In a world promoting productivity, efficiency, and speed it can be urgent — for some, even essential —to provide for a space and methods counteracting the pressures to perform and appease expectations. Bjørkengen Farm in Bø in Vesterålen was such a space.

This year’s program opens with the exhibition “Arrow and Bow” by artist and filmmaker Camilla Figenschou. The exhibition presents a video installation based on footage from Figenschou’s first feature film, Bow and Arrow (originally completed in 2016). The project as a whole is about being deeply present, through a cinematic language that takes its time and provide us with time.

The setting is Bjørkengen Farm—a former treatment centre for individuals with mental challenges and other disabilities as well as a training and activity centreopen to all. Before political disruptions of NAV (the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration) and changes to the healthcare system led to the farm’s closure in 2017, the Bjørkengen Farm offered a wide range of activities —from equine massage training to bow and arrow shooting on horseback and equine-assisted psychotherapy. The latter follows an experience-based approach that fosters a deeper understanding of oneself and one’s relationship with others. Horses possess qualities that can help us develop mechanisms for self-regulation. In addition, interacting with horses helps reveal one’s behavioral patterns. There are other benefits to this type of therapy as well: horses are intuitive—they can read body language and sense moods —and the therapeutic process is liberated from the confines of a strictly conversational format, the need to put things into words, and intellectualization.

Bow and Arrow’s affinity and familiarity with the surroundings is remarkable. Whether this stems from Figenschou’s roots in Lofoten or from the filmmaker’s cinematic method and sensibility is uncertain. Nevertheless, one can sense that the footage has been captured with care, without either exoticizing or “instagraming” a landscape that, in reality, has become a tourist magnet. Instead, we witness a camera gaze that allows for the environment and its landscape to assume their natural place; a glaze that shows equal interest in everything it observes: people, animals, objects, and surroundings. They are all of equal importance. Figenschou’s approach aligns both with a trend within contemporary film—known as sensory realism, which places sensory experience at the forefront — and with broader artistic movements whose roots date back to the 19th century. What unites them is an emphasis on the experiential and sensory nature of art.

In Figenschou's film, the slow pace, sparse editing, minimalist plot structures, and the use of amateur actors all contribute to creating a sense of realism—an experience of authenticity. Long takes—which encapsulate time—and the images themselves convey an existing, contextual, and material reality through sensory experience. Particularly in the brand-new version of the feature film, Bow and Arrow – Director’s cut, set to be previewed at Svolvær Kino on March 13, we are presented with a kind of film that refuses to conform to dramatic purposes. The narrative is elusive; it is neither bound to a causal logic nor driven by character-based progression. Time does not serve narrative requirements.

In the project, Figenschou has conceptualized the camera gaze as a character in its own right, endowed with its own will and empathy for the characters and residents of the farm. This is important in understanding Figenschou’s project and the tradition in which she is situated, for it is precisely through the highly sensitive and probing camera gaze that the encounter between the audience and the film’s reality is facilitated. This gaze focuses on the sensory—it seeks to evoke something within us rather than represent something tangible. This gazefacilitates the audience's role as co-creators.

With the exception of the character Mia, who is portrayed by a professional actress, all other participants are real people associated with the farm, and they play a version of themselves in front of the camera. Figenschou defined the overall framework for the shooting but refrained from micromanaging the participants. Instead, she facilitated their role as co-creators, ensuring they could retain freedom and autonomy, and allowing the interplay among them to develop naturally. The script emerged as a combination of scenes based on real events and staged sequences. Reality and fiction enter into a symbiotic relationship—they merge.

Many of the issues that Figenschou addresses challenge the conventions and expectations of the movie industry This is not the case in the visual arts, where expectations related to narrative storytelling, character development, entertainment value, and seamless editing are mostly absent. Thus, one can say that here—in the gallery space—Figenschou’s cinematic language found a home. Both she and the audience are warmly welcomed.

Thank you to all participants from Bjørkengen farm, actress Anna Katharina Haukeland and co-creator of the video installation Astrid Skumsrud Johansen.

Thanks to the rest of the crew of the film:

First Assistant Director: Paul Tunge
Director's assistants: Sunniva Tangvik Kveum, Lisa Enes
B camera: Tor Edvin Eliassen
Colorist: Christian Berg-Nilsen
Sound: Rune Baggerud, Kim Erling Johansen
Sound design: Gunn Tove Grønsberg
Music: Thomas Dybdahl
Editing: Camilla Figenschou
Shahrukh Kavousi
Director of Photography: Øystein Mamen
Producer: Mona Steffensen
Written and Directed by: Camilla Figenschou

Camilla Figenschou (b. 1978, Gravdal) is a filmmaker and visual artist, educated at Konstfack in Stockholm, with film studies at Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires and at Nordland Kunst- ogFilmfagskole. She primarily works with narrative film and photography. In 2010, she made her debut with the short film Det begynte å bliingennatt. Her second short film, Å åpne, å se (2012), was shown internationally and received the prestigious Terje Vigen Prize at the Grimstad Short Film Festival in 2012. In 2016, her first feature film, Pil og Bue, was released; in 2020, Tauba premiered; and in 2022, Nå er jegogså her.