Bawke - POV - Aarhus Universitet

36 p.o.v. number 21 March 2006
An interview with director Hanna Andersson
on Staircase
Richard Raskin
This film is a perfect example of wordless storytelling. Could I ask you to comment on what
you see as the special challenges and rewards of telling a story without the use of
dialogue?
I believe it’s more engaging to watch a film without dialogue. Word-
less storytelling leaves space for the audience to feel and reflect. I
myself treasure moments like that and I’m very inspired by the old
silent films.
I wouldn’t rely on the spoken word to tell a story on film, since we
tend to believe in what we see, but seldom in what we hear. The
challenge is of course to find situations, actions and imagery that
speak for themselves. When you do, they speak more truthfully about
the characters and their inner life.
When it comes to the actual filming, telling a story with no
dialogue is more time-consuming on set, because every setup has to
carry the story forward. I prefer not to cut back to the same camera-
angle, which you can do more easily in a scene with dialogue. With
dialogue, you can easily cover several script pages in one or a couple
of set-ups. It’s more demanding to film without dialogue – more
demanding, but also more rewarding.
Could I ask you to fill me in on the development of this project? How did it begin? How did
it unfold?
We were in our final year of film school and we were supposed to do a
project for Swedish Television. We were given the theme “trapphus”
[staircase]. I felt like making a film that would be more like a dance