And I didn't know… I thought it was a fictional character because I hadn't heard of her. And she says that there's a Swedish painter who has a connection with the other side and her name is Hilma af Klint. Because the first time I heard her name mentioned was when I watched a movie with Kristen Stewart on a plane called PERSONAL SHOPPER, where she looks for her dead brother. LO: Well, it started with a fascination of Lasse. I was ready to change my life and do this. Do I actually like what I do? And I was tracing the common thread of, “I think I want to do acting, actually.” And at the same time there was a first draft of this script and ViaPlay wanted to buy it, so all these things just kind of intersected at the same time. I was also 25, so quarter-life crisis thoughts were coming to me, too. TH: It was this awful time, but it was kind of a blessing to have all this time to be bored. But then during the pandemic I moved home and had this period of reflection… I was working in investment banking at the time when this started becoming an actual topic of conversation, and I was on my only vacation, like, ever, and my dad was talking about this project saying, “I think I’m going to make a movie about Hilma af Klint and you should play Hilma.” I was like, “I’m… I’m a banker.” I can’t do this. And she was a medium, obviously, and Swedish, so he started doing a lot of research. Through that he became very interested in mediums, being able to talk to the other side, and at the same time Hilma was becoming really big in New York. There was this whole process of figuring out if there are extra-terrestrial beings, and there was some connection with that and mediums. Tora Hallström (TH): My dad started out by being really interested in UFOs and through that he met some guy who used to work at the Pentagon. Raphael Jose Martinez (RJM): So what drew the two of you into doing a film about Hilma af Klint? I think Hilma would have enjoyed it very much. What began as a simple question-and-answer session about the film eventually turned into a wonderfully weaving, meandering conversation about solace and comfort in a post-pandemic world, the power of manifesting, the need for witches in contemporary society, and the soul of art. I had the pleasure to sit down with both Tora and Lena for a conversation. ![]() Starring the mother-daughter duo of Tora Hallström and Lena Olin, both as Hilma at different points in the artist’s life, we get a powerful telling of woman who, to this day, seems to exist outside the bounds of conventional society. HILMA gives a beautiful overview of the often fraught and difficult life of Klint. In 2019 her show at the Guggenheim Museum drew over 600,000 visitors, making it the most attended exhibition in the museum’s history. An iconoclastic mystic, who used her powers as a spiritual medium to paint what she saw in the metaphysical world, Klint was unknown until her first gallery showing in 1986, 42 years after her death. The film tells the story of Hilma af Klint, a queer Swedish artist who, despite predating popular abstract artists, was completely unknown until well after her death in 1944.Īnd by choice. ![]() Swedish writer-director Lasse Hallström’s HILMA deftly avoids all the trappings of the banal, cliched bio-pic and gives us the story of a truly strange and powerful artist without any generic window dressing. The most interesting things about them are generally paved over in order to tell stories of overcoming struggle and making these people into messengers of hope. Films about artists are often hagiographies, a way to elevate someone into some sort of canon.
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