongst young women.

The 2nd half of the dream
Duration: 4 mins 24 seconds
2019 June, Germany

Brief synopsis:

Sartre said: "Existentialism is a kind of humanitarianism." This kind of humanitarian thought has affected the development of contemporary art and the mainstream thought of adapting to the times. Nowadays, we are living in the social Internet era with multicultural life, the Internet has replaced people's thinking, social rules have replaced people's choices. It is more important than ever to think about who we are and how we are doing. For immigrants, these issues are even more complicated.

About the artist:

Born 1987 in China, lives and works in Berlin.

She is a filmmaker and video-artist. Yafei’s work examines the clashes between cultural norms & traditional values and the mindset of a globalising Chinese society.

After Yafei received her BA in Film- and Video-Art at the China Academy of Fine Arts in 2011, she graduated with a MFA from Bergen Academy of Art and Design (KHIB) in 2016.

Her 2016 piece ‘Wearing the Fog’ has been selected by various international films festivals and won —amongst other awards— “Best Experimental Film” at “The Broadway Film Festival” in Brooklyn, NY. In 2017, Honourable Mentioned at the FIRST International Film Festival in 2016. her performances “Life Tells Lies" and “I wonder why”, as well as the resulting video-works, received international acclaim. Since then, Yafei has had museum exhibitions in Bergen, Shenzhen and Beijing.

Harstad Cinema / screen 2

Film programme presented by curator Kristian Skylstad.

In Purple, (2019), 12,00 min

Pulheim Jam Session, (2015), 22,40 min

I’m Gonna Live Anyhow Until I Die, (2012), 22 min

I’m Lost Without Your Rhythm (2009), 13,29 min

Magic & Loss, (2005), 16.52 min

Johanna Billing (b. 1971 in Jönköping, Sweden) has worked with film og video since 1999. She involves groups of people in production of her cinematic works partly based on workshops, improvisations and script. The films address and explore relationships between the private and the publid. At AMIFF 2019 a retrospective of her filmatic and videographic prodoctions will be presented.

Johanna Billing (Jönköping, Sweden, 1973; lives and works in Stockholm) has been making video works since 1999 that weave together music, movement and rhythm. Merging the production modes of collective live events and workshops with a cinematic language, Billing in part directs the participants and in part activates a series of improvisations around the notion of performance and the possibility it holds to explore issues of the public and the private as well as the individual in the society as a whole. Billing often addresses political climates and cultural specificities, but more importantly she transforms, through a documentary method, her filmmaking in a fictive space to examine actual and contrived events and how that filmed compression illuminates their overlap. Billing’s films often involve music, which in her hands becomes a tool for communication, memory and reconstruction.

Recent major solo exhibitions include Keeping Time, Villa Croce, Genova, 2016, I’m Gonna Live Anyhow until I Die, the MAC, Belfast (2012); I’m Lost without Your Rhythm, Modern Art Oxford, Moving In, Five Films, Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, (2010); Tiny Movements, ACCA, Melbourne, I’m Lost without Your Rhythm, Camden Art Centre (2009); Taking Turns, Kemper Museum, Kansas City; This Is How We Walk on the Moon, Malmö Konsthall, Malmö (2008); Forever Changes, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Keep on Doing, DCA, Dundee (2007) and Magical World, PS. 1, New York (2006). She has participated in survey shows such as Momentum 10, Moss, 2019, 4th Auckland Triennial, Last Ride in a Hot Balloon, Auckland (2010); Documenta 12, Kassel (2007); Belief, Singapore Biennale (2006); 9th Istanbul Biennial; 1st Moscow Biennale (2005); 50th Venice Biennale (2003). From 1998 until 2010 Johanna also ran the Make it Happen record label, publishing music and arranging live performances.

Panel discussion about the disintigration of truth and myth in film and artist moving image.

Saturday 19 October , 11:30 am, at Castello (between Harstad Kino and the town square). Free entry.

AMIFF invites to a panel discussion about the disintigration of truth and myth in video and film, moderated by Kristian Skylstad. Panel members: Nicolas Norton (art historian and writer), Yafei Qi (artist) and Kristian Skylstad (artist and curator).

Harstad Cinema / screen 2

Festival director Helene Hokland in conversation with director Lene Berg and main character Delano Greenidge after the screening.

