It seems appropriate that Three Miles North Of Molkom received its UK premiere on the eve of the Summer Solstice. No doubt the regular visitors to the No Mind Festival in Angsbacka (it's north of Molkom, you know) would approve. The commune places an emphasis on sharing – to the point of giving filmmakers Corinna Villari-McFarlane and Robert Cannan unfettered access to their two weeks of discovery. It's a great film – funny and touching, with some terrific cinematography. Both McFarlane and Cannan were brimming over before the Festival screening, and after the credits and clapping had subsided were happy to answer questions (along with one of the participants - albeit reluctantly- down-to-earth Aussie Nick, who had never seen the film before).
Jenny Leask, Documentary Programmer for the EIFF: Can you give us some background as to how the film came about and how you got such good access to everything that went on in this crazy place?
McFarlane: We were looking for a debut directorial project and we wanted to do something that challenged boundaries, and we wanted to make a documentary – 'cause no one was ever going to give us money to make a feature. We wanted to make a cinematic documentary that took you on a journey. So, I heard about this place. I called Rob, we went to check it out… they were very interesting. And we thought, let's make it work.
Cannan: Many things about the place instantly said 'we have to make the film here'. Obviously there were going to be lots of different characters going on lots of different journeys, plus the set up was a sharing situation so it was great, so you didn't have to go do the normal documentary thing of talking heads interviews. It was happening very naturally so you just let it happen. In terms of access, we did have to get the place on side, but once they were on side they could say to everyone coming, "this is a great thing, you're coming here to be as open as possible, be open for the film too." So a thousand people arrived and signed a release form as they came in. People were there to open up and there were so many crazy things going on that, in a way, the film was just another thing going on for them, so I think that's why we managed to get such a level of openness.
McFarlane: In terms of how we actually got the characters, we stood up on day one and we knew what we wanted – a range of ages and nationalities and sexes and experience levels of this kind of stuff – so we thought, okay, we've got about four hours to go and find a group and the way they do it is all the thousand people walk around in a tent and close their eyes and just 'feel the vibe' of who their group's going to be. So just before they did that we stood up and said, "we're making a film and this really means the world to us, it's our debut film" and we communicated to them how important this was to us and how we'd taken a gamble leaving jobs and everything to do this and then people volunteered. We found all the other characters and we really needed someone who was completely new to it and we'd almost given up on that, then Nick turned up. Someone ushered him over [Nick does an impression of being pushed heavily from behind], so it was perfect. I don't know if you want to ask Nick how it was for him…
JL: How was it for you Nick?
Nick [whose surname has not been revealed]: It's exactly what they said.
JL: How was it watching it tonight, because it's the first time you've seen the film?
Nick: It was surreal. It was surreal then and it's surreal now. I've been thinking about it so much, because Rob and Corinna asked me here. It wasn't so much an invitation as "You will get here or we will hunt you down for the rest of your days. [Cannan interjects: "That's not true"]. Yes it is. It's just fascinating, just to see, because a lot of that stuff I didn't actually see during the two weeks we were there. A lot of people were going off in different directions and doing different things. And obviously the tantra [tantric sex] was involved and, obviously, I'm not happy with that decision because my grandmother's 94 and she's going to have to watch this!
They open questions to the house, so I ask whether any of the other participants in the film have seen it and, if so, what they thought.
McFarlane: We were really quite worried about Siddharta [a Swedish Viking of a bloke who 'leads' many of the sharing groups] because at the screening he was at people found him quite amusing, and it was in his home town and it was the biggest film festival in Scandinavia so everyone who knew him was probably there. And we watched it and everyone was laughing and we thought 'oh no' but at the end he came down, strode down, and he loved it, he loved the look of himself, he loved the sound of himself and he said, "What have you got to laugh at, I'm just like you, we're all screwed up." And they gave him a big ovation.
Mervi [a Finnish grandma in poor health, who possibly goes on the greatest 'journey' during the film], on the other hand, comes – she's been to six screenings in all parts of the world.
Cannan: She turns up and dresses really glamorously and talks about "those days" when she was "like that". Now she's a totally different woman.
McFarlane: Ljus – he's the hippy, right – he hasn't seen it yet but he writes us these emails every few months and writes this kind of really weird stuff but he will see it when we go back to the festival to show it to them in a couple of weeks. And I think he's going to love it, you know, he's got all the ladies.
Q: To what extent was it a journey for yourselves? In terms of a spiritual journey – how did that work out for you?
Cannan: A lot of people say, 'how involved did you get in the stuff?' it's impossible to not get involved to some degree because it's going on around you all the time. At that time of the year in Sweden there's 20 hours of daylight, people barely sleep. Everyone is just up all the time, doing stuff and we were just shooting as much as you possibly could.
McFarlane: I think you have an experience of making your first film and that's kind of weird as it is and then its happening 20 hours a day and is really quite full on, you've got people crying in front of you and telling you all their stuff. So in terms of a journey in the sense of an organised, spiritual, set out target, it's not really like that, so it's still going on for us. But it was epic.
Cannan: It really was a great place to make a directorial debut because it was such a liberating environment.
