Uģis Olte & Morten Traavik
Director / Editor who enjoys staying playful when dealing with serious subjects. Equipped with senses of a musician and a belief that dreams, myths and fairy-tales can be useful tools for telling any contemporary story
@mortentraavik
Director / Artist / Works across a wide spectrum of artistic genres and international borders / The notion of the world as a stage and identity as role play is never far away in his works, as well as a characteristically blurred distinction between art, activism and social issues
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Lives in Latvia / Lives in Norway
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1971
Liberation Day: A documentary musical (2016)
Under delicate diplomacy by artist and filmmaker Morten Traavik, the government’s negative reception of Laibach is appeased, and the Slovenian group has a green light to perform in North Korea. But this is not the end of Traavik’s and Laibach’s trouble. The plan for the concert undergoes various levels of censorship. What remains is a small number of songs accompanied by edited visual material approved by the Censorship Bureau. Laibach present amplified cover versions of songs from the 1965 musical film The Sound of Music. Western culture industry’s rebuke of National Socialism, reprocessed after Laibach’s playful appropriation of totalitarian aesthetics, reaches a quasi-unruffled audience during North Korea’s Liberation Day celebrations. Who absorbed whom? Laibach’s sincerity crosses North Korean politics and puzzles our perception of liberty and oppression. The film is premiered for the Athenian audience at AB6’s Kino on October 28, 2018—the day of the Greek national celebration of the Όχι (No) to the 1940 Italian Ultimatum.
#musical #liberationday #totalitarianism #liberty #oppression
photo: Daniel Miller
Film, 100'
Courtesy of the artists
Directed by: Uģis Olte and Morten Traavik
Original languages: English, Korean
Subtitles: English
Produced by: Traavik.Info (Norway), VFS Films (Latvia)
In coproduction with: Mute Records (UK), Norsk Fjernsyn (Norway), Staragara (Slovenia)
Supported by: National Film Centre of Latvia, Culture Capital Foundation, Arts Council Norway, Slovenian Film Center