Page 22 - Fujifilm Exposure_25 Jean Francois Robin_ok

REACH FROM THE SKY
AN INTERVIEW WITH MATTIAS NYBERG
Suspended in a He was, however, “soon
struck by the vibrant cul- ture here. You walked through Soho and there were film companies every- where, and everyone
seemed to talk about film.”
Signing up for a BA degree course
in Communications and Audio-Visual Production at London Guildhall University (now part of the Metropolitan) Nyberg gained a particu- larly strong year for talented students what the course seemed to lack in decent in-house equipment.
The spectacular end result of his three years, during which time he had increasingly got to light various col- lege films, was his graduation project in collaboration with, in his own words, a “very driven and conscien- tious” group of fellow filmmakers led by German director, Florian Giefer.
The Brothers Martorana, an atmos- pheric circus drama about three knife- throwing siblings finally driven apart as the pressures of the Big Top take their toll, won the 1999 Fujifilm Scholarship Award for Best Overall Production. In addition, it garnered the BBC Design Award for Lucy-Sian Clark while Nyberg himself was named
continued on page 22
cage from a
builder’s crane
nearly 700 feet
up above a con-
struction site at
Canary Wharf in London’s
Docklands, Mattias Nyberg would have needed regular reminding that it was all in the cause of ‘art’.
The fact it was also a freezing cold January day and Swedish-born Nyberg suffered from vertigo didn’t help either. The result, however, has since helped to block out some of the worst aspects of that wintry memory.
Nyberg had been invited by acclaimed British photographic artist Catherine Yass to film an eight-minute continuous take with the self-descrip- tive title Descent which then became part of her much publicised Turner Prize short-listed entry in 2002.
Filming on Super Fuji 16mm 500T, Nyberg held the shot while being low- ered to the ground. “We’re looking at buildings in the fog. The Canary Wharf tower was camera left and the HSBC building was in the background,” he explained. It took three takes.
In post-production, Yass flipped the image, “as if you’re going down the
building upside down,” said Nyberg. To add, reported an official website helpful- ly, “perspectival distortions.” A related sequence of photographs in lightboxes shot by Yass from the top of the build- ing site with a stills camera created “a giddying sense of freefall. Buildings dis- integrate into abstracted streaks of colour and light as the camera tilts downward towards the ground.”
This art installation contrasts nice- ly with a much more recent art film with which Nyberg has been involved. Destined for showing later this year at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead – then probably at various film events around the world – it was an intriguing project shot at the town’s famous unfinished high rise car park which film buffs may recall was the scene of a spectacular murder in the 1971 cult thriller, Get Carter.
Directed by Runa Islam, Project Car Park was filmed over six days using sets, actors and split screen all juxta- posed with shots of the architecture
and the architect’s original model. This time the weather was “fantastic. The building’s great especially from the inside and I was able to get a real- ly contrasty look – using Fuji’s 125T and 250D – with the shafts of light and the concrete,” Nyberg enthused.
For a young man – he’s now just 28 – who might have been destined to become a full-time ice hockey profes- sional, Nyberg’s career has clearly undergone a major sea change since he left Sweden for England in 1995. He had studied economics at university but most of his waking time seemed to have been taken up with sport.
Looking back now, Nyberg, a rangy 6ft 5ins but two stone lighter than when he had to keep bulked up for his first division ice hockery team, thinks he did- n’t really have “the right mentality. I was too interested in other things like pho- tography and literature.” So, with a group of friends who were similarly bored with their native land, he set off for London without much idea of what to do next.
Photos above: Dudley Sutton in Cheese Makes You Dream directed by Kara Miller; opposite page: Mattias Nyberg
20 • Exposure • Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video