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Director's Statement
DEJA VU began years ago in my childhood home in rural Denmark when I did a dreadful act, that still reverberates within me. My father hung a painting of Jesus above my bed. Every evening before closing my eyes I begged the man on the cross to look after my family. When my family collapsed in spite of all my prayers I blinded his gift. I still remember the smell of the burning canvas and the shock of suddenly seeing checkered wallpaper instead of Jesus' eyes. Since then I have travelled the world with my camera to find new ways of looking at life.
I've traveled the world for almost half a century to make my films. Did I get anywhere? To answer that question I have thrown all of them into a large pot and boiled them for months to extract the essence of my journeys of discovery through a variety of documentary as well as fictional realms.
As a painter suffering from vertigo who in the autumn of his life spreads all his paintings out on the studio floor and with gouty legs climbs a tall ladder to view the motives he has depicted through time hoping all the paintings come together to a large painting of a man's attempt to reconcile himself with the timeline from young to old, from cradle to grave.
A personal tale of destiny told through the images I chose to focus on with my camera. The first and perhaps most dangerous image on the timeline occurred long before I got a camera when I burned out the eyes of Jesus on a painting above my childhood bed. Paradise lost. Since then, the rickety film director has been obsessed with focusing on how those in front of his camera try to keep their balance in a world that is constantly changing its mask. "