I am leaving today for a holiday in Norway.  I hope to see some old friends, hike, and take a break from research and writing (and hunching over screens).  I thought I would post some Norwegian shorts and sound projects (really, a grab bag of links that I have been collecting over the last couple of weeks in anticipation of the trip).  Enjoy!

Before oil: the exploitation of ice.  An (orphan) film from Ives Argus of Unknown Cinema. 

The Bridal Voyage in Hardanger (Rasmus Breistein, 1926): part melodrama, part non-fiction, part Hardanger fjord adventure!

Ola Refsnes’ home movies, esp. Swimming Alongside the Wreck of Donau (1945).

Ivo Caprino: Norway’s stop-motion puppeteer.  I love the shimmering water beneath the fisherman’s boat in this fragment.  Pinchcliffe (1975) here.

Camera Magica is a Norwegian production company directed by Morten Skallerud, specializing in large format cinema.   A Year Along the Abandoned Road was shot over 105 days in 1988/1989 in 65 mm.  According to CM, the film shows “a whole year passing by in Norway’s Børfjord at 50,000 times the normal speed.”

Jens Lien’s startling graduation film from the London Film School, entitled Montana (1992). A corpse and a cowboy (costume) in a hotel room.

Nurse with Wound (Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter): A radio art intervention in Lofoten, a set of islands located high above the Artic Circle.  This is the sound of midnight sun.