| 8mm film transferred to DVD (2006) 8 minutes Stereo sound Colour English subtitles
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The film is based on the story of an episode experienced by a Danish and a Norwegian women at a pub in Nottingham, England. In 1992 both were au pairs in Nottingham where they met each other at a language course. They became friends and later fell in love.
In 1992 British laws on “public indecency” and “obscenity” still forbade homosexuals from showing affection in public. The episode at the pub mirrors the two women’s struggle for finding a space of their own, which was not possible at their respective host families either.
In the story, language makes surprising leaps, but personal contexts remain misinterpreted. The episode at the pub and the retold ghost story expresses what could be seen as three different kind of “otherness”; sexual, metaphysical, and lingual. In the women’s intense experience of getting to know each other, the film reflects on how identity is also formed through the telling of stories.
Two voices tell the story. Dictionary fragments of English words with Scandinavian etymology interweave their story. Persons with local Midlands accents pronounce the words, which function as keywords for the story. Visually, the film primarily consists of blank white film from the end of an 8 mm film reel. Short glimpses of 8 mm film images are shown, reflecting glimpses of memory. Additionally, a condensed soundscape provides an ambience around the space of the story.
Stills from “A New Space Within a Space”