Filmform (est. 1950) is dedicated to preservation, promotion and worldwide distribution of experimental film and video art. Constantly expanding, the distribution catalogue spans from 1924 to the present, including works by Sweden’s most prominent artists and filmmakers, available to rent for public screenings and exhibitions as well as for educational purposes.
Dagen står opp/The Day Rises is a reconstruction of Lene Berg’s memory of her father’s arrest in Paris in the mid-1970s, shot in a model. The voice-over follows the process of memorising: while her memories are detailed and concrete, as seen in a movie, how can they be remembered if she wasn’t present when it happened? The title of the film, Dagen står opp (The day rises), quotes the French phrase ”le jour se lève”, which is also the title of a famous French melodrama with Jean Gabin (directed by Marcel Carné, 1939).
“I believed, for many years, that this was all behind me and that, even though it had shaped me, it was not something I needed to think about anymore. But then, suddenly, my long since deceased father stood before me. My dear beloved father, what the hell are you doing here? I have an awful lot to do, I can’t think about you now, maybe later, but now I don’t have time! But this time there was no way to avoid him. Just like when he was alive, he demanded my full attention. He insisted it had to happen now, because soon you will also die, he said, you don’t think that you’re the only one who is going to get out of this alive?”
Lene Berg, born 1965, is a Norwegian film director and visual artist based in Berlin and Oslo. Her main media is film and moving image, but her artistic praxis also includes installation, collage, photography, and text; and she has produced a number of projects in public space. She studied film at Dramatiska Institutet in Stockholm and has directed four independently produced feature films as well as a number of short films and mixed-media artworks and installations for galleries, museums, and public spaces. Berg’s autobiographical film False Belief premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019 and was nominated for the Amnesty and Teddy Award. She represented Norway in the 55th Venice Biennale with the film Dirty Young Loose (2013). In 2022 she did the Festival Exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall, which is considered the most important solo presentation of a Norwegian artist in the country. In 2023 she published her first novel, Fra far/From father at Kolon.
Berg’s work has been shown at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter; Konsthall C, Stockholm; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Art in General, New York. She has participated in a number of group exhibitions and biennales such as Manifesta; the Biennale of Sydney; the Taipei Biennial; Contour Mechelen and Transmediale Berlin.
