Shadow Distribution has released the official trailer for Rob Tregenza’s GAVAGAI, adapted from the poetry of Tarjei Vesaas, considered to be one of Norway’s greatest writers. The film will open at Cinema Village in New York on August 3rd, and at the Music Hall in Los Angeles on August 10. Other select cities will follow.
Rob Tregenza’s uncompromising cinematic vision and devotion has, among other things, led him to direct such celebrated Independent films as Talking to Strangers, The Arc and Inside Out and to work with Jean-Luc Godard and, as a cinematographer with particular belief in long takes, for Alex Cox and Bela Tarr. In GAVAGAI, director Rob Tregenza and screenwriter Kirk Kjeldsen have adapted the poetry of Tarjei Vesaas, considered to be one of Norway’s greatest writers (1897-1970) to the screen.
German businessman Carsten Neuer travels to Norway to finish the impossible translation of some Norwegian poems by Tarjei Vesaas into Chinese, a project of his late wife. He hires Niko, a down-on-his-luck tour guide, to drive him to the poet’s home and places of inspiration to stimulate his own translation. On the road, the ghost of Carsten’s wife appears to him, while Niko struggles with the sudden consequences of his girlfriend’s pregnancy. On this journey, two very different men come to realize the transforming power of love, the limits of language, and the human need for friendship.
Shot entirely in Telemark, Norway on 35mm, the film stars Andreas Lust (from the Golden Bear-nominated film Der Räuber, The King’s Choice, and the Oscar-nominated film Revanche), Anni-Kristiina Juuso (from The Cuckoo and The Kautokeino Rebellion), and Mikkel Gaup (from Tregenza’s Inside/Out and the Oscar-nominated films Pathfinder and Breaking The Waves).
Director
Rob Tregenza (born November 14, 1950) is a North American cinematographer, film director, and producer. Besides shooting his own projects, Tregenza also worked as a director of photography with other directors, including Béla Tarr (Werckmeister Harmonies), Claude Miller (Marching Band), Pierre William Glenn (The Sad and Lonely Death of Edgar Allan Poe), and Alex Cox (Three Businessmen). Tregenza earned his PhD from UCLA in 1982. He has produced, directed and photographed four feature films: Talking to Strangers (1987), which appeared at the Berlin International Film Festival, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival; The Arc (1991), a co-production with Film Four International which showed in Berlin, Edinburgh, Toronto, and Chicago; Inside/Out (1997), which screened at Cannes, Toronto, Rotterdam, and Sundance; and Gavagai (2016).
Tregenza’s first feature, Talking to Strangers, won him acclaim and the eye and praise of Jean-Luc Godard, who personally selected the film in 1996 to be showcased at the Toronto Film Festival. Richard Brody, of The New Yorker, wrote of the main character, Jesse, in the film: “The drive for [his] purity extends through all domains—intimate, intellectual, artistic, and, for that matter, religious—as the quest for experience comes into conflict with the yearning for the realization of a higher, even transcendently great, ideal.” Tregenza’s third feature, Inside/Out, premiered at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section.
Tregenza’s fourth feature film, GAVAGAI (2016) was shot in 35mm, in Telemark,Norway. It stars Andreas Lust (The Robber 2010, Revanche 2008), Anni-Kristiina Juuso (The Cuckoo 2009) and Mikkel Gaup (Kautokeino Rebellion 2008) GAVAGAI was based on 15 poems by Tarjei Vesaas.