Hot Picks

- Ready for My Close Up 2019

- Talk of the Dead 2016

- Tower Rats 2020

- Script of the Dead 2024

- The Bell Affair 2023

- Easter Bloody Easter 2024

- Velma 2022

- Everwinter Night 2023

- Main Character Energy 2023

- Stupid Games 2024

- Bittertooth 2023

- 4 Minutes of Terror: Night Slasher 2024

- Apart 2024

- The Abandoned 2006

- Becky 2024

- The Evil Fairy Queen 2024

- The Black Guelph 2022

- Followers 2024

- Silence of the Prey 2024

- Battle for the Western Front 2024

- Beware the Boogeyman 2024

- Subject 101 2022

- Driftwood 2023

- The Legend of Lake Hollow 2024

- Black Mass 2023

- Skinwalkers: American Werewolves 2 2023

- The Manifestation 2024

- Spirit Riser 2024

- Garden of Souls 2019

- It's a Wonderful Slice 2024

- Caleb & Sarah 2024

- The Thousand Steps 2020

- The Desiring 2021

- When a Stranger Knocks 2024

- Quint-essentially Irish 2024

- Son of Gacy 2024

- Saltville 2024

- The True Story of the Christ's Return 2024

- Whenever I'm Alone with You 2023

- Jurassic Triangle 2024

- Midnight Peepshow 2022

- Offworld: Alien Planet 2024

- The Swiss Conspiracy 1976

- Sex-Positive 2024

- Here for Blood 2022

- All Over Again 2024

- The Color Yellow 2023

- Des Töchterleins Leid 2024

- I Am a Channel 2024

- The Hermits 2023

- Murdaritaville 2024

- Inheritance 2024

- The Devil's Partner 1960

- First Impressions Can Kill 2017

- A Killer Conversation 2014

- Star Crash 1979

- Strangler of the Swamp 1946

An Interview with Viktor Johansson, Director of Under Gottsunda

by Mike Haberfelner

November 2014

Films directed by Viktor Johansson on (re)Search my Trash

 

Quick Links

Abbott & Costello

The Addams Family

Alice in Wonderland

Arsène Lupin

Batman

Bigfoot

Black Emanuelle

Bomba the Jungle Boy

Bowery Boys

Bulldog Drummond

Captain America

Charlie Chan

Cinderella

Deerslayer

Dick Tracy

Dr. Mabuse

Dr. Orloff

Doctor Who

Dracula

Edgar Wallace made in Germany

Elizabeth Bathory

Emmanuelle

Fantomas

Flash Gordon

Frankenstein

Frankie & Annette Beach Party movies

Freddy Krueger

Fu Manchu

Fuzzy

Gamera

Godzilla

Hercules

El Hombre Lobo

Incredible Hulk

Jack the Ripper

James Bond

Jekyll and Hyde

Jerry Cotton

Jungle Jim

Justine

Kekko Kamen

King Kong

Laurel and Hardy

Lemmy Caution

Lobo

Lone Wolf and Cub

Lupin III

Maciste

Marx Brothers

Miss Marple

Mr. Moto

Mister Wong

Mothra

The Munsters

Nick Carter

OSS 117

Phantom of the Opera

Philip Marlowe

Philo Vance

Quatermass

Robin Hood

The Saint

Santa Claus

El Santo

Schoolgirl Report

The Shadow

Sherlock Holmes

Spider-Man

Star Trek

Sukeban Deka

Superman

Tarzan

Three Mesquiteers

Three Musketeers

Three Stooges

Three Supermen

Winnetou

Wizard of Oz

Wolf Man

Wonder Woman

Yojimbo

Zatoichi

Zorro

Your new movie Under Gottsunda - what inspired you to make a movie about Gottsunda in the first place, and what are your personal relations to Gottsunda?

 

At the time I would bike to nearby Gottsunda everyday to leave my daughter in kindergarten. Once we rode past a burned-out car and my daughter asked, well, if it had crashed. We took a peek inside and there were burned books in the wreck, trying to see what they said. Too see what lies beneath, to actually read the burned book.

 

You have chosen a very poetic approach to your story (or rather stories) at hand - care to elaborate?