About the film:

A Norwegian artist reconstructs her kafkaesque journey through the US justice system, as her partner is arrested, convicted, and imprisoned without cause in New York.

False Belief is the autobiographical story of a couple caught up in a battle that is wiping out the seminal African-American cultural legacy in Harlem. In 2008 Norwegian artist Lene Berg moved to Harlem with her partner, a black man, a publisher who will be referred to as D. After giving the police a statement about being harassed by a neighbor, D was arrested. But what exactly is he being accused of? This led to a series of catastrophic events where D’s implicit trust in the U.S. justice system put everything he cherished at risk. Why doesn’t he play by the rules? Is he ignorant of the fact that black men are systematically transported to prison everyday in the United States? Is D a local hero or a fool? Why did he believe that his experience would have been any different? False Belief tries to untangle the circumstances around this criminal case through D’s candid storytelling accompanied by Berg’s own narration, driven by still and moving images, court documents, and collages. By analyzing what at first seems to be a minor case, False Belief uncovers the larger picture of a society that employs incarceration as a political and economic weapon.

- a different kind of true-crime from an increasingly gentrified Harlem.
Pelle Bamle, Morgenbladet

- False Belief is a playful, inquiring and very unsettling Norwegian documentary.
Ellen Lande, Ny Tid

- False Belief is a tough, complex but relevant and important film.
Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg—RBB|24

- One watches in disbelief as an innocent man is criminally convicted and loses his right to vote as aggressive gentrification is combined with a racist judicial system and traditional patterns of perception in Harlem.
Till Kadritzke, DER SPIEGEL

FALSE BELIEF

103 minutes, English dialogue

Premiered at the Berlinale 2019

Nominated for a Teddy Award and the Amnesty Award

Produced by FABB001 AS

About the artist:

Lene Berg (*1965) was born in Oslo and studied film at the Dramatiska Institutet (University College of Film, Radio, Television, and Theater), in Stockholm. In 1997 she directed the feature film En Kvinnas Huvud (A Woman’s Head) and has since produced mixed-media artworks and installations for galleries, museums, and public spaces as well as a number of short films. Most recently Berg directed the award-winning Kopfkino (2012) and GOMP: Tales of Surveillance in Norway 1948−1989 (2014), two featurelength films that reflect her passionate engagement with societal outsiders who challenge the mores of political and social institutions

Harstad Cinema / screen 2

The Sirens – An Opera Film is an autonomous work based on The Sirens – A Foyer Opera a live performance by Crispin Gurholt at The National Theatre in Oslo as a part of Monsters of Reality 2016.

Regi: Crispin Gurholt, 2016, lenth: 26 min.

The Sirens - A Foyer Opera is inspired by the mythological creatures that lured sailors into death with their seductive song, Franz Kafka`s short story The Silence of the Sirens, and Greek politician and ex-finance minister Yanis Varoufaki`s manifesto Democracy in Europe. The manifesto is based on the original idea of democracy described by Plato, as an applicable ideal for contemporary Europe. Would it be possible to revitalise Europe with these ancient ideas today, or is it simply a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable collapse?

A large video projection with imagery from Athens filmed by Gurholt during Summer 2015, was integrated in the live performance at the theatre: Nature has taken over a nearly deserted Athens. Acropolis still hovers over the city, but the main symbol of our Western democracy is slowly dissolving. On scaffoldings between quivering columns and unstable walls a group of people is struggling a sisyfos-battle to preserve the fragile constructions.

One of the sirens has been separated from her herd. She plays the role of Greece, while the herd of sirens (chorus) interprets the role of Europe. The Sirens portrays a world in decay, a Europe in torment and distress.

Cast

The Siren of Greece

Mezzosoprano Désirée Baraula

Choir The Sirens of Europe

Sopranos

Karen Austad Christensen

Ingvild Farestveit Hov

Altos

Silje Indrebø

Birgitte Sandve

Tenors

Thomas Ringen

Hauk J. Røsten

Basses

Erik Hedmo

Martin Røsok

Eivind Støylen

Conductor

Ida Cecilie Holm

Libretto

Crispin Gurholt

Texts and text fragments

Yanis Varoufakis

William Shakespeare

The Smiths

Joy Divison

Rammstein

Nahum Tate

Thomas fra Celano

Music arrangement

Helga-Marie Nordby and Crispin Gurholt

Video Crispin Gurholt

Om kunstneren:

Crispin Gurholt (born 1965 in Oslo, Norway) combines live installations (tableaux vivants), photography, video, drawing and painting in his work. Through this combination of formats he seeks to uncover new stories and layers of meaning that arise in the transference between the different expressions. His subjects throw a critical light on society’s repressive mechanisms and power hierarchies, such as racism, domestic violence and issues raised by globalised economic or institutionalised structures.

