Hunting Down Memory (Jakten på hukommelsen)

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Hunting Down Memory
Original title	Jakten på hukommelsen
Type	Documentaries
Director	Thomas Lien
Short summary	Who are you if you do not know yourself? Who am I if my whole past is gone? What is identity? In which way is identity connected to memory? Imagine waking up tomorrow without recalling today. All recollections are deleted. Imagine living without a background history, without recognizing those who know you. Imagine encountering the world as if it was for the first time. And finally, imagine this happening to you while travelling alone on a train in China.
Summary	Who are you if you do not know yourself? Who am I if my whole past is gone? What is identity? In which way is identity connected to memory? Imagine waking up tomorrow without recalling today. All recollections are deleted. Imagine living without a background history, without recognizing those who know you. Imagine encountering the world as if it was for the first time. And finally, imagine this happening to you while travelling alone on a train in China. Hunting Down Memory is a true story about Øyvind Aamot, who suddenly lost 27 years of his memory. He remembered nothing from his life. NOTHING! For most people, this would have been a dreadful experience, an ominous and frightening event in their life. For Øyvind, it was an adventure. He is neither traumatized nor paralyzed, he is just curious. He wants to know what happened, but he would also like to know what cottage cheese and blueberry pie taste like. “The awesome aspect of losing your memory is that you experience something new all the time,” says Arne Næss, at the age of almost 100. As always, a playful smile hovers around this renowned Norwegian philosopher's mouth. “It’s like having your hard disk deleted,” according to one of the doctors who examined Øyvind when he returned to Norway. At the age of 27, he had to start learning how the world functions. Among many other things, he believed that all the small children were a separate people. He could not understand irony. Sex and love was totally alien to him. He had no idea what money, passports, identity, nationality or gender was all about. Norway and China – are they two countries? What is a country? What is a nation? What is a language? What is a mother? Øyvind Aamot sailed for six months on a circumnavigation voyage with director Thomas Lien, before he quit in order to travel alone in China. A few months later, his memory was completely gone. Hunting Down Memory will be a film which is both humorous and tragic. We will enter into the universal theme “identity”, and through Øyvind’s story we will gain insight into our own nature. At the same time, we are served Øyvind’s amazing story, from the time when he was a happy circumnavigator until he lost his memory, and then in mysterious ways managed to return to Norway, experienced the world with the consciousness of a child, was confronted with various prejudices, and had to build a new identity.
D.O.P	Patrik Säfström
Editor	Inge-Lise Langfeldt
Sound	Petter Fladeby
Producer	Petter Vennerød
Production company	Merkur Film as \| Sofiesgt 60 \| N-0168 Oslo
Country of origin	Norway
Release date (national)	2009-02-20
Technical information
Format	35mm
Screen ratio	1:1,85
Colour	Colour
Length in min's	80
Length in meters	2189
No. of reels	5
Distributor (Norway only)	SF Norge AS \| Dronningensgate 8a \| P.B. 639 Sentrum \| N - 0106 Oslo \| www.sfnorge.no
Festival participation	2009 Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival 2009 Norwegian Short Film Festival, Grimstad 2009 SilverDocs - AFI Disovery Channel Documentary Film Festival, Washington 2009 Norwegian International Film Festival Haugesund - New Nordic Films 2009 Scanorama Film Festival, Lithuania 2009 Nordox, Beijing 2009 Plus Camerimage, Poland 2009 Guangzhou International Documentary Festival, China 2010 Göteborg International Film Festival 2010 Titanic Film Festival, Hungary
Prizes received	2010: Kanon Award for Best Music Score The Kanon Award is Norwegian Filmbusiness’ own award, presented at the International Film Festival Kosmorama in Trondheim, March 15th 2010
URL	http://www.merkur.no

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Director biography:
Director Thomas Lien Thomas Lien was born July 9 1971 in Bærum, Norway. Lien has worked in the film industry since 1991 in various capacities (production and camera assistant on a number of feature films; assisting editor on two feature films and editor of several short films and commercials). From 1996 to 2003 he was captain on a cruise around the world. He made his directorial debut in 1995, with the shortfilm Depth Solitude (co-directed with Joachim Solum), which won the Giovani Leoni for Best Short Film at the 52 Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica, Venezia.

Filmography:
2009: Jakten på hukommelsen
2005-2006 Tikopia (writer, director, editor)
1996-2003 Director tv-series ’En Sjøreise – Og hundre stemmer’ (5 x 30 min’s)
1995 Depth Solitude (short film)