Bergen Film Festival press

With a population of 385,450, it is pretty amazing that the beautiful town of Bergen, Norway, can put on such an impressive festival of 140 films.

One sensationalist evening paper had 3 full pages with pictures from the film, in color, "festival shock film", all neatly presented by the festival upon arriving.

The festival has its 10th year anniversary, and founder Tor Fosse was kind enough to take us out for lunch as we arrived, having the first journalist come to the restaurant.

There were three interviews lined up, running back and forth between the hotel and cinema to catch parts of films inbetween. The largest daily paper managed to trick me with their question of what age restriction I thought was suitable for the film. I always considered GSH to be 18+ (could be an effect of my 15 years in the US, there are certainly scarier images every day on the news). Here in Norway, the festival tickets are allowed for everybody over 15, and the festival did not see it necessary to put a higher age limit on it. But, I did also say that if the festival thinks 15 is ok, they are the ones that are used to Norwegian standards. It is very nice to be back in a Scandinavian country. Here at least the papers are trying to make a scandal of the film, when in the US no regular paper would touch it. At least it will probably mean that the the remaining tickets will be bought by 15 year olds.

The one film I managed to see all of was "Shooting Robert King", strongly recommended. It tells the story of war photograper King over 15 years, from his first attempts to get into the industri in Sarajevo. It is very rare that you see the baby steps of what will become one of the greatest in the field.

At night, the mayor hosted a dinner for the filmmakers. Delicious sea food and lovely company.

We want to thank Tor Fosse and all the other organizers and volunteers for making a film festival that is so important for Scandinavia and all of Europe also an extremely smooth and pleasurable one to be a part of.

audience audience "He did get kicked in the balls once!" "It was all giggles and kittens working on it" "Why, hello!"; Flying into Bergen No, no one got hurt.... Bright Lights, Big Movie