The Festival takes place at the Norwegian Film House which is situated in the centre of Oslo and is much on the lines of our South Bank NFT. There is a shop (selling books on film and DVD’s etc), a library, a café but, unlike our NFT, there are two cinemas. Each cinema is fully equipped for both film and video and the video projectors are ceiling mounted in the auditorium giving a wonderfully bright image onto a huge screen. The programmes had been transferred onto Mini DV tape from whatever had been submitted and the sound carefully balanced to avoid the projectionist having to juggle volume controls. The tapes were played on a professional Sony DVCAM player.

The organisers are the Oslo Kamera Klubb and they aim to attract entries from as wide an international field as possible but inevitably there was a preponderance of Scandinavian films but also from countries that we tend to forget in this context, namely Ukraine, Russia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. From a total of 61 films getting some sort of award 15 different countries were represented.

The atmosphere throughout the weekend was very friendly and informal due partly to the astonishing fact (to an IAC member of long standing!) that at least 50% of the audience were youngsters in their late teens and twenties.

As to the films, the standard was generally pretty high but no better than a good year at our own festival. There were a number of crazy rock band and rap jokey productions, not surprising considering the ages of the producers, but difficult for an old man like me to grade. The winning production however I could relate to and it was a stunner. Titled “Siste Dager” it was a twenty one minute slow paced essay containing not one spoken word, of an old lady living out what were obviously her last days. She lived in a remote house by some water and as she slept and sat she dreamed of her past. The lady was played by a famous Norwegian actress and it showed! The lighting and photography, all muted and mellow, could have been the work of a seasoned cinematographer (traditional European or Chinese – not American!). I was amazed to see at the prizegiving how young the two Norwegian producers were.

Since I viewed all 45 of the exhibited films my head was spinning but a few stood out for me. Oddly to report most of my favourites were not amongst the Gold awards and in my opinion were under rated by the professional jury. Our own Atta Chui’s “15 Minutes” made quite an impression and was for me easier to understand than his previous film. He once more plays with time using some interesting effects. As to my own “On Silk”, that may well have been over rated but UK audiences will no doubt make their own judgement. I liked Rolf Mandolesi’s “Mala Tempora” about the tree felling which we saw here last year and which I felt deserved more than a Bronze. There was an ambitious two handed drama from Belgium which won a Gold called “Le Voleur D’ames” that was impressive. A woman is drugged by a country landowner and taken to his manor house for the purpose of photographing her nude. The two characters however failed to convince me entirely. Nearer to my heart was “Selfportrett”, made by two young women who are professional still photographers. They stopped people on the streets of Oslo asking them all the same question namely “How do you like to have your picture taken?” The answers were I am told both varied and amusing but since there were no subtitles I could not appreciate them! The winning documentary “Siste Vers” which featured workers made redundant following the closure of a local Norwegian factory, was well done but tended to wander rather. There was one more film that I must mention since I thought this too was underrated. It was called “Pas de Deux” another one from Belgium. It was about two women who had broken up their affair and we saw them on their separate ways and how they were re acting. It was cleverly done and deserves a viewing if it comes our way.

I ticked another six films that I thought really good, being well made and worth seeing,, but I can’t go on forever! The full list of award films is to be found on the Oslo Kamera Klubb site.

- Michael Slowe    Dec 2003

Page updated on 14 February 2008

Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers

Free JavaScripts provided
by The JavaScript Source