Society
Interview with Thomas Østbye, Norway
THOMAS ØSTBYE is a distinctive voice among Norwegian directors. He’s known to combine artistic reflections on the documentary genre with contemporary political dilemmas. He made his mark with formally challenging documentaries like Imagining Emanuel, HUMAN, and In your dreams, which received a dozen art and film awards, bought by the Arts Council Norway, and screened at venues ranging from the National Broadcasting to the Museum of Modern Art NY. Østbye also makes art installations, photography, interactive film, and runs the production company PlymSerafin. He is currently working with a ClimateTrilogy, and a feature doc: SOCIETY
We sat down with filmmaker and director Thomas Østbye to discuss climate storytelling and its relation to social change. Østbye is part of the Nordic Lab with his film “Society” which poses the questions of what you really value in society, and what you would fight to preserve? What can you let go of, even if it hurts? The film takes place in Norway and Indonesia in parallel.
“-Storytelling can be meaningful but it can also be a false pseudo-meaningful activity, in which it creates a sense of agency and responsibility without that necessarily correlates with any actual real change.”
Our starting point is that we are in the shit already, as humanity we are not facing a wave coming at us, we're in the water already… Doing what we have done before will never be enough.
Storytelling does however hold potential to create change, it could for example influence power since much power depends on its communication and film may present counter-visions. But clearly, it hasn’t been effective until now in terms of creating change when it comes to the climate emergency.
We could perhaps talk about what it should be? But that is a much larger question.
“Storytelling makes it possible to experience a different point of view and a different world. It also allows for us to have collective experiences and common references, and this can help to build better fellowships and communities needed for the actual fight.”
Further, storytelling holds potential regarding experiments with filmmagic, with potential ways to deal with catastrophe and new realities. It is essential that we test new stuff. Although this requires us to be open to failing a lot, as is the case with experimenting.
Film has, especially concerning justice struggles, been successful in helping draw up the battle lines, to visualize and define conflict and to help the fight.
“-People in power are escalating the emergency, they can only do this because we are failing to understand where the frontline is. Storytelling can help visualize who’s in power, who’s guilty, who is not, who has agency etcetera.”
It can connect different struggles with each other, and empower those struggles. Storytelling can also help us perceive ourselves as part of a group that has the agency to act.
So how do we tell the difference between false or actual change-generating storytelling? There is no easy or singular solution, it is not like one film can stop the climate emergency, but people can’t be part of a struggle if they don’t have any perception of who the guilty ones are. Storytelling can help people identify different power positions, and as such it has great potential and capacity for possible action.
But to be honest, in reality, it is not about “the climate”. To be too focused on a conceptual word like that can be both limited and problematic. It is more accurately about the good and bad.
“-In reality it is about self defense.”
About being a destroyer or helping fight the system that kills innocent people. About some people harming other people for money and power. Climate is one arena, but the fight is bigger than that in my opinion.
Maybe we need a reframing? Climate in itself can be seen as a lens to approach inequality between people, extractivism, imperialism. To make it easier to address global scale problems and lift problems as systematic instead of singular cases. Different lenses can be valuable for different things, but the objection against the word comes from an overuse that causes a dilution of meaning.
Film has the capacity to create storytelling of experiencing reality in proxyform, to move us in time and between places. This makes it possible to connect with the consequences of our actions or inactions of today.