Jan Otto Ertesvåg

How happy can you be? is an attempt to make the practical manual – “Your guide to happiness” by using a modern, scientific approach: science, practical empirical attempts to measure happiness.

The sea and the fjords used to be our main road, National Highway No. 1. Now that everyone drives a car, the water is an obstacle, and at night the sea can seem strange and dark to us. But the undulating surface of the water reflects all light sources from civilization. We become part of the reflective waves, while we experience sounds from a night in the coastal town of Ålesund: storms, Hurtigruten at the quayside, and people's life in the nightlife along the quays.

Mass: abstract gravity. Experimental art film created with partially lit paper relief.

Animation of pieces of plastic found on the shore.

The reality of beach snails is not that much different from human lives, filled with an intricate interplay of social interaction and solitude, curiosity about the world and its rigid rules, fleetingness of life and the resilience to go on.

In this short, the story of a mother’s recovery from breast cancer is touchingly documented through playful stop-motion portraits of her children playing with her hair. The confronting gamut of emotions experienced by her and her family unfold before us, layer by layer, face-to-face, as her son and daughters twist, braid, and blow-dry her locks into different styles, no matter how long or short they are.