Directed, shot and edited by Malin Christin Longva
Animations by Sunniva Mellbye (Release date: June 30th 2017)
While You Can (No One Visual EP pt. 3)
Powerful finale of Marte Røyeng's music video trilogy
Activism, marching soldiers, a lake being sprayed with poison.
Ghosts of the past from archive film blends into modern people.
A woman's silhouette is filled with a glittering cosmos.
What comes after fear? What is next, when you are finally ready to meet the world? After the lonely and introspective passivity in the visual EP's first part, No One, and the movement in the journey away from self-absorbation in part two, The Key, this is the question posed in part three, While You Can.
The video for While You Can is striking in the way it merges together past and present, extreme situations and small everyday joys, nature and industry, and the petals of a flower with the entire universe. "You have so much inside you", the images seem to say.
The trilogy is about breaking out of the idea of being "no one" – about growth, and realizing that where you used to feel afraid and alone, there is now the bigger picture and the sensation of all the powerful things you are capable of doing.
Perhaps "art films with music" fits better than "music videos" as a description for No One Visual EP. Marte Røyeng's motivation to create visual companions for all three tracks on her debut EP came from the opportunity to tell more than the music alone can do. She gave the director free rein to elaborate on the EP's theme of transitioning from "no one" into "someone".
"The title alone, While You Can, gave me a lot to work with," says Malin Christin Longva, who has directed, shot and edited all the videos in the trilogy – a work that began in the fall of 2016. "While You Can is a call to action, encouraging people to do lots of things: to be an activist, to love, to create. It's not really important what it is, only that you do it," says the filmmaker.
Longva continues: "I wanted pictures of activism, war, submission, and portraits of people. I've used archive films from different wars, in Africa, the First World War and D-Day." In While You Can we see environmental destruction alongside subtle hints towards the climate change crisis. "I have wished to bring forward the environmental debate from a new perspective, with a new point of view. In poetry, people are able to say things in a new manner, creating new images. I believe in my own ability to tell something in a new way," she says.
"I see No One Visual EP just as much an independent work of film art, as a trilogy of music videos for me as a pop artist," says Marte Røyeng. "The video for While You Can, for example, is much more charged with optimism than the song lyrics are." In the song, Røyeng bittersweetly depicts that which is about to sink. The video, on the other hand, focuses on encouraging people to stand up. "Speak while you can."
Filmmaker Longva concludes: "When it comes to choices you have to make in life, it is not about what you believe you'll never be able to do. It is about doing something. Not getting stuck in a thought about what it is supposed to lead to. Finding out 'what is vital, what do I believe in?'. And then a change may happen. But whether it does is beyond our control. I just have to do what I believe in."
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No One, Marte Røyeng's debut-EP, was released in January 2017 (Groundling), is produced by Thom Hell and recorded in Fersk Lyd. While You Can features Olaf Olsen on drums and Ole-Henrik Moe on strings. Marte Røyeng has written the lyrics, music and string arrangements.