Part of First Look 20/21
Friday, July 23, 2021, 4:00 p.m.
Museum of the Moving Image - Bartos Screening Room

Dir. John Skoog. Sweden. 2019, 71 mins. In Polish and Swedish with English subtitles. Aron Skoog, Agnieszka Podsiadlik, Billie Åstrand, Gitt Persson, Grzegorz Falkowski, Artur Krajewski, Mateusz Wieclawek. At once communal and personal, patiently observational and cinematically inventive, Ridge sees debut filmmaker John Skoog encountering and collaborating with the small southern Swedish community of his childhood. Over the course of a summer, we encounter farmers, tourists, migrant workers, young video gamers, and drunks—a mix of real-life neighbors, performers, and the director’s own family members. Skoog’s choices are uniquely his, emergent from this time and place and supported by a tone—deadpan, reserved, grayly comedic, somewhat ominous—that is also sui generis. At the same time, there is a sense of craft at play—of framing and color and movement, of contrapuntal subterranean sound—that cannot help but call to mind the very masters of the form. Winner of the 2019 CPH: DOX Grand Jury Prize. New York premiere.

Preceded by The Harvesters, Dir. Derek Howard. Kenya, Canada. 2019, 6 mins. This richly sensory film renders each stage of a honey harvest by three Maasai men with hypnotic concentration. New York premiere.