Weightless by Erika Janunger

On a boring college night, the average student would be idly clicking through various friend’s facebook pages, but as I have vowed to never use the social networking website again, I decide to spend the night with a bowl of ramen and Youtube. I began my video venture by looking at some great samba videos to see if they could help refine my own latin dance techniques; after some grueling moments trying to mimic my own movements to those of the big hipped Brazilian girls, I decided to take a rest and look at some other videos (you might be wondering how this all relates to film… I’m getting there) and then I stumbled upon this gem: "A short dance/architectural movie about defying gravity". Immediately I was drawn in by the eerie playing of the toy piano and the melodic coo of an unknown songstress, who I come to find out is also the scenographer and director of this very short film, Erika Janunger. To say that I understand from a technical viewpoint everything that’s going on would be an absolute lie, but I think that’s what drew me too to this film even more. Sitting down and actively watching this video as a student of film and not knowing how the talent was laying on the walls or how the books thrown off the shelves were pulled onto the wall like if the two had some magnetic pull towards each other intrigued me.

Moreover, everything about this visually stimulated me: the lighting is simple, yet beautiful, and added to the mysterious mood of the film. For example, the first two opening shots of the light bulbs: GORGEOUS! The casting was great as well: both of the dancers were very aware of their bodies’, and every movement they made was calculated, precise, yet organic. The locations were minimalistic and, added to the overall vibe of the film.

I enjoyed this piece so much that I went a step further and researched Erika Janunger a little bit more unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of background info on her but I did find an online portfolio or sorts. My favorite thing up there had to be her idea for a, stage for street musicians, you can check that out under the “architecture “ tab on her website and a whole bunch of other cool things here: http://www.erikajanunger.se/design/