The Tree Lover Director: Jonas Selberg Augustsén, Sweden, 2008, 76 minutes
Friday May 29 | 7:00PM | Pacific Cinémathèque
Canadian Premiere
In a remote corner of northern Sweden, a trio of young men decide
to build a treehouse. Not just any treehouse, but a symbol of
a lost Eden, a physical embodiment of the missing connection between
people and the natural world. With little more than a few architectural
drawings, a tiny maquette, and a whole lot of gumption, Jonas
(director), Andreas (sound), and Anders (camera) embark on a journey
of personal and cultural discovery. It’s very easy to say ‘I want
to build a tree house,’ but the reality of doing it is something
else entirely. Jonas discovers this as he is suspended more than
fourteen metres in the air, desperately trying to hammer nails
into a tin roof. “This is so scary, I could cry,” he says. But
the constant threat of plummeting to one’s death, mosquito hell,
and the local police are the very least of their problems. While
Jonas agonizes that their project is ‘too male’ (the only female
on site is Maya, Jonas’s long-suffering dog), and that no one
really understands or cares about the underlying gravity of the
project, the hard work of hammering, sawing and building must
continue. The all-too brief Swedish summer is hurrying to a close,
and the tree house is unfinished.
The Tree Lover is filled with dry humour and a wonderful
quixotic spirit that recalls the very best of Thoreau or his Swedish
equivalent Eyvind Jonsson (who almost starved to death in a remote
cabin in the woods). With a little help from a cultural theorist,
a theologian, and a biologist, who collectively explicate the
critical place that trees have long occupied in human history,
the filmmakers craft a beautifully constructed exploration of
the human need for connection and home. Even if that home is in
a tree. As Martin Lönnebo, a bishop emeritus explains, the tree
is a central image in almost all human mythology and religion.
“The further away we get from the forest,” he says, “the more
we miss it, until we forget what it was that we were missing in
the first place.” In an increasingly secularized and rootless
age, where urban ease has largely replaced real (hard) work, the
act of physically building something proves a revelation. The
significance of the latin phrase ‘hic locus santcus est’ meaning
‘this is the place’ becomes clear as water when the final product
is finally unveiled.
Director’s Biography
Jonas Selberg Augustsén started out as a carpenter, going
on to become Head of Sales at H&M in northern Sweden before
he decided on a complete change of direction. He studied film
production at Kalix Folkhögskola, then moved on to the School
of Film Directing in Göteborg for four years. He has worked
on several award-winning short films together with the producer
Freddy Olsson. The Tree Lover is his first feature documentary.
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