The Rotterdam International Film Festival is scheduled to continue until Sunday, February 4, having begun on Thursday, January 25. Professionals in the film industry and others with an interest in it convene to view films from around the world. In addition to feature films, documentaries will also compete to represent the most impressive incidents in the world. Director Alexander Lind’s documentary The Light examines the Elle-Mie laser beam show on the West Coast of Jutland, Denmark, which is one of the most-discussed works of art in history.
The Light is an exceptionally well-made documentary that meticulously investigates an era in art that will likely go unnoticed or unrecognized by many audiences: the turbulent public controversy that surrounded Elle-Mie Ejdrup Hansen’s Peace Sculpture installation from 1995, which was designed to commemorate Denmark’s liberation from Nazi occupation. By connecting the remaining 6,000 war bunkers along the west coast at night with a single laser beam, the initiative brought to light a troubling ambiguity in the collective memory of the nation.
The Danish resistance’s surviving members instigated an opposition campaign against the project, which was rapidly disseminated via parliamentary channels and mass media. Presently, filmmaker Alexander Lind draws attention to elements that were possibly less conspicuous in 1995. The documentary The Light reveals the enigmatic moments that had been buried for so long beneath wrath and silence. The questions arise after more than two decades of shunning the truth. The questions like, “Do these structures indicate a historical partnership with the Nazis?”
The Danish eminent artist Elle-Mie Ejdrup Hansen investigates the relationships between space, technology, and people through a wide range of media, including drawing, traditional oil painting, and large-scale site-specific pieces. Whether it be a church, a socially challenged neighborhood building complex, a distinctive Danish coastline, or a field in Western Jutland, the initial setting frequently has a particular topography and spatiality. An underlying theme that unites the larger works is an enthusiasm for emerging technologies, including novel forms of video, light, or software. Her works include collaborations with people from other disciplines, mainly composers, musicians, designers, and technology specialists.
The renowned director Alexander Lind, whose graduation film Carl and Niels was awarded international acclaim after being selected for the esteemed IDFA film festival in Amsterdam, now presents a documentation of one of the most contentious pieces of artwork of 1995. From the debitive days of the Danish Parliament to Elle-Mie and her team members’ attempts to perform the enormous laser show, his 70-minute documentary The Light masterfully returns the audiences to those restless days of the artist’s show.
Alexander Lind combines the old footage with the present interviews and shots in a closed-space studio to recreate a historical event. By listening to people from different positions, we can discover Elle-Mie’s character, coupled with her persistence and determination to do that huge job. Employing a laser beam light or candle inside the dark studio, Lind invites us to the light of truth. The sentences declared in the interviews were also chosen smartly. While we hear Elle-Mie’s voice over the ocean, shore, and waves while coming to the bunkers or while getting to know her through her friends (Leif and Gitte Kathe), mentor (Inge Bjorn), or teammates (Jessica Kriesz and Heidi Meier Bach) words, it seems The Light touches our hearts.
According to the interviews, it is perceived that she suffered from cancer when shaping the idea of the Peace Sculpture Installation. “To me, the bunkers symbolize the scars of a diseased time,” Elle-Mie says. Or in another scene, she talks about the bombardment of radiation on her body and points out that the bunkers were constructed to defend Denmark while it was under the dominance of Hitler’s Nazis, or when she persists on the laser beam effect on the coastline to bring out the light of truth. To the artist, this work of art is life, not just a show in which the curtains fall, and scandalous events are revealed. Although it is impossible “to hide 6,000 bunkers in Denmark,” Danish authorities and people apparently deny the reality of what happened during the Nazi occupation. This is what Alexander Lind portrays in different layers by spotting the painful grey area of the time.
Documentaries are to show the reality of life, even if it is so bitter and unbearable. The stories of the Second World War are almost the tales of the heroic journey the resistance movement took to bring freedom. Denmark has no exception until May 4, 1995, when Elle-Mie Ejdrup Hansen’s thought-provoking visual art triggers the trauma that has been hidden behind the victorious anecdotes. This is what artists do: unravel the truth for the public, as Alexander Lind did in his astonishing documentary, The Light.
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