Bow and Arrow
A sensory portrait of a horse center in Bø in Vesterålen where disadvantaged young people are treated through work with horses and equine-assisted psychotherapy. Filmmaker Camilla Figenschou introduces one actor among amateurs who play themselves, and creates a kind of egalitarian dramaturgy where people, objects and landscapes are studied with the same interest.
About the film
In Bow and Arrow, spectators are invited into a real-life environment, a horse center in the north of Norway. At Bjørkengen farm, the biologist Tiu Simæle and the doctor Anders Svensson are conducting a treatment project for disadvantaged youth, where various types of work with horses are in focus. Caring for the horses, horseback riding, horse massage and arrow-and-bow shooting are some of the activities the youngsters get to try. On the farm, they also offer equine-assisted psychotherapy, a form of treatment in which the horse's ability to read and understand body language is used to visualize human behavioral patterns.
By means of the minimalist plot and careful camera work, the film's strength lies in how it allows the environment and the landscape to speak for itself, and even more "directly" so than if it were presented in traditional narrative or documentary.
About the filmmaker
Camilla Figenschou (b. 1978, Lofoten) is a filmmaker and visual artist educated from Konstfack in Stockholm. She studied film studies at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires and Nordland College of Art and Film. She works mainly with narrative film and photography. In 2010 she debuted with her first short film Det begynte å bli ingen natt. Her other short film, To open, to see (2012) was widely shown internationally, and won the prestigious Terje Vigen award at the Grimstad Shortfilm Festival in 2012. In 2016, she shot her first feature length film Bow and Arrow. Figenschou’s latest film Tauba had its premiere in 2020.