18/11/2011

Bookended by Austrian director Wolfgang Murnberger’s My Best Enemy [+see also:
trailer
making of
film profile], the Moritz Bleitreu starrer and Berlinale contender, and Buster Keaton’s 1926 silent, The General, Movies on War - the world’s first annual film festival focusing on wars and conflicts, peace and reconciliation – opened yesterday (November 17) in the Elverum and Åmot regions, the centre of military education in Norway.

Festival Director Vigdis Lian, former CEO of the Norwegian Film Institute and head of programming at the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund, has scheduled 20 films from countries with armed conflicts, adding panels, round tables and a showcase touring the local schools, including Norwegian directors Mathias Rygh and Mathias Eriksen’s From This Day to Where.

”Even today Norway is at war – with Afghanistan,” said Lian, and the ten-year involvement with Kabul is a key theme of the event, which – among several films about the conflict - unspools a three-part Lars Løge documentary production for Flimmer Film, realised by Norwegian directors Odd Isungset (The Price of War), Øysten Bogen (Power and Powerlessness) and Frederik Græsvik (The Hard Way Out).

”We asked ourselves what we really wanted to know about the Afghanistan situation, and we agreed there was little in the daily news coverage telling us why we are there, and how we are carrying out our mission," explained Løge. Entitled The Price of War, the series by the three experienced TV journalists is also aired this month on Norway’s TV2.

Aiming at ”putting wars and conflicts into an ideological perspective, with a Norwegian point-of-view in mind,” Movies on War, which ends on November 20, will show films from Norway, Denmark, the US, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia and Israel. The festival is organised by Østnorsk Filmcenter with Film3, in collaboration with local authorities.