Filmform (est. 1950) is dedicated to preservation, promotion and worldwide distribution of experimental film and video art. Constantly expanding, the distribution catalogue spans from 1924 to the present, including works by Sweden’s most prominent artists and filmmakers, available to rent for public screenings and exhibitions as well as for educational purposes.
Gompen og andre beretninger om overvåking i Norge 1948–1989 BY Lene Berg
GOMP: Tales of surveillance in Norway 1948-1989 depicts the third day of a staged hearing investigating the surveillance of dissidents, mainly suspected communists, in Norway during the Cold War. As there was never a public hearing about these illegal acts, Berg undertook extensive research and staged a live event in front of an audience. It features both real witnesses and actors, archive material and scripted dialogue. The resulting film almost imperceptibly blends documentation, personal testimonies, and political theatre. Bearing witness to these accounts of trauma, paranoia, and betrayal, we build up a complex image of Post-War Norway, and are reminded that listening and watching are not innocent acts and there is a price to be paid on both sides. The seamless blending of actors and witnesses, theatre and documentation reflects one of the film’s essential questions: where does reality end and fabrication begin when one describes political and historical events?
“Gomp” was the nickname given to a crucial part of a homemade surveillance contraption that enabled conversations and meetings to be secretly recorded at the HQ of the Norwegian Labour Party (Folkets Hus in Oslo).
Lene Berg, born 1965, is a Norwegian film director and visual artist based in Berlin and Oslo. Her main media is film and moving image, but her artistic praxis also includes installation, collage, photography, and text; and she has produced a number of projects in public space. She studied film at Dramatiska Institutet in Stockholm and has directed four independently produced feature films as well as a number of short films and mixed-media artworks and installations for galleries, museums, and public spaces. Berg’s autobiographical film False Belief premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2019 and was nominated for the Amnesty and Teddy Award. She represented Norway in the 55th Venice Biennale with the film Dirty Young Loose (2013). In 2022 she did the Festival Exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall, which is considered the most important solo presentation of a Norwegian artist in the country. In 2023 she published her first novel, Fra far/From father at Kolon.
Berg’s work has been shown at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter; Konsthall C, Stockholm; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Art in General, New York. She has participated in a number of group exhibitions and biennales such as Manifesta; the Biennale of Sydney; the Taipei Biennial; Contour Mechelen and Transmediale Berlin.
