Growing Pains

In three long, uninterrupted one-takes shot over a single summer’s day and night, the camera moves slowly through the park while the guests alternately react to the lens or try to ignore it. A gang of Pierrot clones mingle with the visitors. The film is an joint creation between students of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and the Danish Film School, initiated independently by the students. Using Bakken as a frame - historically, architecturally and socially - all the contributors helped develop the concept for both the film and the performative interventions in front of the camera, which are sometimes inseparable from the hedonistic and condensed semi-fictional universe that an amusement park is.

Set within a day’s natural cycle in a sentient forest, a deeper interconnectedness is threatened by an external force when darkness falls. Through shifting perspectives, viewers are invited on a sensory journey that bridges science and poetry, inspired by the research of Professor Suzanne Simard on mother trees.