Could this coronavirus be the best way to cope with loneliness: Watching movies for a week on a remote Swedish island, with no connection to the outside world? Cultural festival presented this chance, and applications are now open.
The Gothenburg Film Festival has had to implement its 2021 strategies to stop the spread of coronavirus infection in Sweden. It also has to ban public events involving more than eight people.
As a substitute, moviegoers will be asked to spend a week on a remote island. They will be watching in solitude for 60 films.
The theme of this year’s festival, the largest of its kind in Scandinavia, is social distances. Applications are now open for a weekend on Pater Noster’s remote Lighthouse Island.
Film fans chosen for the role will be requested to provide a report on the films they have seen and their loneliness experiences. If selected, you will communicate with the outside world for a week without social media and phone calls.
The experiment is presently for the week starting January 30. But ship transport from the island can move according to the climate.
For centuries, Pater Noster deemed uninhabitable and dangerous. Its name comes from the Latin version of the Lord’s Prayer. Sailors supposedly repeat it as they approached. That may no longer be the case since the island’s lighthouse was turned into a luxury hotel. However, it remains a remote and barren place. And the person chosen by the festival will spend the week as the only guest.
The festival is also offering screenings for one person only at Gothenburg’s Scandinavium arena and Draken cinema. It is for those who are unsuccessful or unable to spend the week on the island. Alternatively, you can join the festival’s digital platform, where the films and talks will also be available.
“The creation of isolated film experiences for single-person audiences at iconic sites is a way of ensuring entirely safe festival screenings. However, it is also an attempt to process how the pandemic has changed people’s relationships with the film. On Pater Noster, it’s all about the total isolation that so many people experienced in the world over this past year.
The festival’s artistic director Jonas Holmberg explained;
”The sensation of being utterly alone in the Scandinavium arena or Draken cinema ties in with the altered relationship people now have to all those places that normally buzz with activity but are now deserted”.
Sounds like a wild adventure 😊