Addicted to Solitude

A documentary travelogue by Jon Bang Carlsen about South Africa after apartheid. The director talks with various inhabitants of rural South-African regions about the history of their country and about their desires and dreams for the future. In the process, he contrasts the beauty of the landscape with the fierceness of the events that took place in the recent past. The film concentrates on the life stories of two white women who have both suffered a tragic loss in their personal lives. Jon Bang Carlsen is one of the most single-minded contemporary Danish documentary filmmakers. Since 1971, he has been making films in which he focusses on individual people who, far from the turmoil of world politics, tell characteristic tales about the time we live in. Carlsen describes his method as ‘reinventing reality‘. To do so, he uses a procedure that some documentary filmmakers consider contentious. He may devote a lot of attention to research to make his films as accurate as possible, but he wants to retain total control over the reality he evokes. To this end, he presents himself as the narrator in his films, he makes his main characters ‘re-enact’ scenes, and if necessary he writes complete dialogues for them, so they express better what he wants to say with his film.