In a comic and often a banal manner his films present everyday life of peculiar residents of Scottish provinces. He got BAFTA nomination once again, as a Scottish representative, with his controversial short film LITTLE RED HOODIE (2010). Under Jeorge Elkin pseudonym, Joern uses periodically, he won this year's Audience Award at prestigious Clermont Ferrand Festival in France for his WIND OVER LAKE . A the moment he is preparing his first full-length feature film.
Joern Utkilen's most important films retrospective is going to be screened during the European Film Festival Palić, where he will receive this unique award and his WIN OVER LAKE will be screened within Young Spirit of Europe selection.
Mr. Utkilen, what brings a Viking on a Scottish soil if it's not burnin' and looting? Filmmaking?
Who says I am not burning and looting? :)
OK, I am not. Just burning matches. When I light candles.
I came to Scotland to study film a long time ago when there was no film-school in Norway. Four years became seventeen. Now I am emotionally trapped.
In your short films you're dealing with raw, but somehow funny everyday life of Scottish utter province. Your, let me say, surrealistic realism, often opens a new perspectives in common and dreary fate of your protagonists. How much that "common and dreary" moves you in a creative way?
I would not say I am moved by the common and dreary. I would say I am moved by people. What people do. Why they do what they do. And how they do what they do.
Palić Film Festival audience will have a rare opportunity to see a retrospective of your most important works. Tell them something about your future feature-length film project.
My feature film project will become a lot longer than any of my short films. In fact three times as long I hope. Around ninety minutes. It will have music. Actors. And some dialogue too. It will look at men who refuse to grow up. So therefore relate to pretty much every man on the planet.
