Göran Olsson

Archival film maestro Göran Hugo Olsson has assembled—from a vast catalogue of footage in the vaults of Sweden’s national television service SVT—accounts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as witnessed and represented by Swedish journalists. Stories of the beginning of the Israeli state interwoven with the Palestinian struggle for independence. News coverage with Yasser Arafat and interviews with Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban during a visit to Sweden unseen since first broadcast. From the tenth anniversary of Israel’s founding to the First Intifada, perspectives and encounters with statesmen, civilians, revolutionaries, and intellectuals tell the story from myriad angles of an evolving media landscape, revivifying a history of the ongoing conflict.

In the sixties, Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) built a house on the remote island of Fårö, located in the Baltic Sea, and left Stockholm to live there. When he died, the house was preserved. A group of very special film buffs, came from all over the world, travel to Fårö in search of the genius and his legacy. (An abridged version of Bergman's Video, 2012.)

Albert and David Maysles' classic GREY GARDENS immortalized the estate of Edith and Little Edie Beale, relatives of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who lived in alarmingly poor conditions. But there is more to the story: it was Lee Radziwill and Peter Beard who first brought the Maysles to the Beales, when the two set out to make a film about Radziwill's childhood. The reels of that first contact were shelved for 45 years. This documentary recovers the lost footage. Anchored in Beard's recollections and artistic vision, we are returned to "that summer" in 1972, a seductive dream world and collage of radically unconventional creative personalities—Warhol, Bacon, Jagger, Capote—practicing the art of living amidst oppressive forces of class expectation and prejudice.

25 years after Paris is Burning, we dive back into the fierce world of voguing battles in the Kiki scene of New York City, where competition between Houses demands leadership, painstaking practice, and performances on point. A film collaboration between Kiki gatekeeper, Twiggy Pucci Garçon, and Swedish filmmaker Sara Jordenö, we’re granted exclusive access into this high stakes world, where tough competitions act as a gateway into the daily lives of LGBTQ youth of color in NYC. The new generation of ballroom youth use the motto, “Not About us Without Us”. Twiggy and Sara’s insider-outsider approach to their stories breathes fresh life into the representation of a marginalized community who demand visibility and real political power.

Examines the evolution of the Black Power Movement in US society from 1967 to 1975. It features footage of the movement shot by Swedish journalists in the United States during that period and includes the appearances of Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, and other activists, artists, and leaders central to the movement.

Loran, a filmmaker from the notorious suburb Gottsunda, grapples with the desire to move away but is torn by loyalty to his childhood friends who lead a criminal life. "G" marks Loran's farewell to Gottsunda but completing the film in a changed community tests his sense of belonging and identity.

Daoud lives in a limbo that he is trying to break. He cannot go back to Somalia and he is expelled from one European country to another. He is a 'Dublin-case'. Daoud is accused of lying about his age. He has almost given up. The film depicts his time in Sweden.

In 1996, the artist Leila K was nominated for the best album award, for her album "Manic Panic", in the Swedish Grammis Gallan. She ultimately lost the award to Dilba, and didn't take it very well. The day after, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published a story about Leila K peeing on the floor at the award ceremony. Leila K filed a lawsuit against them, and was offered a chance to redeem herself. The documentary also covers how Leila K built her career and stardom, from the beginning with Rob'n'Raz and their world wide mega hit "Got To Get" in 1989, up to her second album of her solo career.

"England 79" - 17 scenes from Great Britain the winter of discontent, 1979.

In April 1975 Commando Holger Meins occupies the West German Embassy in Stockholm. In exchange for the hostages they want to force the release of RAF-prisoners in Germany; Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin, etc. The occupation lasts twelve hours and ends in defeat for the occupants, left is a blown-up Embassy and four people dead, two of them executed by the occupants. Karl-Heinz Dellwo, 23 years old, is arrested and sentenced to jail. In 1995 he is released from prison. Today he lives in Hamburg with his girlfriend Ella, also a former terrorist. Karl-Heinz is trying to create a new life for himself, but he is always haunted by his violent past.

A creative documentary about the song recorded by soul-man Billy Paul in the 70's. But also about the Philly Sound, Philadelphia, racism, cocaine, money and fame in the life and love of a beautiful elderly couple.

Khieu Samphan was, as head of state, the public face of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. Facing Genocide is a close portrait of the man who made Pol Pot's terror regime possible.

Based on powerful archival material documenting the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation in the Third World, this documentary is accompanied by classic text from The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.

Amber belongs to a queer generation which no longer wants society to dictate their identity. The teenagers proudly inhabit a spectrum of fluid identities and master their first loves and losses.

While southern Europe is crumbling, Angola is the world’s fastest growing economy. In Africa’s rapidly developing cities, urban musicians are creating sounds that have come to define the new generation. Urban music like kuduro, coupé-décalé and azonto have arisen out of social change and have come to define a new African identity shaped by post-colonial consciousness.

Three years in the life of Swedish singer Olle Ljungström.

Theater the New Hip-Hop depicts the life of Sharmarke Elmi. In a world where hip-hop has been the primary creative expression, he challenges himself and his surroundings. Sharmarke starts with stand-up but discovers that theater also can be a way to create stories out of life. With the support of his friends who are artists, poets and writers, he gathers the courage and get up on a theater stage for the first time. The film captures Sharmarke’s struggle to break norms. It is a film about theater, hip-hop and society.

Since 1967, Guy Debord’s critical manifesto ‘The Society of the Spectacle’ has been an essentiel theoretical basis for any attempt to analyse the capitalist society of images that permeates every aspect of life in the Western world. We live in a continuous sensory bombardment of distractions that keep us in the role of passive consumers – a condition that has not exactly improved since the revolutionary 60s. What to do? And how do you film a notoriously complicated theory that attacks the very image itself? Artist Roxy Farhat and filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson (‘Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975’) bring Guy Debord’s ideas into the 21st century. Guy Debord’s own (anti)films are given a modern counterpoint by satirical interventions in a visual work that is not afraid to criticise neither itself nor the cult around Debord and situationism.

"There can only be an unhappy ending to this", people say when they hear about Palestinian Osama and his Israeli wife Jasmin’s love. Their home countries separate them through racist laws and lack of security. They choose exile, but soon rosy dreams turn into despair in an inhospitable Europe. Will their love survive?