Directing
The Arab spring is a backdrop for the dialogue between two women in the suburb Tensta in Stockholm, and the film puts forward a connection between the global protest movements of the past three years and the riots in the Swedish suburbs.
What can we do when art fails? Or when film fails art? Time Passes is Ane Hjort Guttu’s response to such questions. Inspired by Peter Watkins’ Edward Munch, the result is a brilliantly incisive film about not only the artistic process but also time, power and the possibility of living a life of dignity.
A documentary maker from Norwegian TV meets resistance when she contacts a group of activists in good faith to tell a story that is not her own.
Møbler er ikke bare møbler (Furniture isn’t just furniture) is centered around an ongoing dialogue between a woman and a man who have settled inside the display exhibitions of an IKEA warehouse. They alternately read aloud from the marketing catalogue and discuss their relationship in a language mainly composed of hackneyed phrases.
Frihet forutsetter at noen er fri (Freedom Requires Free People) presents an 8 year old boy at a primary school in Oslo. The film follows him through interviews and during school hours, and looks at the conflict between his strong desire for freedom and participation and the framework put forward by the school. Freedom Requires Free People questions the conditions of critical thinking within educational institutions and, in a broader sense, within society. –www.anehjortguttu.net
Art director Naoki Hayakawa works 16 hours daily in a creative, neo-totalitarian advertisement company in Tokyo. The working pressure causes a mental condition between sleep and wakefulness where he has strange and wonderful dreams.
Four Studies of Oslo and New York was produced for the solo show The Rich Should Be Richer at Kunsthall Oslo. The Rich Should Be Richer raised the question of the ownership of sunlight in the late-capitalist metropolis and the association, both metaphorical and real, between poverty and darkness. The exhibition consisted of a series of screenprints, a proposal for a public art work, a parallel exhibition of Gustave Dorés engravings from London, and the 15 min video Four studies of Oslo and New York. The film placed discussions of new development in Oslo alongside Diego Rivera's painting of Manhattan, 'Frozen Assets' (1931), and scenes from the film 'The Fountainhead' (dir. King Vidor, 1949).
UNTITLED (THE CITY AT NIGHT) consists of an interview with an anonymous artist, who has for twenty years worked on one single work: A huge archive of abstract drawings representing episodes the artist has witnessed through nightly walks in the city.
A small art academy in fused into a huge university as one out of many institutes. They have to follow all the university´s administrative procedures. But secretly, the students and staff decide to self organize as an independent art school. They create their own courses, programmes and leadership, secretly and without the university´s knowledge.
