“Om du inte fanns” is a documentary made by Stella Explorer and Pontus Andersson in collaboration with YEAR0001 and Arketyp
ABOUT THE FILM
20 years ago, youth recreation leader Jacob launched a project at Katarina Södra school located at Södermalm in Stockholm. The goal was to create an album where the children were the artist. Jacob acts as a producer, helping them to find subjects, write lyrics and record the tracks. The result is a full-length album called Most Wanted 2000 with a release party in the school cafeteria.
Life moves on.
20 years later, Stella finds her copy of the album. She’s now become a recording artist with her first solo album just having been released. She remembers Jacob fondly and wonders what happened to him and if he realizes the impact he made on her. In an effort to thank him, she starts contacting her old school friends. The plan is to record new versions of their old songs and arrange a suprise party for Jacob back in the cafeteria.
To lure Jacob back to the school cafeteria, Stella also contacts an old friend of his. Pontus. As it turns out, he’s become a documentary film producer who’s instantly hooked on the idea. He convices Jacob to be interviewed for a friendly profile piece, totally unsuspecting of the suprise arranged for him back at Katarina Södra school.
ABOUT THE ADVERTISING
The solution needed to be locally rooted. An early idea was to create a school yard campaign celebrating people like Jacob. People who made an impact far greater than they themselves can fanthom without recieving proper acknowledgement. I myself have a person like that. A youth recreation leader that saw me at a time where it seemed like the rest of the grown up world didn’t. When I spoke to people about this, almost everyone could instantly think of a similar character in their life.
But due to time limitations and a non-existent budget the idea was scrapped. Instead the idea came from the original project, where the kids were put center stage. Just like they got to make a real album, we where gonna make an accompaning real ad for it that would be broadcasted in their home borough.
For a long time I’d been wanting to do something with the old tv that’s sitting on top of shelf behind the bar at Balthazar. For years it seems to have been rolling day and night showing music videos from weird foreign tv channels. So, our solution was to create a long video file. First we showed four or five music videos (produced before the year 2000) and then one long retro tv advertisment we had produced. Then a few more music videos before another advert. And so on. The long video file was loaded onto a Rasperry Pi that would loop it infinitely after being plugged into the TV. For guests everything would stay the same as always. The old tv playing music videos before suddenly breaking reality by airing an ad for a CD made by local school children.
But before we got the chance to excecute, the TV broke. We talked to the owners about our idea and that we would be happy to repair the tv, for free, but that just seemed to make them suspicious and confused.
Instead we got into contact with Bar Europa, another Södermalm bar that runs retro video on a tv. They where into the idea and willing to take part, and so we made it happen.
A local tv ad for a local project.