When I started working with theatre in the early 2000s was manusförfattarens the work of the holy. If Sarah Kane wrote the downright stage directions where the characters sucked out of the eyes of infants, it was the director’s task to try and find a good solution to the instruction as possible. In the world of film, the text would, however, serve the director, if there was something in the script that you didn’t recognize it was never the reading that had narrow glasses.
the Author, here was the closest to a mobboffer that should been eliminated by natural selection a long time ago but for some strange reason was still in the room like an annoying fly on the wall. In recent years, however, something dramatic happened in the writer/director’s tvångssymbiotiska organism; teveseriernas corner. The shape has admittedly been around a long time but now started to set the same quality standards of a series in a feature film goes the screenwriter and director, who by nature are two very self-absorbed figures with huge need to control, in a kind of identity crisis. For the amount of material this will be produced at a high level, can no longer be created by only one author or a director – instead, you are forced to now often be several.
Despite the fact that this situation offers many challenges, it is hard not to love the image of a bunch of cloned Jane Campions directors in swimsuit standing with the water to the navel, and have regimöten.
In the ” An evening with Jane Campion” (is on Youtube), arranged by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, describes Campion this change as something of a relief. Although Campion without a doubt upphovsperson to the two seasons of ”Top of the lake”, but then she realized that it was impossible for her to do all the work alone, she created a regigrupp. It was good on the action had to take those parties, the one who was good at emotions got to drive the scenes, at the end of the day it happened that they went and bathed together.
offers many challenges, it is hard not to love the image of a bunch of cloned Jane Campions directors in swimsuit standing with the water to the navel, and have regimöten. Maybe because the image hitting the hole on the director’s eternal loneliness, perhaps because it is so egobefriande. As on who has done what, actually, does not play so big role.
Lars von Trier tried in the 90’s to wipe out the director’s ego but in a different way. In the manifesto, ”Dogme 95,” there were ten commandments, which, although it broke as quickly as you could, but paragraph 10 is still interesting: ”the Director must not be credited.” In our individfixerade time, it may seem incomprehensible, but it was a way to remind themselves that the film was more important than the individuals who made it.
Hannibal Buress and Ben Sinclair of ”High maintenance”. Photo by: Janky Clown Productions HBO/REX
IN the HBO series ”High maintenance” if you have chosen this self-effacement as a kind of dramaturgy. In the first two seasons are very few recurring characters, no familiar faces, a whole section is told from a dog’s perspective. The series consists of a range of self-contained short films interwoven by a marijuanaförsäljare in New York city. The only very loosely recurring character is weedförsäljaren himself, played by Ben Sinclair, who also acts as the upphovsperson next to the creator Katja Blichfeld. Here, then, are two strong creative sender, but again; behind them stand several.
”Transparent” (Amazon) is created by Jill Soloway, but then it is impossible even for her to do everything myself offered often other directors in, sometimes it is something completely unknown name, sometimes it is others Andrea Arnold makes a section or two. Common for them all is that they are not there to put a personal stamp on the work, rather than submit to the whole. Many of these new production team, led also by women, and the proportion of female partners is remarkably high. (Only two of the fourteen directors of ”Transparent” are men”).
You should certainly not deny that there are challenges with these huge companies that take the production decisions and ultimately own everything. But one should also not deny that the change brings new voices and practices. Neither the ”High maintenance” or ”Transparent” has any literary model or understand from a bolagstopp, in both cases, the work has started without funding, and then have a channel stepped in. In addition, there has never been a film alone that made the production decisions and the idea that the world of film beyond the strömningsjättarna would be fair and hierarkilös is an almost laughably naive illusion.
The big question is instead what happens with the actual storytelling. They say that the film is a mix between art and spectacle and there are many today who worry about the spectacle takes over and the art is lost in the streamingtjänsternas time. But regardless the companies ‘ size, they are nothing without creators. And it has writers and directors with a personal responsibility for their own work, it is only when one renounced the responsibility of the man been made a stooge for the market. No matter whether it is one or several, if you do theatre in a bike storage room in Västerås or a tv show for HBO, the question should always be the same: What do you want to tell? Maybe make it not about who has done what fades away. But what is told may never make it. In that case you can always say no.
Lisa Langseth is the director and writer behind films such as ”the beautiful”, ”Hotels” and ”Euforia”.