Digital Heritage: Pomor museum in VR format

Presentation of the project by initiators of the project; Oleg Khadartsev and Zhanna Guzenko from Friday Milk / Uncapitals (Murmansk): Friday 18 Oct, 15:45 hrs, Harstad Cinema, screen 2

VR installation in the Harstad Cinema foyer throughout the festiaval.

Uncapitals: Digital Heritage

VR installation

‘Digital Heritage’ is a collective art-project where the team of young artists and cultural workers get aсquainted with the old Pomor traditions, history and culture. During art residency in September 2017 to Onega (Russia), the project team created a concept for digital version of Pomor museum by rethinking the information from encyclopaedias and live material. Five virtual spaces resemble museum halls: there is an entrance area, overview halls, exhibition halls, devoted to the traditions and household, and a guestbook room.

The project is on the verge of imagination and reality, it is a mix of historical facts and mythology, the newest technologies and art, the contemporary pop-culture and traditional Pomor way of living.

More about the project: http://uncapitals.com/2017

Description of the virtual rooms:

The Entrance

Instead of a hall, a ticket counter and a security, who is usually checking your stuff, you will see the warm light of the Russian oven. It represents the heart of Pomor culture - the object you will return to constantly. The hearth gives a lot of possibilities, but you have to keep the fire alive. To move to the next room, just take a log and throw it into the fire. Each room has its own totem: Pomor panka doll, a letter, a gun and Pomor calendar.

“Pomor calendar”

A calendar has always helped people to arrange their activity with regards to time and space.

Interaction with nature, especially with mysterious and severe nature of the Russian North, formed not only customs and traditions, but a way of perception. Arkhangelsk region, or Pomor land, is famous for its fishermen, but what is more important, it is a point of myths and legends concentration, which constitute the world outlook of the Northern people. Exploring and contemplating the echoes of the past in the reflection of the present is only possible if one throws a stone or a sphere into the sea and dives down.

“The Gun”

If we are talking about Pomor household reconstruction, we can concentrate our attention onfishing methods, types of hangers and knots. But can we understand the feelings of the fisherman when he is standing on thin ice? Can we understand what it means to spend time mostly with people that have only one thing in common - the urge to get food for their families? The hall which has a gun as a totem uses the imitation of a game and reconstructs the emotional background of person who has to kill every day to survive.

“Pomor panka doll”

Panka (something like a toy, a thing to entertain you, or an idol) becomes a symbol of a room, devoted to Pomor traditions. Such an ambivalence in the meaning explains the multiplicity of traditions, which change from village to village. Creators of the room would like you to pay attention to the way values were inherited: stories were passed by word of mouth, from the elders to the youngsters. Feel like a child in the cradle, listening to the stories of your grandfather. And today Alexandr Porfirievich from Vorzogory village will play the role of your grandfather.

“The Letter”

The part you will see within the current installation is just the top of the iceberg: there are a lot of untold stories and unexpressed feelings before us. The guestbook becomes an equally important hall as all the other ones: leave your impressions here or tell us your story.

Project team members:

Alexandr Timofeev (RU), 3D model specialist, VR developer

Andrey Isaev (RU), coder

Andrey Larin (RU), coder, UI\UX designer

Anna Potashova (RU), communication specialist

Anton Smirnov (RU), project manager

Ekaterina Tolkacheva (RU), journalist, photographer

Fredrik Einevoll (NO), sound designer

Havard Christensen (NO), coder, VR developer, digital producer

Inna Fedorova (RU), project manager

Kamen Zlatev (SE), coder, VR developer, artist

Ludmila Buzova (RU), art critic

Malin Sternesjö (SE), coder, Illustrator, artist

Maria Sarycheva (RU), guest curator

Oleg Khadartsev (RU), project leader

Olga Dushicheva (RU), designer, illustrator

Pavel Mikhalovskii (RU), coder, IT-developer

Philipp Guzeev (RU), coder, IT-developer, artist

Sergey Shafransky (RU), sound producer

Slava Krasnov (RU), project manager

Taisa Sevenard (RU), VR developer, artist

Torje Spilde (NO), sound producer

Zhanna Guzenko (RU), project producer

Facts about connection between the Pomors, Norwegians and Sami:

Pomor trade or Russian trade is the term for a trade link between the Pomors in northwestern Russia and the people along the coast of northern Norway, as far south as Bodø. This trade took place from 1740 until the Russian revolution in 1917.

The Pomor trade was basically a barter trade between people in the northern regions, with grain products from Russia against fish from Northern Norway as the main commodity. Eventually this developed into a money trade, and in fact the ruble was used as currency in several places in Northern Norway. The Pomor trade was of great importance to the Norwegians, Sami and Russians. The trade took place as Russian Pomors from the Kvitsjøte and Kolah peninsula came sailing to fjord settlements and trading places along the coast of Northern Norway. The Pomors were skilled traders and seafarers, and they also explored the areas around The White Sea. In addition to sailing west with trade goods, they also established a trade route east past the Ural Mountains to northern Siberia. - Wikipedia

FILMS FROM NORDLAND COLLEGE OF ART AND FILM AND TROMSØ ART ACADEMY

Harstad Cinema/ Screen 2

Nordland College of Art and Film and Tromsø Art Academy, in collaboration with AMIFF, presents a programme of film and video works in the space between film and visual art. The moving image programme at Nordland College of Art and Film, include film and visual arts in the same programme to expand and challenge both fields. At the same time, the study emphasizes exploring methods for collective thinking and practice within a field that is in rapid development, both technologically and in terms of content. The Art Academy's contemporary art program is part of a multidisciplinary faculty of visual arts, consisting of creative writing, music, drama and theater, and specialization in art and culture, which allows for cooperation and exchange between the disciplines. Therefore NKFS and the Academy of Fine Arts in Tromsø are particularly interesting for AMIFF and a collaboration we seek to continue.

There will be conversations with the artists and filmmakers about their individual practice after the program.

Opening AMIFF 2019

Thursday 17. Oct, 19:00 hrs, Harstad Kino, screen 1.

This years opening film is Icelandic A White, White Day. By marrying supernatural legend with tinges of bleak humour, director Hlynur Pálmason again succeeds in conjuring a story which touches on deep human impulses; a tale of growing madness amidst the stunning, almost otherworldly Icelandic nature. Before the film there will be the premiere of this years commisioned work; Valuta, an artist film by Jon Eirik Kopperud, filmed in Harstad and Oslo.

About A White, White Day

In a remote Icelandic town, an off-duty police chief begins to suspect a local man for having had an affair with his wife, who recently died in a car accident. Gradually his obsession for finding out the truth accumulates and inevitably begins to endanger himself and his loved ones. A story of grief, revenge and unconditional love.

Hvítur, hvítur dagur premiered at La Semaine de la Critique at the 2019 Cannes festival.

Regi: Hlynur Pálmason, Iceland (2019). Actors: Ingvar Sigurdsson, Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir, Hilmir Snær Guðnason. English subtitles.

About Valuta

The film Valuta takes place in a parking garage and a hotel room. Three unidentified bodies are brought forward, while they bring forward excerpts from the book Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion from 1688 by the French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche.

The film was shot in Oslo and Harstad during the summer and fall of 2019. It is being presented for the first time under AMIFF.

Artis: Jon Eirik Kopperud. Norway, 2019. Format: 16mm og 4k video to DCP. Length: 35 min.

Archive film and town walk – Harstad Wool Factory

Thursday 17 Oct , 17:00 hrs, Harstad Kino. Screening kl 17:45 (length 20 min.)

Over half a decade Harstad wool factory produced wool products for the whole of Northern Norway. First from its site in Storgata, and then form modern factory building in Hamnneset. At AMIFF 2019 South Troms Museum present the film about Harstad Wool Factory, made by John Berthung in the 60s. Here you will hear the story of the factory and get an insight in the every day life of the workers at the factory. Before the screening we take a walk around Harstad to look at the places where the factories where.