Three by Anne Haugsgjerd
Educated as an a graphic designer at the Norwegian School of Crafts and Design, Haugsgjerd only began working with film around 1980, initially as an assistant editor, before directing her first short, Life in Frogner. Haugsgjerd was stuck trying to edit footage she had shot of a well-to-do area of west Oslo when she came across the work of Swedish experimental filmmaker Eric M. Nilsson; a subsequent exchange with Nilsson became the inspiration for the film’s extraordinary voiceover, in which it becomes clear that (to paraphrase John Lennon) a film is what happens when the filmmaker is busy making other plans. Typically for Haugsgjerd’s career, the film won the public prize from the Norwegian short film festival in 1986 only after having been rejected for the same festival’s official program.