Longing for Belonging

Beate Mortensen Nesheim

Year of Production: 2001 Category: C-film Duration: 42 min. Sound: mono Language: Norwegian English Subtitles Download the film(295mb) OBS!Broadband only! Download a clip(5,92mb) Contact the Director Havøysund, a small fishing village in northern Norway. A place of different values for different people. What makes the sense of belonging - or not belonging to this place? The film is portraying different people's perspective on life here, as well as the everyday life at the place. The two young girls, Linn and Cathrin (image), want to escape the island. Their interests and values at this point in life, is pulling them away from the place against the cities, but still it is hard for them to cut or stretch the bonds to their homeplace.

Palmer is raised into the world of fish, sea and docks. He is in some ways a fisherman by his own choice, and at the same time a fisherman due to the lack of other opportunities.

Jens lived the Dream that many northerners have: To escape the dark and cold winter season by travelling to a warmer and more pleasant world. In Thailand he met Phlabphlung. She came with her two sons to live in Havøysund with him, and found her place in the community in an unexpected way.
Havøysund is my own homeplace. I grew up here but left the place many years ago. As a student of Visual Anthropology I went back to do a study
of place and belonging. My own feelings towards the place are somehow ambiguous: It is the paradise island of my childhood - and the 'Alcatraz', the isolated, jail-island of my teen age. The dream was to escape.
In my former fellow islanders I recognised the ambiguous feelings towards this place that I myself have. I see this as pointing to the fact that what a place is, is not defined once and for all. The idea of place can change and exists as different and often ambiguous conceptions in people's minds. The sense of belonging to a community doesn't necessarily mean belonging to the place where you're born and raised, and the wish to stay where feel you belong might limit your opportunities in life.
The field- and film work was carried out over six months, from July to December 2000.


Copyright: 2001 Visual Cultural Studies, University of Tromsø
For distribution, please contact:
Gøril Skotnes
Marit Gjertsen