Four short films by Anne Katrine Senstad created in collaboration with Actor Bill Sage. ¹

In a critical look at the human condition in current world affairs, filmmaker Anne Katrine Senstad suggests that a healthy value system has been disenfranchised and replaced by what the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1929-2008) called a simulacra—a postmodern imitation of reality, consumerism, and predatory systems. Senstad with actor Bill Sage express these theories in the films which were produced remotely along with sound producer JG Thirwell, within the confines of isolation during the pandemic. Senstad and Sage sharpen our understanding of today’s crisis to embark successfully to rebuild a better world.

UTOPIE/UTOPIA (2020) theorises that tolerant co-habitation is a place of utopia, and reflects on ways of understanding community and individuality, societal and political systems, and solitude and the degree of contact necessary for individuals to exist and create at their own pace. Anne Katrine Senstad’s film explores the nuances of French philosopher Roland Barthes’ (1915-1980) term “idiorrhythmy”—a  productive form of living together in which one is autonomous yet recognises and respects the individual rhythms of others.

In Senstad’s first film in the series of four, exploring Barthes text “UTOPIE/UTOPIA” from his 1977 book How To Live Together, acclaimed actor Bill Sage, in a personal and evocative monologue performance, assumes the character of Barthes in the creative process of preparation for his University lecture series of four decades ago. Set in the context of our contemporary world that is gripped by societal and political crises amplified by the 2020 pandemic, Sage’s character explores various forms of solitude through Barthes’ contemplations on history, psychology and societal structures. Barthes’ text concludes that our “Sovereign Good” is a form of tactful cohabitation and that an inner state—the state of tolerance—is a place of utopia.