The Line

A woman’s dream -sparked by a line in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona- unfolds into a reflection on cinematic projection, myth-making, and the narratives that frame women’s lives and choices.

Using this encounter as a lens, the film examines how cinema has participated in constructing feminine mythical personifications, and how women in film history are frequently described in relation to children. The work becomes an account of one woman coming to terms with her own non-motherhood -shedding inherited layers shaped by stories about women that are not, in fact, stories by or for women. The film also incorporates some of the actual equipment used in the making of Persona, folding material traces of film history into the present tense of the dream.

…”Persona is not only a film that, on a dramatic level, sees woman as mother, and mother as quintessential actress, but one that creates an image to literalize the Oedipal perspective on narrative and associate woman’s body with the cinema apparatus. Curiously, it is not Bergman but Frederico Fellini who best articulates this view on film:
“I think the cinema is a woman … This uterus which is the theater, the fetal darkness, the apparition – all create a projected relationship, we project ourselves onto it… just as we do with women.””

– Lucy Fischer, Shot / Countershot, Film Tradition and Women’s Cinema, Princeton University Press

Running time: 15:00min
Year of completion: 2012
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Language: Swedish with English subtitles

Credits

Written and directed by Minna Långström
Editing and special effects: Minna Långström
Cinematographer : David Berg, Minna Långström
Steady Cam operator: David Berg
Cast: Riina Huhtanen, Susanna Ringbom, Kristian Thulesius, Lina HåkanssonExtras: Sezgin Boynik, Isak Lynch
Sound recording: Pertti Venetjoki, Laura Kuivalainen
Sound post production: Pertti Venetjoki
Music: Samon Takahashi
Foley artist: Kimmo Vänttinen

Film festivals and screenings

Official Selection: Aesthetica Short Film Festival (York, UK), 2012