Last year, Stendahls and Göteborg Film Festival dared people to apply to watch its annual festival in ultimate isolation on the lighthouse island of Pater Noster for a week. Pater Noster is a lonely lighthouse in the North Sea perched at the very edge of the archipelago in one of Sweden’s most barren, windswept locations.
This year’s experiment, the fourth with which Stendahls and Göteborg Film Festival have enticed audiences, is just as challenging, just as exclusive and just as mind-bending. The Hypnotic Cinema challenges the audience to undergo hypnosis before a film screening. The purpose is to explore whether it is possible to intensify a film experience for visitors who dare lose control of their own thoughts.
The Hypnotic Cinema is part of this year’s festival focus, Disorder, which explores the borderland between disorder and order – in our societies and within ourselves.
“The rules and restrictions of the past two years have illuminated how to maintain order in society and what really governs people’s thoughts and behaviors. Maybe we don’t make decisions as independently as we like to think? With The Hypnotic Cinema we want to raise questions about submission, transgression, and control,” explained Jonas Holmberg, artistic director at Göteborg Film Festival.
Three festival films will be screened as a part of The Hypnotic Cinema. Before the chosen film, a hypnotist will perform a mass hypnosis from the mainstage at Stora Teatern in Gothenburg. The hypnotist will transform the audience’s state of mind according to the mood and theme of the film they are going to see. After the screening, the hypnotist will break the hypnosis.
“Watching a film in the cinema can be extremely hypnotic. At home, with a tablet, it is much harder to maintain the focus you need to get really absorbed by a film. Now, as Göteborg Film Festival returns to the theaters, we add another hypnotic layer. The Hypnotic Cinema is both a tribute to and an extension of the experience of watching films at the movie theatre,” Holmberg added.
Credits
Agency: Stendahls
Art Director: Alexander Skoglund
Copywriter: Mikael Andersson
Junior Art Director: Sofia Malmborg
Junior Copywriter: Molly Ljungström
Account Director: Peter Ohlsson
Project Manager: Anna Lotto
Production company: Is This It
Directors: John Boisen & Björn Fävremark
Director of Photography: Fredrik Sellergren
Producer: Johanna Smitz
First Assistant Dirctor & Additional Cinematography: Philip Esse
Make-up Artist: Annica Strömberg
Visual Effects: Tussilago
Producer: Robert Danielsson
VFX Artist: Jonas Gramming
VFX Artists: Eric Ljunglöf & Marcus Holst
Sound Design: Andreas Mellkvist
Photo & Retouch: Studio Mint
PR: Manifest PR
PR Strategists: Johanna Svantesson, Julia Wohlén, Fanny Carlson & Annika Svahn
Client: Göteborg Film Festival
Head of Marketing: Marie Murphy
Head of Communications: Andreas Degerhammar
Head of Event: Emma Rygielski
Communications & Press Coordinator: Emmy Westling
Web Design: Linda Gester
Artistic Director: Jonas Holmberg
CEO: Mirja Wester
The Isolated Cinema:
