RnD

New function for the cinema house: a small production center or a movie making activity at Festiviteten, involving community into production and watching the result together.

Investigating if there is any film club or film school for younger generation in Levanger.

Getting in touch with the film production facility located near by the University College.

Example: “Silent movie” created together with the community, focusing on the Levanger cinema, collecting testimonies from the older generation, gathering scenarios and asking younger generation to reenact or reactivate those scenarios or their own scenarios. Musicians could also be involve creating the music and joining for the live soundtrack for the final screening at the Festiviteten.

sketch proposal by Carlos Correia for the newspaper of Levanger:

One of the first idea, proposed by Veronica, was “funeral of the cinema” as performative, durational, scripted, carnivalesque set of events, a structure that would allow each of the participnts to develop their own chapter, involving audience, or different audiences, communities and citizens into active participation and collaborative process.

Different epizodes through performative act, sound or use of materials would address the loss of the cinema in the Festiviteten, at the same time pointing at possible change in the function: from projection to production. Epizodes would be filmed and the “funeral” could serve both as “new beginning”, and as a monument for the history of this important cultural place in the city.

Anne-Gro just sent these news from Levanger:

This is what happened until now:
A majority of the politicians voted for a decision that says that “contact is to be made with the Berg Eiendom (owners of the mall and area around) for the purpose of negotiating the cinema on Moan (the mall area).

The Mayor is authorized to negotiate an agreement. Any negotiated agreement should be submitted to the council for approval”. This means that a majority wants a new cinema with two halls there, but I spoke with Odd, the head of culture, who says that it will still be a cinema in the old movie theater in the city center for at least 3-4 years.
In the mall area they´re now building the new apartments and it is not an issue for them to build the cinema before they are completed, and who knows if they will ever do it. Well, the negotiations will probably show.

A representative of Høyre (right liberal) suggested that they make the decision: “the cinema in Festiviteten should be laid down by year-end”, but a large majority voted against that (28 against 7 votes).

So it seems that yes, there should be a funeral, but we don´t know when we´ll have the dead body and it is also possible that “this funeral might be for the wrong corpse” – meaning that this whole process could take some unexpected turns still.

The Levanger cinema tour ended in Asen, at the cinematic farm of  Inger Johanne Todal Morset and Vidar Dahl, initiators of Filmfestival Vatn (Filmfest 2013 Vatn).

“Life of Hen” is a title of one of the films from the first screening at the Levanger Cinema in 1910.

On Friday September 20 2013 at 3pm the group meets with Odd Håpnes, head of culture at the Levanger municipality.

As a head of culture Odd was into drawing on the board.

On Friday, September 20, 2013 at 1pm the group meets with Kai Lennart Johansen, local politician representing Arbeiderpartiet (Labour, in position in Levanger) at the University College.

Parking lot at the University.

On Friday September 20 2013 at 10am the group meets the cinema theater in Levanger.

Cinema in Levanger has a 100 years of history. At the moment it is run by Tor Wibe, head of the cinema, and Kai Robert Arvola, cinema machinist and operation assistant, who gave us an extensive tour through the building.

Cinema has one main hall that is shared between different activities: movie screenings, concerts, theater performances…

The house has space for exhibitions.

The space on a lower level is used for conferences and parties.

The space for past and future radio.

The technical room hosts a new digital projection equipment.

On Friday, September 20 2013 at 9:10 am we took a train to Levanger to meet Anne-Gro Erikstad, a curator and director of LevArt, a non-profit agency which initiates and facilitates contemporary art projects (http://levart.no). Anne-Gro invited us to dive into a story of cinema theater in Levanger.

Our group was joined by architect Inger Johanne Todal Morset and filmmaker Vidar Dahl, the initiators of Filmfestival Vatn near Levanger.