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.
The Day Rises is a reconstruction of Lene Berg’s memory of her father’s arrest in Paris in the mid-1970s. Some details are unclear, such as the colour of the car in which he was found by the police. What is certain is that beside her father in the little car is also her dead stepmother. The event is staged in a model while Berg’s voiceover describes her recollection process as she weaves together various fragments, including the ones she in reality cannot remember: I was not there. I remember it clearly.
The Day Rises deals with the ways we construct memories to make sense of the incomprehensible, but also the fragile qualities of memories, and their power. The film’s title 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), considered one of the principal examples of poetic realism.
The Day Rises was first shown as part of Lene Berg’s Festival Exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall 2022.
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.
