- Title: UK: FILM "COOL & CRASY" HAS BECOME A BOX-OFFICE HIT IN ITS NATIVE NORWAY
- Date: 7th August 2001
- Summary: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (7 AUGUST 2001) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) REMLOV SAYING: "So this is the rare occasion of the people with the money actually throwing the money after the creative lot. And it took me a year to convince them that this film was actually going to be made and the money was there and the question was to set the start date. So finally you k
- Embargoed: 22nd August 2001 13:00
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- Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM AND FLIM LOCATIONS
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVA2F1I81PLL32QQPSEQSG2VH4QI
- Story Text: Cool & Crazy, the heart warming film about the 30-member male choir of Berlevag, a lively fishing community in the Arctic circle that also featured in Isak Dinesen's Babette's Feast, has become a box office hit in its native Norway. Now its set to charm moviegoers at the Edinburgh Film Festival where it screens on August 13th.
Berlevag sits on the north west of Norway's Varanger peninsula. It faces the ferocious Arctic Ocean and lies adjacent to the North Pole. For its 1200 inhabitants the main source of income is either fishing or fish processing. The community is a social one. There's a cinema every Thursday and Sunday, a darts club, bridge for those who like cards, the Sea Rescue Association and the Arctic Ocean scuba diving club for the adventurous. But for the romantic souls who inhabit this isolated spot on the edge of civilisation there's the Berlevag Men's Choir.
The choir is made up of a motley group of 30 men ranging from 29 to 96. Men, whose singing offers a refuge from the harsh life and extreme weather conditions of their place on Earth - not men who expected to be international film stars. But that's exactly what has happened and it all began when one of Norway's most renowned feature film directors, Knut Erik Jensen, was in the area shooting his third feature film, "Passing Darkness".
"He told me about this wonderful choir that he'd discovered and they'd come to perform at the final day of shooting up there, up in the far north and he'd been completely bold over by them and he said, 'now my dream would really be to make a ten minute film about this cos I realise its far too exotic and far too way out altogether, geographically as well as in every other way', but ten minutes just to catch these people and to catch them in their setting and to make use of the wonderful scenery and so on and juxtapose the scenery with the song and with the mutual commitment between these people and so on. And I said well obviously this is a feature. You must make a feature of this or we must make a feature of this. 'You can't be serious' he said, 'surely not,' I mean he really thought I was pulling his leg and we were only into the second beer." says Tom Remlov, Cool and Crazy's producer.
Remlov said it took him a year to convince Jensen and his cinematographer, Svein Krovel that the film could be made. "So this is the rare occasion of the people with the money actually throwing the money after the creative lot." he says.
Once underway, Cool and Crazy gave Jensen, a graduate of London's National Film and Television School, the opportunity to realise an ambition he'd returned to Norway determined to achieve - to make films about the people of his homeland and bring to the screen the dignity of ordinary lives lived under extreme circumstances.
Born and raised in the northern coastal town of Honningsvag, Jensen was familiar with the extreme weather conditions of Berlevag and filming over four seasons presented a challenge he delighted in. The film's majestic visuals compliment the heavenly sound of the choir which he sets defiantly against the backdrop of their environment - singing in a street in freezing conditions as a blizzard whites them out of frame, challenging the powerful Barent Sea as its waves crash against the breakwater, and basking in the midnight sun on a still, snow-covered beach But it wasn't just a sense of elemental grandeur that Jensen captured. The film's success has as much to do with the intimacy it exhibits. The hopes, dreams and disappointments of its characters lives. The sheer vulnerabilities they share with the audience on screen as they talk frankly and openly about their thoughts, opinions and experiences, a common characteristic of Finnmark, Norway's northernmost county, whose residents are often referred to as the Latins of the the North.
To achieve such a closeness it was necessary to spend time developing relationships with the choir's members. Jensen's second photographer, Aslaug Holm, a documentary film-maker in her own right helped enormously by establishing a trust and intimacy that is implicit in the final result of the film.
"After the first period of shooting he realised now she will get closer than I (Jensen) will, partly cos she will not need a photographer with her she can do the filming herself and b she's a woman and she's a youngish, not to be sexist, but she's an attractive girl you know and they enjoyed her company and so they had no problems giving her their key and letting her lock herself in and into their bathroom and sit on the edge of their tub and you know, try and spot them through the foam, you know." says Remlov.
Cool and Crazy has become a box office hit in Norway where an estimated half-a-million people have seen it. The choir have made a CD of their music and are now receiving fan mail from female Remlov attributes its appeal to it's humanity, "because that's also an international appeal as far as I can tell. I mean here we are in an English studio talking about this, and that's not a frequent occasion as far as Norwegian films are concerned... it obviously has a humanity that touches people, but in Norway of course there is also the thing of it really sort of confirming an image of oneself or of Norwegians that Norwegians rather cherish....It is both a celebration and an exploration of an idea of being Norwegian.
Perhaps its a nostalgia for the old community culture portrayed in the film that moves its audiences so much, a tradition that is quickly being lost. Whatever its secret it seems others want to share it. The film has been a hit at festivals around the world and been critically acclaimed all the way from Berlin, Galway in Ireland to Sydney, Australia.
It plays at the Edinburgh Film Festival on 13th and 18th August before screening at the London Film Festival in November. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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