In the last couple years I’ve conducted two very long interviews with Rob Tregenza, whose journey through cinema comprises four independent features of staggering vision (one being the sole film Godard produced outside his own direction), DP duties for Alex Cox and (with remarkable strife) Béla Tarr, and ambitions for a fifth film. In our second conversation he surprised me: our first chat helped fuel The Fishing Place, a project he directed in Norway with elaborate crane systems (recalling his debut Talking to Strangers) and featuring, in his words, “the best [actors]––technically and artistically––I’ve ever had the blessing to work with.”
Tregenza’s own Cinema Parallel––distributor of Tarr and Godard when no American company bothered touching their work––will give The Fishing Place a one-week run at MoMA starting February 6 and in LA via Laemmle on March 7, ahead of which we’re pleased to exclusively debut a trailer.
Here’s the synopsis: “Anna Kristiansen, imprisoned by the Nazis during the German occupation of Norway, finds herself in a precarious position when Norwegian Nazi Officer Aksel Hansen secures her release. Her freedom comes with a daunting price. Anna is dispatched to the hydroelectric town of Notodden to spy on Adam Honderich, a German High Church Lutheran Minister/Priest suspected of resistance activities. Conflicted by the moral ambiguity of her situation, but given only three days to succeed, she must survive sudden obstacles, the brutality of war, gestell, rapidly shifting cultures, all while seeking some final hope of redemption. The Minister/Priest goes fishing.”
Find the preview and poster below:
