Together with an assistant, a magician attempts to get the audience in a live-directing setup to marvel at their own laughter. The magic is to produce laughter that was not caused by something funny, but that is wondrous in itself.
Ironically after not being so successful wth that, just as the magician decides to end the show, the audience begins to laugh. Which is why he finds it difficult to end the performance, since he sees himself as the author of the laughter and wants to limit it to the duration of his act.
Luckily, the audience initiates a formal round of applause. The magician does not interpret the clapping as part of his magic trick and feels liberated from the consequences of his sorcery.
As a continuation of this theme of relief, the film shifts to scenes in a park under rain.
The rain settles. The magician tries the same with passersby that he finds in a park. A group of boys engages with him.
Once again, he has problems with controling the laughter of his audience to his will.
He delivers a monologue directed at the camera, blaming the fact that this particular audience was a group of friends who know each other well, which makes insiders and jokes naturally seep into the show, making it difficult to guarantee that the laughter is created by the magic trick.
The magician concludes that it is crucial for this trick that the audience members do not know each other. From here, the scene transitions back to the studio.
120 Magic Tricks That Create Laughter Without Jokes
V30:00 minutes, 2021
Lasagne – The Movie
2.5 hours, 2016
There is a young man distributing flyers for a photostudio called “Happy Profile” in the streets; what is ir- ritating, however, is that the young man also hands out home-made Lasagne to the passers-by. They urge hat the food might be better suited for the homeless people sitting down at the street a few meters away. In the understanding of the young man the lasagne is part of the ad. It comes with the flyer. Without the flyer, it’s just a meal, and that’s not the point. Nevertheless, he adapts and hands flyers and lasagne to the homeless on the street. We are in the photo studio of “Happy Profile”. The young man explains the company’s philosophy: a smile should not be put on, but sparked from within. It is not the client’s job to smile but the company’s job to make it happen. He puts it on himself achieve their natural laughter, and will entertain them for that purpose, for the goal to create the optimal “happy profile”. He begins asking questions. The program is overly tailored to the individual client. The categories are abstract: “What medium do you respond to? Story? Object? Smell? Character? Sound? Movement?” He looks for reassurance. “Do you like that?” or “Is that funny to you?”. What is intruduced as a one-sided effort, gradually becomes a shared task. The young man stands in a park, backed by two other young men. This is the “bureau” side of his compa- ny, a sort of corporate meeting outdoors. He speaks directly into the camera, about what is missing in the movie that he is in as a whole. Three men break into a chaotic game with food balls, frisbees, and bad- minton rackets flying through the air. The uncoordinated mixture of these games gradually dissolves into dancing, an awkward but joyful movement set to a looping music track repeating the word “compassion.” Later, the young man returns home, as if coming from work. There, he greets Jente, his flatmate. The cam- era follows her as she cleans her room.
There is a young man distributing flyers for a photostudio called “Happy Profile” in the streets; what is irritating, however, is that the young man also hands out home-made Lasagne to the passers-by.
They urge that the food might be better suited for the homeless people sitting down at the street a few meters away. In the understanding of the young man the lasagne is part of the ad. It comes with the flyer. Without the flyer, it’s just a meal, and that’s not the point. Nevertheless, he adapts and hands flyers and
lasagne to the homeless on the street.
We are in the photo studio of “Happy Profile”. The young man explains the company’s philosophy: a smile should not be put on, but sparked from within. It is not the client’s job to smile but the company’s job to make it happen. He puts it on himself achieve their natural laughter, and will entertain them for that purpose, for the goal to create the optimal “happy profile”. He begins asking questions. The program is overly tailored to the individual client. The categories are abstract: “What medium do you respond to?
Story? Object? Smell? Character? Sound? Movement?” He looks for reassurance. “Do you like that?” or “Is that funny to you?”. What is intruduced as a one-sided effort, gradually becomes a shared task. The young man stands in a park, backed by two other young men. This is the “bureau” side of his company, a sort of corporate meeting outdoors. He speaks directly into the camera, about what is missing in the movie that he is in as a whole. Three men break into a chaotic game with food balls, frisbees, and bad-minton rackets flying through the air. The uncoordinated mixture of these games gradually dissolves into dancing, an awkward but joyful movement set to a looping music track repeating the word “compassion.”
Later, the young man returns home, as if coming from work. There, he greets Jente, his flatmate. The cam-
era follows her as she cleans her room.
We are in Seyðisfjörður. Balázs, a man deeply knowledgeable about cinema, sits in an interview-style setup. He talks about Ingmar Bergman, Béla Tarr, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Abbas Kiarostami, Wim Wenders and other filmmakers. After the interview, Balázs watches a trailer on YouTube for the movie: “Lasagne –the Movie.” He then walks through the northern landscape toward a small cinema. Inside, he takes a seat. The movie begins. The first part is an animation: fish swimming underwater, a washing machine spinning, a turtle floating through space reciting a poem. This animation is a film within the film. The scene cuts to Oskar, the young man who works for “Happy Profile,” sitting under a streetlamp at night, casually watching this animation on his smartphone while eating lasagne. A voiceover introduces him by name: “This is Oskar. He is eating a lasagne.” The voiceover explains what a hard day Oskar had and that now, in order to relax, he is not only consuming the Lasagna but also a video on the internet. The scene cuts again. Now we see Oskar in the same spot, but this time he is recording the voiceover we
hear. it becomes a monologue that is directed to the viewer in which Oskar talks about the name “Lasagne – the Movie.” He says that the name sets a high expectation because it suggests that the viewer will be fed by the movie. He also talks about the difference between giving a movie a positive title like “The Amazingly Great Inspiring Movie” versus giving it a negative title like “A Pretty Bad Movie.”
