Coco Schrijber’s cinematic examination of boredom evokes Kierkegaard: “Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.” Narrated by John Malkovich, the film uses readings from Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho as touchstones. The opening profile features notorious school shooter Brenda Spencer, who shot 11 people when she was 16 to “make Monday more interesting.” Other characters include a Wall Street broker, a pie factory worker, an artist who has been painting time for more than 42 years, the last living World War II female spy and a Saharan nomad. But is boredom always bad? Many philosophers and scholars consider boredom the precursor of creativity; others think that boredom is proof of existence. The film intercuts and sometimes overlaps images and narration to tease out boredom’s place in human affairs. In a bold cinematic move, an uncomfortably long, static shot of train tracks deserves admiration for perfectly creating boredom. Lena, the pie factory worker, pursues a music career by night and takes responsibility for extinguishing ennui: “The world is everywhere. It has endless possibilities. It’s up to me to spot them.”
In his film company dokumentar.no Lie has since 2008 been working as a film director, cinematographer and producer for documentaries. He works with the new Canon EOS 5D/7D with HD film, and edits in Apple's Final cut.
With Haiti mon Amour (Kjære Haiti, hva nå?) Lie went to Port-au-Prince after the earthqake with Ole Paus and others. We followed the money collected by the norwegian consert Dugnad for Haiti and NRK, and then given to Red Cross, Church Aid and UNICEF. It is edited as a low budget film essay, an montage of images. (se video below)
He has since 2007 worked on a documentary portrait – The Seduced Human – Jørgten Leth and Haiti on the danish renowned filmmaker Jørgen Leth (2011). This one-hour documentary is financed so far by the Norwegian Film Institute with 720 000 kroner – and will be released in 2011. (se video below)
Lie is also editor-in-chief for DOX, the leading European quarterly magazine for documentary films, published by the European Documentary Network. See PDFs of the last magaines below.
Lie has been the editor-in-chief and publisher for Morgenbladet between 1993-2003, and has been editor-in-chief/publisher of the Nordic edition of the monthly newspaper Le Monde diplomatique between 2003-08, where he now is still the publisher and regulary film critic.
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