 

I wanted limbo, I wanted the poetic feeling of floating and sinking through the ground. It's all about underground movements in Gottsunda, literally with kids hiding in the sewer system and so on. So I worked a lot with slow motion, you would get the feeling that the cast were trapped in mud or quicksand. On the audio side, Fredrik Hedlund recorded and added dripping sewers, he was down in some hospitals basement recording water and echo. But also ocean waves and bubbling underwater currents. All things under the surface.

You can do so much with film, image and sound, you just have to dive into your particular world. Stay true to your diegesis. Hardcore.

 

Under Gottsunda seems to wander a blurred line between documentary and fiction - do describe this approach for a bit?

 

I shot bits and pieces first, in the beginning it was more documentary style, capturing the true essence of hanging around, wasting your youth I was about to say, but that's what youth is for, floating around in this limbo, to invent and form your identity you have to be set on part self-destruct, part self-create. I tried not to interfere and just capture this.

Then as the summer was coming to an end I realized I needed some dramatic development, and I wrote these heightened continuations to their lives, making their subcultures into extreme sports with rules and manifestos. Some of the stories were written by the kids themselves, for example the longboarder who's force-fed his mother's karma. That's Sergej's own novella that he wrote on the Gottsunda Stories workshop. His entire narration is freestyled, it comes from his own inner world, just not his biographical circumstances.

 

What can you tell us about all the people appearing in your movie, and how did you find them?

 

Both the dancehall group Attitude Dance Crew and the Russian martial artists in Systema I had seen showcases of in Gottsunda. Longboarder Sergej and Palestinian Kerim both attended the creative writing workshop Gottsunda Stories I was teaching. They went acted out their own short stories and poems. When I was street casting, the kids explained that they weren't involved in the arsons. Every kid I met felt that they had to defend themselves against that image. Arsonists, this was secondary school children.

The prejudices of the suburb will even get internalized by those who live there. Media uses them only for reporting about car fires and honor crimes. It really hit me, I realized that the media image must have gotten jammed in their heads. Walking around with the burning cars in their psyche.

 

Do talk about the shoot as such for a bit!

 

The best thing about shooting a movie is when everything goes out of hand in front of the camera. My favorite mistakes are:

When Vanco in one long rant brings up the high standards of Sweden, how everyone is a fucking Rockefeller. Then I laughed so much behind the camera that I had to stabilize the image in post. Completely out of the blue, from Vancos mind.

When Kerim and Ibbe craft slingshots for the first time in their lives, and they're the worst at it, they want to be like the children in Palestine, but then they test shoot a pebble that drops right at their feet. "It works, it almost works". Such a good reaction.
When the Systema guy almost breaks his neck, how scared we got.

Things that break through our defenses.

 

The $64-question of course, where can one see Under Gottsunda?

 

VOD - International VOD-premiere December 1st: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/
24321

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=A24u6Wy8aUU

 

A few words about audience and critical reception of your movie?

 

"It's shot in a fluid Christopher Doyle kind of way ... brings in mind Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park and Elephant ..." - Jojjenito

"Right in the middle of a seductive beauty and ugliness, where Bo Widerberg's sense of light meets the flow of Falkenberg Farewell ..." - Expressen

"Under Gottsunda reminds you of Harmony Korines trashy fiction, or the mood of David Gordon Green's George Washington. " - FLM

"Viktor Johanssons suggestive mix of a political-realism documentary and dreamy fiction bears some thematical resemblance to Clio Barnards The Selfish Giant." - Nöjesguiden

 

Any future projects you'd like to share?

 

Last summer I shot my upcoming feature Flogsta Heaven.

The summer before I rode my bike to Gottsunda few nights a week, this summer I rode in the other direction, with my camera backpack, to the student neighborhood Flogsta.

A bunch of students are studying to become idiots. A different kind of student riot, with drops-outs who give up all things education, and instead they return to being savages, walking backwards, they spend three years to perform a perfect moonwalk instead of becoming a bright future for this country. The motto is daft punk instead of being so accomplished. Those who remain in the Flogsta apartment blocks, those who stay behind. During the summer they start a cult. They stay in “the Flogsta roar”.

There's Arman who skips school to go down in the same depression and paranoia that Michael Jackson had when he invented the Moonwalk. A father walking around in Flogsta as a guard, to make sure that no one kills themselves, as his son did. A bunch of girls dumpster-diving for food, which they then have food fights with.

http://youtu.be/4UYnldJ18zE

 

What got you into filmmaking to begin with, and did you receive any formal education on the subject?

