http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/sep/20/three-miles-from-molkom-angsbacka
What do you get if you mix a camera, £3,000 and a Swedish hippy
festival? An unlikely hit film, writes Carole Cadwalladr
Carole Cadwalladr
20 September 2009
Is Three Miles North of Molkom the lowest budget film ever made? Or
at least the cheapest to have achieved a cinema release? It must be
up there because the whole thing was shot for what the film-makers,
Robert Cannan and Corinna Villari-McFarlane estimate was "a maximum
of £3,000 and we had to beg, borrow and steal to put that much together".
The post-production cost more but it's still remarkably little for
what has turned out to be a funny, observational documentary that
opened in cinemas last week in Britain after having been a hit on the
festival circuit, and has drawn rave reviews from the likes of
Variety and Hollywood Reporter.
It's set in a hippy festival in central Sweden, held every summer,
called called Ängsbacka, or the No Mind Festival, and follows a group
of strangers as they hug trees, walk over hot coals, are elaborately
rebirthed in native American ceremonies and come together as a group,
to "share".
"We'd been looking around for the right project and then I met a man
at a dinner party who told me about Ängsbacka and I immediately
thought it was it. It's a confined space for a confined period of
time and it's a group of people who are on a journey," says
Villari-McFarlane. "We're both really interested in group dynamics
and psychology our mothers are psychotherapists but the whole
thing was a complete leap into the dark. We only got the go ahead
from the organisers six weeks beforehand. We had to just to turn up
and find our characters on the spot."
Which was where they had their biggest stroke of luck. Because
"Nick", an Australian rugby coach, is the natural star of the film.
He only ended up there by accident ("I thought it was going to be a
sort of Swedish Glastonbury") and for the first few days is convinced
that it's some sort of cult. He hates Ängsbacka, hates hippies, and
hates anything that might be construed as spilling your guts. "I
mean, why don't they just get on and deal with it?" he says.
There's been talk of a Hollywood remake, after the review in Variety
came out they had all the big studios on the phone, but it already
feels like it could have been made up: Nick is so perfect that it's
hard not to suspect that he's some sort of stooge, but
Villari-McFarlane and Cannan say that he actually found them. "He
just sort of fell from the skies." He was so relieved to meet some
English "normal" people that he asked to hang out with them and ended
up in the film. He's a delight to watch, funny and sardonic and,
thankfully, cynical. Right up to the point he falls in love with a
Norwegian girl and actually starts enjoying himself. He even starts "sharing".
If the documentary had been made for Channel 4, there'd have been a
patronising voice-over and in all probability a slightly sneering
tone. As it is, Three Miles North of Molkom just follows the action.
"We felt that it was key to show that we were involved. To show that
we weren't just distant observers. I went and did the sweat lodge the
night before they did [in which all the characters are filmed naked]
because I felt that it was important that if they were exposing
themselves to such a degree, then I should too," says Villari-McFarlane.
More than that though, they found it an oddly liberating place to
make their first feature. What with tantric sex workshops and the
endless emoting, they found it a very "freeing" environment. What's
more they had their own epiphany. Before the festival, they'd been
friends and colleagues. But it was in Ängsbacka they fell in love.
And now they're romantic partners.
You did a Nick?
"We did! We owe Ängsbacka quite a lot. In one way or another."
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