Purveyors of Taste: The Letterboxd Generation

We’re living in the age of the curated streaming service and neighborhood art cinema. As zillennials cling to their cassette tapes and MUBI subscriptions, a new form of tastemaking and social hierarchy has emerged in the artsy crowd. Letterboxd, a film review platform, provides a safe haven for those with “unconventional” tastes and an ironic distance to the Hollywood blockbusters they diligently watch.

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Arctic Film Festival, or independent films in the North

Arctic Film Festival is the first and the only northernmost independent international film festival on the planet. Established in 2019 to raise awareness about climate change, it has since then been held in Svalbard’s Longyearbyen – the largest town of the archipelago. On May 13, 2023, the Festival returns there once again, with a carefully curated selection of independent short and feature fiction films and documentaries from all over the world. Apostolia Katsiantridou, the Head of Program for the AFF for the last 3 editions, talked with PRESSET. about the Festival’s history, mission, and nuanced relationship with nature.

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A Forum for Young Film Lovers

This past week, I sat down with Hannah Hasseløy and Jakob Skrede Langedal, who facilitate the Vega Filmklubb. The club consists of thirty people who curate a film programme for the public every autumn and spring semester. Screenings are open to everyone, and membership costs 25 NOK per semester, with an additional 50 NOK per screening. That’s quite the bang for your buck! Continue reading to hear more about this season’s programming and the group’s plans for the future.

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Are the Oscars really becoming more inclusive?

The 95th Academy Awards ceremony was a blast, with eclectic, extravagant, quite perplexing absurdist comedy/drama Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) scoring 7 wins, including in the “Best Picture” category. Written and directed by the duo of “Daniels” aka Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, this film is as far from “Oscar bait” as it can be. Michelle Yeoh’s historic — first Asian actress to have won an Oscar in the “Best Actress” nomination — golden statuette is yet another clear signal of the long-awaited cinematographic tectonic shift. The Oscars are — finally! — changing. But are they?

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Rare gems on a big screen – Oslo Film Festival ‘23

After a three-year COVID-induced break, the Oslo Film Festival finally returned to Norway’s capital with an exceptional selection of independent films from all over the world. Held for two weekday evenings in a row in what once was a bank vault (!), the event gathered quite a diverse and international crowd, which chimed nicely with one of its principal themes – an everlasting fascination with multiculturalism and the controversiality of the daily.

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Sex and death intertwined: AMC’s Interview with the Vampire and Mayfair Witches

Inherently Freudian, Anne Rice’s gothic novels about tantalizing and yet excruciatingly isolated creatures have always been loved and cherished by LGBTQ+ community — first and foremost for their powerful allegoric potential. AMC’s Interview with the Vampire picks up on these notions and is followed by Mayfair Witches, forming a solid premise for Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe.

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Koreansk film er mer enn bare tre ord

Jeg hopper på banen mot Vega Scene for å få med meg den Sør Koreanske filmfestivalen klokka ti denne lørdagen. I regi av Norsk Filmklubbforbund skal en gjeng filminteresserte folk lære seg om alt innen den stadig voksende koreanske filmverdenen. Det blir feil å si at filmer herfra har begynt å bli populære, for det har de vært i lang tid. Det er først de seneste årene at resten av verden og “mainstream cinema” virkelig har åpnet øynene.

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Korean cinema on the world stage

On November 5th and 6th, Norsk Filmklubbforbund held their annual film seminar at Vega scene, a weekend packed with screenings and talks from visiting experts. This year’s theme was South Korean cinema, and I had the pleasure to sit down with Darcy to chat a bit about his work and the current landscape of Korean cinema.

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Cinema in sauna, or how the MIRAGE 2022 opening night at SALT went

Nine venues, international guests, a hand-picked collection of films from all over the world — the 2022 program of the MIRAGE film festival in Oslo is, no doubt, a delight for all cinema lovers. The opening night at SALT Art & Music on October 12, though, offered a truly unique experience, with mesmerizing live music and excitement of jumping into cold water after watching shorts in a sauna (Yes!).

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Classical music and girl power: The Conductor at Oslo/Fusion

Marin Alsop is the first female conductor to run world famous orchestras on three continents: North and South Americas and Europe. The Conductor (2021), brought to Norway by Oslo/Fusion Film Festival, follows Alsop’s professional and personal life, proving that there is nothing a woman can’t do—especially if she is told so.

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Queer Horror shorts pack a punch at Oslo/Fusion

Oslo/Fusion International Film Festival, “Norway's only film festival dedicated to stories of, by and for the LGBTQIA2S+ / QTIBIPOC community” (courtesy of the festival’s mandate on FilmFreeway), took over several locations across the city from September 23-30th and offered a bevy of entertaining and thought-provoking works to the public.

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Why I Dance – en dansedokumentar med funnet mening

Why I Dance (2021) er en dansedokumentar regissert av Andreas Strand Renberg med koreografi av Louis Clément da Costa. Den tar for seg hva det betyr for en sammensatt gruppe rwandiske dansere å uttrykke seg gjennom den fysiske kunstformen. Men uten en klar visjon for dokumentarens innhold, hva slags historie er det filmen ender opp med å fortelle?

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En Oscar til besvær – den 94 Academy Awards utdelingen

For den 94 gangen kunne filmverdens største stjerner samles under årets Oscar utdeling, og årets prisutdeling er en man ikke vil glemme med det første. Spenning, glamour, fantastiske antrekk og ikke minst en god dose med dramatikk preget i likhet med de 93 foregående prisutdelingene også årets. Men hva skjedde egentlig under nattens Oscar utdeling?

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