IN DEPENDENCE
2008

Film | 12 mins

The short film In Dependence mixes newly recorded fictive and documentary sequences with archive material from film history. The fictive sequences examine the psychological and physical dynamics of the crowd by showing how two individuals (played by Elin Klinga and David Mjönes) act out the behavioural pattern of the crowd isolated in an abstract, private space. The documentary sequences and the quotes from film history show the crowd in scenes that correspond to the actions of the two individuals, but they also add an historic dimension, by showing how the fascination of the crowd has been something essential and recurrent in modern culture – from the hysteria of the pop concert audience and the elaborate mass choreography of the Broadway musical, to the Stalinist spectacles, and so on. The three parts of the film follow different velocities and rhythms, and represent separate moments in the dynamics of the crowd: the self-denying attraction of belonging, the collective exstasis of unity, and the chaos and the melancholic awareness of dissolution.