The Gothenburg Film Festival invites a spectator to watch the film alone for a week on The Island of Hamneskar. Image source: New York Times Twitter
The Gothenburg Film Festival is the largest film festival in Scandinavia. And this year, because of the pandemic, it will provide a unique experience for an audience: watching 70 movies alone on a small island. The New York Times reported on this particular film festival.
As at the opening of any star-studded film festival, photographers scrambled to grab their spot and aimed their cameras at where guests got off the bus. But when the first and only GUEST arrived, she was not wearing a tuxedo or a gleaming dress, but jeans and an orange down jacket (designer unknown). There was no red carpet under her feet, only bare frozen soil. Instead of gracefully walking into a celebrity-studded luxury movie theater, she climbed into a speedboat and sailed through the icy waters toward an island where she would settle down for the premiere.
The Gothenburg Film Festival, which opened on January 29 in Gothenburg, Sweden's second-largest city, did not fully embrace social distancing as festivals around the world struggled to cope with the pandemic, but upgraded it. In the coming week, it will also screen films at two city venues for just one film festival audience. In addition, the festival sent a spectator to a barren island in the North Atlantic to watch 70 films alone.
In the face of the pandemic, some film festivals have had to reduce their extravagant size, set up theaters with rotating seats, and force temperature checks, such as the Venice Film Festival last September. Other film festivals, such as the Sundance Ande and Berlinale, are now postponed until March 2021 and offer online access to films and other events entirely digitally. Some organizers are postponing their festivals, praying that future pandemic regulations will allow people to experience more normal film festivals: On January 27, the Festival de Cannes announced that it would be held in July instead of the traditional May.
But at the Gothenburg Film Festival, the most important festival in the Nordic countries, organizers made unusual changes due to snobbery, with jonas Homeberg, the festival's artistic director, saying, "A lot of people have been staying at home alone, unable to meet friends or family, so they turn to the film for companionship and comfort." We wanted to try it out and escalate this sense of isolation and take it to the extreme. So we thought, 'Why don't we isolate people on a small island and have nothing but movies?'"
Photo by Felix Mooneeram on Unsplash
Sweden, the only country in Europe to refuse a formal lockdown, took its own approach to the outbreak, neither recommending the use of masks nor closing schools until December, when a disproportionately high death rate forced the country to change its strategy.
But much of the country has followed guidelines issued by the government, and after months of voluntary social distancing and lockdowns, spending a cold week alone on an island that is only accompanied by movies doesn't seem like what most people need. However, when an online video evoking memories announced the contest, more than 12,000 people applied for the experience. On Jan. 19, Lisa Enroth, a 41-year-old emergency nurse from the southern Swedish town of Skood, was selected as the winner.
Like healthcare workers around the world, Enros found the past few months stressful. She said: "Every day in the hospital, we have to deal with a lot of things, facing so many patients, facing so many new treatment options, I have never felt so busy.
So when she saw the application on the video, she didn't hesitate: "Alone in front of nature? And the movies to watch? I was like, yes, I need this.
The hospital agreed to give Enros a holiday, explaining: "My boss is a movie fan. On 30 January, a ship took her to Hamneskar, a rocky island about 25 miles from Gothenburg, and sailors nicknamed it Pater Noster (meaning Lord Prayer) because they would recite the Lord Prayer as they approached the rugged waters. There, she settled into the former caretaker's hut, which sits next to the island's cast-iron lighthouse, and settled in a movie marathon.
During his stay at Pater Noster, Enros will see 70 films screened at the festival, including Finland's Oscar-nominated "Tov," Thomas Winterberg's critically acclaimed "The Alcohol Project," and Gothenburg native Seiberg's "Happy," all of which will compete for best nordic film. International films competing in the competition include Emma Dante's Sister Macaruso, set in Sicily, and Sharin Favier's Snow Maiden, a story of a ski seeded player being abused by a coach. There is a film unit called "Social Distancing", which showcases films made in response to the pandemic, and another unit called "Lockdown Cinema", which shows short films made during quarantine.
Lisa Enros, a 41-year-old emergency nurse in Sweden, was chosen as the sole viewer of the "Little Island Cinema". Image source: ibtimes.com Twitter
All films are broadcast on the festival's website and open to the public, and online premieres are scheduled. But there are also a very small number of spectators who can go live without worrying about social distancing, and while each film premieres online, the film will also be screened at the Draken Cinema in Gothenburg (which can accommodate 708 people) and the Scandinavian Stadium (which has 12,000 seats usually available to concertgoers or ice hockey enthusiasts).
At each venue, the red carpet guides spectators to designated seats. Although there is no popcorn, the experience of watching the movie is not discounted. Festival director Homeberg hinted: "In some cases, the director may be there to show the film in person. ”
Homerburg hopes to preserve some of the experience of experiencing the film festival by holding a one-person movie show at iconic locations. Meanwhile here, festival organizers are conducting an experiment, saying, "We want to know, what kind of impact does being alone have on the movie-going experience?" What happens when you don't do anything but watch a movie?"
Although Enros will post a daily video diary on a dedicated page on the festival's website, she has agreed not to use any other form of communication and entertainment during her time at Pater Noster, without a cell phone, or books. She said she wasn't worried about loneliness, but she didn't rule out the possibility of "starting talking to furniture." Like Homerburg, she wondered how her week on the island changed the movie experience. "On the first day, I was just'angling, I was watching a movie alone,' she said. But after a few days, I might say, 'Well, these movies are my only companions.' What if I hate them?'"
But for her self-proclaimed sci-fi fan (her favorite movie is The Never Ending Story), even that's a good relief. Enros said: "I love watching movies because it allows me to put down my work and everything that's happening now, and it's a great thing to be immersed in the story of the movie. ”
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