A Year Along the Abandoned Road

Such humility!

Such humility in the face of this colossal undertaking!

Such humility in the face of these movements of stars, these trails of northern lights, these mountains and pebbles scattered along this abandoned road on the southernmost of the high northern islands of Norway…

"No signs of humans being around. I was the first person to make tracks in the snow. There were more and more abandoned houses, and this grand nature around, it gave me a very strong feeling right in my stomach. That feeling I had then, was one of the things I wanted to recreate in the film."

This is how filmmaker Morten Skallerud describes his discovery of the abandoned fishing village of Børfjord at the start of the 1980s. Ten years of back-and-forth trips, with 180 full days of work, and here we have the legendary 12-minute short film, A Year Along the Abandoned Road.

Some additional facts, as they fuel the imagination! At its core lies the technique developed by Skallerud and his team: "nature animation," a unique method blending stop motion, time-lapse, and a land-surveyor’s forward-moving camera. The technical feat of this final aspect is especially impressive, involving a computer powered directly from the mobile cart carrying the camera, thanks to a network of power cables and a generator, modeling the exact trajectory of the image to make its movement "invisible." Let’s remember that this was the 1980s, in the heart of an abandoned village. So much for the technical side.

As for the rest, imagine this small procession of filmmakers on their "road to Damascus," carefully moving their cart a few decimeters forward between each frame, creating a loop stretching... 2.5 kilometers! Such patience to put all these frames together over ten years of work… Ten years of work for twelve minutes of film! Such a deep dedication to filmmaking, right onto the analog film itself… Astonishing!

Further considerations to conclude: Skallerud now makes his film available on online platforms, but it is crucial to note that it was specifically designed for cinema screens. And not just any screens. To make the whole thing even more grandiose, the film was shot in Panavision—a costly panoramic format historically associated with epic films (like Ben-Hur, for example). Inevitably, we lose the immersive effect of the gigantic curved cinema screens when the camera accelerates through the curves—and the detail of the analog film, which surely enhances the sense of human presence and tactile connection with the landscape… Like an overlay of our inner stirrings.

A small consolation: it is now possible to freeze-frame and admire the details of each frame. Each one is a true work of art, especially when the rare humans of the year stop to pose for the camera—the descendants of fishermen who come back on vacation to visit their ancestral village.

As Borges once wrote: the world is inscribed on a face…

Emmanuel Bernier
Head of Acquisitions at Tënk
and loony bird