The Line

The Line is a short film about myths surrounding the notion of femininity.

A woman dreams about the complexity of projections and their origins provoked by a line in Ingmar Bergman’s film Persona. The film is divided into chapters – projections that correspond to Bergman’s line “I want to have …., I love ….., I don’t have …!” Some of the actual equipment used in the making of Persona becomes a part of the narrative acquiring a role of an alchemist who transforms reality into a mythical material.

The woman is trapped in sequences of feminine representations about beauty and motherhood that do not correspond to her own experience. In her dreams she reconstructs the lines into haunting scenes, in a pool of snow, in a garden with graceful Greek statues, at an unused industrial sight filled with empty plastic bottles and other trash, and in glimpses of kids running by. A man watching her from a distance makes a sketch of the scene, only she is missing. The dream sequence is structured around a scene where she witnesses the rehearsal of a line from Persona, where Ingmar Bergman directs the actress Bibi Anderson. Whose story is the line telling? Can it be subverted? The close up on the camera with a child behind the roller constitutes a metaphor for women often being seen merely in terms of their relationship to motherhood in man made film history, while it also refers to parts of Bergman’s autobiography The Magic Lantern, about his relationship to his mother.

Lucy Fisher writes:

…”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.)

Running time: 15:00min
Year of completion: 2012
Production format: XDCAM, AVCHD
Screening format: HD projection (1080p25)
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Language: Swedish with English subtitles

Film festivals and screenings

Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York, UK (Nov2012)
Lens Politica Film Festival, Helsinki, Finland, Nov 2012
Galleria Forum Box, Helsinki, Finland, May 2012
CPR Film Festival in connection to the ArteBA art fair in Buenos Aires 22.5.2016, curated by Tainá Azeredo.
Pleasure/Pain curated screening by Adrianne Finelli, Artists’ Television Access in San Francisco, 2015.
Festival Miden @ CAMP, Athens, Greece, June 2013,
5th Cairo Video Festival, Sep 2013,
Peru Short Film Festival, Nov 2013.

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