THE PROJECT


Mothlands is an experimental film project that will launch on September 1st 2013 and run a year on.

Behind the project is danish film maker Trine Dam Ottosen. She will collaborate with a number of likeminded co-creators from the world of film, literature & music, who bring their own experimental hearts to the project. During the year of the project, we aim to create 6-8 short films that are independent of each other in terms of narrative, but connected through method, mood and theme. The finished films will be released on this site and on Vimeo.

The method
The films will be made without a traditional screenplay. Instead, the ideas will be explored together with the actors, based on in-depth character work and situation based scene-structures. The method is highly physical and centered around improvisation, and draws on experience from documentary filmmaking, physical theater and live action roleplaying.

The inspirations
The project is inspired by previous artistic movements like the Surrealists and Dogma95.

The rules / overall ideas
1) Challenge linearity
2) Choose honesty
3) Trust energy
4) Question aestethics
5) Go, liberate!

The connection

All the films revolve - in one way or another - around characters, who are on the edge of what we in our modern world understands as normal. Questioning the boundaries of normality and reality, the films invite the viewers to move into the mothlands - a mythical landscape between dream and reality. 

Even though the films will be intervowen by theme, sentiment and visuality, there will be no guarantee of a coherent whole in the end. The project is thought to be an experimental free dive into deep waters, with all the uncertainty that should imply.The motor is a wish to liberate the creative proces of fiction filmmaking, an take the exploration of ideas away from the intellectual realm and into the real world. 

Read The Mothlands Manifesto for a more in depth description of the intentions behind the project.

The jam-sessions
Throughout the projects run-time, a few of the films will be created through the so-called jam-sessions. These will be short intense work-sessions, where we will get together in a group of 4-6 people and make a film during a few days of collective creation. The idea behind the jam-sessions is to push the work method even further into intuitive creation, - not unlike the automatic writing of the surrealists, - and avoid falling into safe repetition.

Language
We hope that this project will be able find it's own audience in all corners of the world. That is the simple reason why we have chosen english as the language for this blog. The film sketches will however most likely be in danish and/or swedish, with english subtitles.

Sharing & Copyright
We celebrate creative sharing, and encourage you to share these film sketches, as long as it not for commercial purposes. Please credit the work where possible, and respect the rights held by actors and co-creators. You are always welcome to contact us, if in doubt.