(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
I would call it a war. An anti-intellectual and propaganda war that is being waged in every respect in the international film industry. Hollywood and its investors operate with budgets the size of a state budget, including the defense budget. Hollywood producers, of course, decide what to produce to reach the vast masses world wide. They own and control the large distribution chains, and of course the cinemas. Obviously, some have to believe that this works and pays off. Norwegian film politics and the Film Institute are a disaster for the art film (a lousy expression, by the way). It has never been harder to get films produced outside the mainstream, with few exceptions (and the exceptions are not good either), and it has never been more difficult for the individual director to come through with different and intelligent film script. The producer field, as we saw it was launched in the 1980s and 90s, has got the gulf and both ends. Previously, the director could apply for production support for his film without going the way of a producer. Now, the director can't even put his legs inside the film institute's walls in the Queen's Gate in Oslo without following a producer. Norwegian film directors and their union must be the laziest and perhaps stupidest of all time – because have you heard Norwegian film directors make a critical statement about the coup that has been quietly carried out in good, undemocratic spirit over the course of 20 years? Stated so that the criticism was heard, noticed and given results? The sum and consequence of Norwegian film politics is at least discouraging, if one still notices that film is considered an artistic expression.
One wonders what it is like for a climate of lack of self-criticism, courage and will within the Norwegian film industry.
National Romanticism. What is the reason that the vision of the board of the Norwegian Film Institute has been dazzled? Can one read what the rationale must be for so hopelessly investing in the dead stories, historical postulates, disasters and reason mainstream of dead people? For film art, that's not what it is about.
"Part of the Norwegian film industry fronts its anti-intellectual attitudes as if it were the King's Merit Medal," writes film critic Ulrik Eriksen. "Did the little thing that existed of self-reflection and intellectual curiosity disappeared when the business interests became the sole councils in Norwegian film production?" he asks further (Morgenbladet no. 42, November 2016). Here it is the critic who comes on the field, not the directors. Critic Aksel Kielland claims in a major article in the journal Vagant (no. 3–4 2016) that Norwegian film production can today be called "the new Norwegian national romance". There is no exaggeration. National romance: to emphasize national characteristics, in this context the heroic character, as propaganda for the reactionary swarm we see increase to the very high heights, and which has its roots in, among other things, epic drama for the masses in cinema all over the world. Now it is to recover fresh kroner from the tax office – a 75 million production of the national hero Roald Amundsen can be expected in cinema in a year or two. It should probably come into play, and well then. Norwegian film directors contribute everything they have of talent and education to cover this highly debatable hero worship. Commercialism is, by definition, conservative – that is, in keeping with the general trends and political populism of the time. And one might wonder what it is like for a climate of lack of self-criticism, courage and will within the Norwegian film industry. It seems that everyone is afraid of everyone.
Severe Anxiety. Making a movie is defining a philosophy, I say. This means that you must have a theoretical superstructure and an intellectual attitude about what you want to express. It is not about emotions or images as such, but about a construction of sound / image that is also more than a "sculpture of the time", as Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky wrote, but a process of recognition and a method of thinking. Yes, and then get other people thinking, then – that's what art is all about. To make us reflect on ourselves and our place in the world. Norwegian film and autonomous, independent directors are just another story. But who knows, maybe fresh and positive alternatives will emerge when enough is enough and the directors take matters into their own hands. Trends are turning and moving, and the audience will once again want in-depth and contemplative film. What we now see is "the anguish of our time in earnest," as the Swedish film director Roy Andersson wrote many years ago.
