Film Classics- The Choices of Convenience

Convenience is certainly a way to describe Kings of Convenience lead singer Eirik Glambeck Boe and guitarist Erlend Oye’s relationship, and no less, their unhurried approach to their work. Releasing their tranquil Quiet is the New Loud in 2001, the duo took a three year break whilst Oye recorded a solo album, Versus in 2003, and Boe finished his psychology degree. In 2004 the pair teamed their creative efforts to produce the mellow but outstandingly brilliant Riot on an Empty Street. No matter how long they take to produce their albums, it’s always worth the time spent. Pogo takes Eirik Glambeck Boe out of his busy schedule of playing football, chess and writing songs to talk us though his favourite film classics, and weirdest gig, which, oddly enough, is being touched up by a few over zealous fans. “After a show we played in Bari in Italy, I got trapped in a crowd of a few hundred fans. I couldn't move, but I could feel their hands touching me. It was great.” Strange, anyway, on with the films…

1. Songs from the Second Floor by Roy Andersson
The Year: 2001
The Time: winter
The Feeling: awe
The film has a story, but it’s of little importance: An old businessman finds his building in ashes after a fire, and then starts to walk around the city. What’s brilliant about this film that the cameras move very little and each scene is beautifully choreographed. They almost look like paintings by Edward Hopper. It describes a society which has rejected nature, the past, and essentially human nature. It's a criticism of modernism in a very beautiful way. The best character is the travelling salesman who is selling plastic sculptures of Christ. I like the scene when the businessman visits the only sane character, his poet son, in an institution, and tries to talk him into stopping writing.

2. Mulholland Drive by David Lynch
The Year: 2003
The Time: winter
The Feeling: fear
I think the film is a pilot of a series that was never made. You are introduced to a number of mysterious characters throughout the film, but most of them, you never meet again. The best moment in the film is the scene with the old couple in the airport. They remind you that the coherence and meaning you were beginning to feel at this point in the film, don't exist. It is an opportunity to step into the world of a schizophrenic person. When the structures that holds reality together starts to fall apart, you will be frightened. I’d like to be either one of the characters in the girl on girl sex scene, which was nice.

3. Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog
The Year: 2003
The Time: autumn
The Feeling: joy
Fitzcarraldo is a son of Irish immigrants in an early twentieth century town in the Amazon. He loves opera passionately, and decides to have an opera house built in his jungle-town. To raise the money he decides to travel on a steamboat further into the Amazon to start a rubber plant. It is a beautiful portrayal of insanity. The best and funniest scene is when Fitzcarraldo's boat ventures into the realm of the blood-thirsty savages. Fitzcarraldo and his men hear threatening drums from the jungle, but he has unlimited faith in his own weapon: A gramophone quietly playing Carmen.

4. Kitchen Stories by Bernt Hamer
The Year: 2003
The Time: spring
The Feeling: excitement
The story takes places in Norway in the late 1950s, where a group of Swedish home-scientists are on a mission to investigate how people use their kitchens. They are doing this research for an agency which aims to create "the perfect kitchen". To non-Scandinavians this film will serve as an anthropological introduction to understanding the culture which created IKEA. The film is an observation of the lunacy, of a society based purely on reason. There’s a scene when the convoy of scientists enter the village with identical caravans. You identify with the main characters, the lonely farmer who is the subject of the kitchen-behavior experiments, and the confused scientist.

5 The Story of the Crying Camel, German documentary
The Year: 2004
The Time: autumn
The Feeling: joy
The film is a document of the last days of the era of natural coexistence between animals and humans. A German filmmaker spent several months with a Mongolian nomad family. Very little drama takes place in the family, so the family's camels gradually become the main characters of the film. My favourite character will have to be the newborn camel that is rejected by its mother. There’s a beautiful scene where the music-man plays to heal the traumatized mother-camel. Written by Nosmot Gbadamosi.