 

I went to a folk university, maybe you call it community college, in rural Fellingsbro. And learn from the local masters who only had bee movies on their resume, haha. The teacher had filmed an instructional video for bee keeping, so he was teaching the next generation of film makers. But we lived like in a reality show couped up with all the cameras and editing suites. It was great. Then I've been writing novels, and with every book I've tried to adapt it into a movie, but fallen on the finish line. After 8 years I realized I had to film it myself. So my latest novel The Dark Sport is partly the basis of Under Gottsunda, but things mutated, came to life with the real stories of Gottsunda.

 

What can you tell us about your filmwork prior to Under Gottsunda?

 

In Fellingsbro I made the short film Cotton Candy. A girl crouching under heaven, not to get caught up in the cotton candy, the clouds that is. Before I found my mix between grit and poetry, I went all in beautiful poetry narration with piano soundtrack, it was too much.

The girl is played by my little sister Linnea, and the best scenes are when she was just playing around, looking into a black cat's eyes, studying it. I have noticed that the best scenes occur when the actors get to examine something, build something, like the slingshots from Under Gottsunda, or get tangled into their own theories and argue amongst themselves, spacing out high on wild blueberries, and just forget the director. Actors think that I'm looking for something special, they want to be good and do the script justice, but I am looking for mistakes and true discovery. That's special.

This authenticity is what I've been struggling with in my previous short films, The Tennis Boy (basis for my novel The Dark Sport) and Webcam Girls (basis for my novel Wrestlers). All of a sudden, in Gottsunda, the film was alive, and we all were alive that summer.

 

Filmmakers who inspire you?

 

The world of Harmony Korine, Andrea Arnold, Terrence Malick, where actors actually have a breath and trash is blowing around in the wind, and Werner Herzog's ecstatic truth.

 

Your favourite movies?

 

Feeling lucky?
Want to
search
any of my partnershops yourself
for more, better results?
(commissions earned)

The links below
will take you
just there!!!

Find Viktor Johansson
at the amazons ...

USA  amazon.com

Great Britain (a.k.a. the United Kingdom)  amazon.co.uk

Germany (East AND West)  amazon.de

Looking for imports?
Find Viktor Johansson here ...

Thailand  eThaiCD.com
Your shop for all things Thai

Something naughty?
(Must be over 18 to go there!)

x-rated  find Viktor Johansson at adultvideouniverse.com

For Under Gottsunda these films really meant a lot: Tim Sutton's Pavilion. David Gordon Green's George Washington, James Clauer's Aluminium Fowl, Lance Hammer's Ballast and Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep.

 

... and of course, films you really deplore?

 

Not deplore, but there are blockbusters with so much lost potential, amazing worlds and mutant identities just lost. For example, one day I will make a Ninja Turtles magic hour skater film. Let's reclaim these blockbusters. Let's make a Transformers movie where poor Detroit kids pimp left-over cars into robot drones.I want to make fan films called Werner Herzog's Bane, or Harmony Korine's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

 

Your/your movie's website, Facebook, whatever else?

 

Official site: http://undergottsunda.se/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/gottsundastory

 

Thanks for the interview!

 

© by Mike Haberfelner


Legal note: (re)Search my Trash cannot
and shall not be held responsible for
content of sites from a third party.




Thanks for watching !!!



 

 

In times of uncertainty of a possible zombie outbreak, a woman has to decide between two men - only one of them's one of the undead.

 

There's No Such Thing as Zombies
starring
Luana Ribeira, Rudy Barrow and Rami Hilmi
special appearances by
Debra Lamb and Lynn Lowry

 

directed by
Eddie Bammeke

written by
Michael Haberfelner

produced by
Michael Haberfelner, Luana Ribeira and Eddie Bammeke

 

now streaming at

Amazon

Amazon UK

Vimeo

 

 

 

Robots and rats,
demons and potholes,
cuddly toys and
shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

is all of that.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to
-
a collection of short stories and mini-plays
ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic
to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle, all thought up by
the twisted mind of
screenwriter and film reviewer
Michael Haberfelner.

 

Tales to Chill
Your Bones to

the new anthology by
Michael Haberfelner

 

Out now from
Amazon!!!