During the last month's seminar at UiO Tarjei talked about the short film "Catilina" and his process while making it. Without spiling the film here are my highlights:
-He found inspiration in Agnar Mykle book "Lasso rundt fru Luna(Lasso Round the Moon)" and Karl Ove Knausgaard's books "Ute av verden (Out of the World)" and his fourth Min kamp book
-Originally his script was written with male main character named Agnar, but after casting all other actors he realized that the right actor for his main character is an actress
-He choose the play Catilina because he saw parallels between the character Catilina(main character of Ibsen's play) and the main character he wanted to create and parallels between young Ibsen writing Catilina and where he was as a person and an artist when he read the text
-He talked about having some trouble in film school because he couldn't limit himself in his writing
-The biggest impact the play Catilina had on him and the film is by inspiring him; the start of the play “I must, I must, a voice deep in my soul urges me on. I will heed its call with courage and strength for strength, for something better, something nobler than the present life” became his mantra
-Short film is outside industry frameworks because of it's length. Film festivals rarely accept short movies longer than 30-40, and feature films shor---ter than 70; Catilina is 45 minutes long
-He was scared that he ended his career with this decisions, but he just found out about 2 year Art grant
-Deleted his social media because he is practicing being dead ( to better understand his decision, read Plato's "Phaedo", where Socrates says that "philosophy is the exercise to death". This is known as "art of death" and is practiced by detaching from material desires and focusing on wisdom and truth)
- Sees his film as a story about misunderstanding each other, because people see the world from different places. I quote: "The philosophical life and the real life, the ideals and the reality, can be experienced as irreconciled, irreconcilable dimensions. "
-Big fan of Ibsen ( thinks he is Dostoyevsky of playwriting), Plato ( Phaedo is referenced in film a few times) and Socrates
-He cried after finishing last Karl Ove Knausgaard book ( not because it was that good of a book, but because there is no more books to read)
-If he could change anything he would change its beginning and end😅
-About his future plans: working on a political play as a writer that will be on stage in Denmark early next year, is collaborating with another director, hopes to maybe write more shorts
