Also Directed by Jon Bang Carlsen
During a production of "Hamlet", the withdrawn lead actor and the girl playing Ophelia, who has just escaped a life of drugs and prostitution, spark an unlikely and low-key romance.
A documentary comedy about extras in Hollywood and how their dreams reflect the society they live in. The film's stage is an old hotel in the middle of Hollywood. Dilapidated inside as well as outside, but the passing of time hasn't eradicated all traces of an elegant past. Until the beginning of the 1960th the Stars from Broadway lived in Montecito Hotel on Franklin Avenue when they flew in from New York to film at the big studios. But the Stars have disappeared and those who dream about being Stars have moved into their hotel rooms, the extras, the hookers, the pimps, the restless dreamers stuck in a hotel with a dying elevator that slowly drives them crazy.
To what extent does a director stay objective and anonymously hidden behind the camera? The Danish director Jon Bang Carlsen knows for sure that the choices he makes in his films aren’t accidental. Several excerpts from his own work show that events in his personal life have a major influence on his work. In fact, he appears to be using images that he recognizes in particular. It’s a revelation for this filmmaker, who used to think he could stay objective and invisible. Topics such as doubting his faith, his runaway father and impressions from a carefree childhood are recurring themes in his diverse oeuvre. Showing us individual scenes, Carlsen comments in voice-over on the images and muses about his life and work.
In his new feature film Jon Bang Carlsen inserts the viewer into the affluent suburbs of Los Angeles, a world where families put on a brave face to mask the tension and turmoil at home. The kids are rebelling and the parents doesn’t know how to deal with them. With their parents consent, the children are abducted and bundled into a van which takes them to a reform school in the middle of the desert, in Utah. Blending fact with fiction, Carlsen shows us how parents sometimes achieve control by surrendering it and how fabrications can help us understand real life.
The irish west coast: Jimmy, a lonesome man in his mid-50s, dreams of having a wife. He contacts a matchmaker.
Seven versions of Riga, the city on the Baltic Sea, and its features as seen by outstanding European film directors: Sergei Loznitsa (The Old Jewish Cemetery), Ivars Seleckis (On Ķīpsala), Audrius Stonys (Riga Boats), Jaak Kilmi (Littering Prohibited!), Jon Bang Karlsen (Cats in Riga), Rainer Komers (Daugava Delta), and Bettina Henkel (Theatre Street 6).
Portrait of God is a documentary road movie about the manhunt for the most wanted person in the world. The film is constructed as a classic detective story. A middle-aged detective shadows the suspect through the highs and lows of South African society until he ends up in a gigantic prison in Cape Town bursting with murderers, thieves, and rapists.
The documentary began years ago in director Jon Bang Carlsen's childhood home in rural Denmark when he committed a dreadful act that still reverberates within him. His father had hung a painting of Jesus above his bed. Every evening before closing his eyes, he would beg the man on the cross to look after his family. When his family collapsed and his father left their home, in spite of all his prayers, young Jon blinded his father's gift, burning Jesus' eyes with a glowing poker. Since then the director has travelled the world with his camera to find ways of making up for the damage. His film tells of this journey, mirroring his own life's story in images and clips from his more than forty films made in a variety of genres.
Jon Bang Carlsen's essay about his way of approaching reality with a camera. Following the filming of "It's Now or Never", the story of an Irish bachelor's quest for love, Jon Bang Carlsen elaborates on how he manipulates reality in order to get to the core of it. " Staged documentary " he calls his method.
