Award-winning director John Skoog: We tried to make a film that just is a condition

What is it that happens? Roaring's wake, cows that seem to runaway and stand and graze in the forest, a slåttermaskin whose strong headlights create human shadows moving against a black skogsfond. A tonårsfylleslag in a clearing. A team from Poland which will säsongsjobba on the farm.

John Skoog's first feature film contains precisely the kind of disparate and unfinished scenes from a sparsely-populated areas. All are taken from John Skoog, environment, small Countries between the Rock and E4 in the north west of Skåne, and in a way, these fragments still, meditative, and often terribly beautiful: ”If Tarkovsky had played video games and was an american film, so would his films have been able to have the look like this”, was the motivation when hybridfilmen ”Season” was awarded with the will claim the top prize on the grand Danish dokumentärfilmsfestivalen Cph:dox, earlier in the year. The Swedish director is flattered by the comparison but do not want to talk about Tarkovsky.

– The standard is that there is a hierarchy; a story performed by actors, then comes the camera, the sound, the editing... But we have tried to make a film that is a condition. It is not the narrative that is allowed to dominate here, but there is a equality between all people, things and animals that appear in the pictures, the location, the camera, the sound – everything is meant to exist together, at the same level. Dependent on each other, " says John Skoog via Facetime in the early morning from Manhattan.

for his next project, documenting the city's oldest and last good ”public market” (the type covered market), the Essex Street market, which is now in the typical way need to move out to a newer, finer and halvprivatiserad building.

– this equality in the ”Season” is that you as the audience will be given the opportunity to think along with the film, " he continues.

Image 1 of 3 ”the Season” Photo: Ita Zbroniec-Zajt Slide 2 of 3 ”the Season” Photo: Ita Zbroniec-Zajt Slide 3 of 3 ”the Season” Photo: Ita Zbroniec-Zajt Slideshow

the Season, from the Latin'sat' io and the French saison, means såningstid, or in short, the best time for something. At the same time it is well the worst time ever, or in all cases for a very long time, for this planet. And over the film's different scenery, there is this darkness, this sadness, which is difficult to take on.

" Well, there is much to say about undergångstemat – ”antropocen” is a word that many throw themselves with now. But it is really late in the earth, in the film and on the planet. With the risk of making a fabrication, I am thinking, at the same time that things can become clearer, and it may be the best time to enhance the visibility of any of this, " says John Skoog and continue to philosophize.

" Can you somehow make a proposal to a less hierarchical division of these things so maybe you can give the movie the feel of it antropocena the state, by itself. I can't exactly formulate the idea, which is perhaps why I make films instead of writing. Then I don't have to say it...

" Yes, or, cold in the gaps for the intervals. It is in the spaces that the story becomes. It is, of course, between the words that Edith Södergran will be fantastic, " says John Skoog.

Late in the earth, which we talked about, is, of course, Gunnar Ekelöf, and he said one time: ”You must always leave a chair around the table for the reader.” That's right, it is so very rare that you feel it with a movie, the audience experience to be an important part of it. We want to provide the most comfortable arm-chair to the audience, so you can say. Feels ”Season” generous in the way so it is fantastic.

there are some, shall we call it a human tragedy? Passively the hard stuff, pure anxiety sometimes. As a big party where you at långborden making ”August and Lotta”-deck. Young people like super, where one gets to the official facebook page and plåtas of friends when he passed out in a thicket. Or the Polish guest workers who will tell a young man how he should approach women. But all of this is approaching John Skoog and cinematographer Ita Zbroniec-Zajt with respect, but that the images of the finger.

" Well, often arrive a film crew just down somewhere, filming in a few weeks, a month, and then disappear from there. In the so-called european art-house film, you can often feel the effects of the type of cynicism towards its characters, that it almost makes fun of them. Our film is on the people's side. At the same time, one must say that there is a distance between the camera and the that the signs, a distant language, it is its own character. Kind of like an alien that just landed on the earth and sees everything for the first time, without really being able to decode all of our characters.

– first Of all it is a very beautiful and strange thing to sit alone and at the same time together in biomörkret. Or to just be three in a large salon. But then, I also believe that the movies are an attempt to pay back my debt to the ”Cinema island”, which I had so many experiences. Different images belong in different places.

John Skoog, visits the display of the ”Season” at the Cinema Zita in Stockholm on Friday 3 may at 20.15