Change of power at Doc Lounge Stockholm!
Doc Lounge Stockholm is in a time of change - old project managers are leaving and new are taking over. We are thanking Ilja Stenberg and Madde Edlund for three great years, at the same time as we are welcoming Gloria Hao and Jonatan Rolfer to the role as project managers at Doc Lounge Stockholm!
Ilja and Madde, you are leaving Doc Lounge for new adventures. What have been best with working with Doc Lounge?
Madde: To do the actual events. The very best might have been when everything fell in to place, and then when the film started I always got chills.
Ilja: To do everything! To watch docs and choose to screen the once that we were touched by. Then come up with ideas of things that could go with the film and implement them! To have all crazy ideas! And to welcome people to experiences we had created!
Tell us your best anecdotes!
M: At the screening of Pepe Mujica - Lessons from the Flowerbed, we had prepared a scenography with paper flowers below the screening canvas. After the screening, one lady in the audience asked if she could get on of the paper flowers. Of course she could and it all ended with us all standing and breaking the scenography, not one single paper flower were left in the end!
I: For the screening of Dazzling Light Of Sunset, we set up a collaboration with the Georgian Embassy in Stockholm. It all ended with that the ambassador herself sponsored the screening with a lot of Georgian wine and held a toast after the screening!
What have been the most challenging?
M: To always challenge and push the boarders of what a film screening is allowed to be/should be/is. And in the beginning to speak on stage!
I: We always wanted the work with Doc Lounge Stockholm to be hard and challenging for ourselves. But the most challenging has been to keep everything together, to engage in all parts of the work without breaking...
Do you have any advice to pass on to Gloria and Jonatan?
M: Never get comforteble or take the easy way out!
I: Have fun! Connect with industry people. Exchange ideas with others working with similar things and try out all crazy ideas!
Jonatan and Gloria, welcome as new project managers to Doc Lounge Stockholm! Who are you and how did you end up at Doc Lounge?
Gloria: I work as stage designer and artist and studied architecture. I winded up at Doc Lounge because I like working with social meeting places and its certain qualities and people - whether that place is a theatre or a film club.
Jonatan: Besides planning these fun creative events with Gloria I run a small music company through which I give out music, play music and mentor artists. I have always been a sucker for film clubs, and frustrated over the lack of them, so when the possibility to work with one came up it was a no brainer.
What are you most excited about?
G: I’m excited about shaping the concept and working together with Jonatan, merging our different fields into common ground.
J: Same as G of course and also to find out where is the weirdest, most unexpected place to host a screening in Stockholm?!
What is your vision for Doc Lounge Stockholm and what can we expect to happen?
J: We want to spread the word of Doc Lounge Stockholm and hopefully make it as popular as our cousin down in Malmö!
G: A remix of high and low - in terms of films, places and art expressions. Extending the documentaries into the club experience with spatial and perfomative art installations.
J & G: Boundless opera divas and new voices of swedish rap scene, to say the least!
Any comment on the advices from Ilja and Madde?
J & G: We learnt a great deal from I and M. They really helped us get into the Doc Lounge bubble and told us to go for our ideas, that no idea is too weird and that 'trial and error' is a great work method. We like!
Photo to the left by Henrik Johansson. Madde and Ilja at their screening of Speed Sisters in a garage 28/11 2015.
Photo to the right by Natalia Fuentes Araya. Glora and Jonatan at their premiere event, the screening of Free Lunch Society 26/9 2017.