About me
Emil Engesnes Bråthen (1997-) is from Orkland, Trøndelag. He graduated with a Bachelor in Moving Images (Fine Arts) in 2022. Since graduating he has worked as en editor and colorist at the production company, Lofoten Film Collective, in Lofoten, Norway. During this period he has written and directed several award winning short films. He now recides in Stockholm, Sweden.
For an in-depth list of works, check my CV at the bottom of the page.
Artist Statement
I work with experimental video art and narrative fiction films, both made with the silver screen in mind. My main focus are the dangers and traumas surrounding the lives of children as well as the audience perception in regards to violence and memory as seen on screen. The work often centers around the idea that sound and image should act as strict observers in lieu of emotional extractors for the audience to be told what to feel. The intention is that the audience's critical thinking surrounding the themes of the work is itself a part of the experience.
The cinema has become a safe space where you go to escape reality, but this has to be challenged. The art of cinema shall not only offer safe and familiar viewpoints from where you can observe violence and evil. Instead, the viewer shall become aware of their own relationship with on-screen cruelty and be forced to acknowledge it.
If the audience experience intellectual independence while facing the images they are presented, only then can questions asked by the artist finally be considered, pondered on and felt, long after the credits av finished rolling. Every artist possess some responsibility for their stance in relation to the contents of their work. This means that some works cannot simply be entertainment or a safety cushion for the observer. Instead, they have a responsibility to update and raise the viewers awareness - on a personal level - to the content they are exposed to.
To offer answers or truths in film are in many cases itself an act of violence upon the audience as it will further the distance between people and the experiences within the moving image. We have developed a fear of taking what happens on screen serious. This does not only concern art, but also the news, social media, talk and gossip. As an audience, we have a responsibility to ponder the questions that film and art proposes. Because, by letting movies give one-sided answers to what confuses and scares us about life, our selves, or the world we live in, we are throwing away our independence for comfort and a false sense blissful ignorance.
