Wood sculptor Ole Jakob Nielsen gives us a rare insight into the soul of trees, from his home in the Faroe Islands - a totally treeless country.

FROM THE DIRECTOR

“I think this short profile of Ole Jakob Nielsen captures the very spontaneous nature with which it was made.

I was traveling around the Faroe Islands — a landscape I was fascinated with — in search of a film among its 50,000 inhabitants. I eventually heard about Ole, a local wood sculptor, and the idea of a wood sculptor in a tiny treeless country already got me excited. Upon knocking on his door, the chemistry was instant and we shot this film together in about a day and a half.

I basically got to know him by filming him. After the final shot, he took me around the country to meet the rest of his very charismatic and artistic family — poets, puppeteers, filmmakers.

As Ole had quite a poetic philosophy around work and life in general, I really felt like going far with the poetic thinking in the film, through the music and the ideas presented by Ole’s observations and the conversation between us throughout.

While I never had any particular interest in trees per se, what really fascinated me about Ole’s work is how close it gets to that blurry line between reality and projection. Some of the coincidences in his sculptures are so great that you really question whether it’s possible for them to not be random and part of some deeper meaning.

I’m really attracted to things that invite us into that liminal space where our imagination starts to take over and the question of “truth” or fact no longer really matters. You just start to see as much beauty and truth in something imaginary as in something already existing. As a filmmaker, I like to invite the viewer to leap into that space that only cinema can take us — and documentary, as "factual" as it's meant to be, is no exception.”

-Yannick Jamey