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.
False Belief is a story from Harlem, New York and shows how the law is being used as a weapon in the battle for land, domination and power.
In False Belief the Norwegian artist Lene Berg and her partner, the American publisher Delano Greenidge, try to reconstruct a kafkaesqe journey through the US justice system as Greenidge is first arrested, then convicted and imprisoned in New York without cause nor evidence.
In 2008, Berg moved in with Greenidge in Harlem at a time marked by gentrification and tensions between tenants and real estate interests. In 2011, after reporting to the police that his neighbour had harassed him, Greenidge ends up being arrested himself charged with harassing the same neigbour. This is the start of a series of increasingly dramatic and incomprehensible events that put not only his trust in the justice system, but ultimately everything he cares about, at stake.
The core of the story are Greenidges first-hand accounts where he tries to understand the sequence of events, combined with the candid and factual narration from Berg. The story is narrated using a mix of moving images, photographs, court documents, collages, talking heads, voice-over, music and cut-out characters, whose droll playfulness highlights the absurdity of the events.
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.
