ANTHROPIA (2017)
“It’s clear, why VR has become the prime medium for a lot of artists at the moment. It provides a total surrounding experience, and doesn’t need to fight distractions.”
“The installation makes a lasting impression. And it will be interesting to see how the medium will be used artistically from now on, like Anthropia.”
“(Anthropia) was clearly the exhibitions most sublime and innovative art piece.”
– Laura Engstrøm, review in Ingeniøren, a Danish magazine, September 22, 2017
“The nasty tricks of the minigolf course and all the shifts of perspective did in a defiant manner somehow get to me. It was a release to be liberated from technology and re-enter the real world with real people providing me with a piece of apple, to chew my brain back to reality.”
“But the experience stick. As a newbie in the exploration of tech’s potential I can do nothing but allow myself to be impressed. If I, with glasses on my head, can feel the experience of a crime on my own body I might get the opportunity to understand and explore the gang wars and humanitarian conflicts in the world.”
– Emilie Maarbjerg Mørk, feature in Politiken, Danish national newspaper, September 27, 2017
EWA, OUT OF BODY (2016)
“For 8 minutes I have been the fictional 14-year old girl Ewa. I have seen the world through her eyes, and experienced how it feels to be exposed to mental cruelty by her mom. And the experience was so powerful, that my stomach still reacts to the virtuel whipped cream she tasted.”
“Johan Knattrup Jensen hope and expects that VR technology will give cinema the creative push, that past technologies have done. Like when the handheld camera was introduced in the sixties and made the french auteurs film on real streets and by this emancipate cinema from studio rigidity.”
“The all but harmonious relation between mother Helga and Ewa leads to unpleasant experiences for Ewa and the audiences seeing the world through her eyes.”
“In the film the audience experiences to suddenly leave the body of Ewa. In stead you are hanging in the room above mother and daughter like an invisible spirit, and in the film’s most creepy moment, it is as mother senses your invisible presence and turns investigative towards you.”
“At the same time it’s strangely emotional to suddenly experience seeing Ewa from the outside. You feel a great care for the poor girl, who as punishment from tasting the whipped cream is forced to eat the whole cake.”
– Kristian Lindberg, feature in Berlingske, Danish national newspaper, May 16, 2016
“It’s a family thriller,” Knattrup Jensen, who directed, says. “In ‘Ewa,’ we want to create a cinematic experience of being another person. Ewa is a woman with a strong will. Through her, we experience a story about setting yourself free as a person, no matter the cost. She’s a complex individual and hides a few demons deep inside that she has to find the courage to confront.”
“The film at this point is no longer something that hangs on the wall. It’s a world you slip into. You get another physique, another way of moving. You might even start thinking differently. The experience is powerful and you forget yourself, completely. Like an intense love affair, deep meditation or a great buzz.”
“The story of Ewa is about being a witness to your own life, feeling like a spectator watching your life without really being in control of it. Then it makes sense to work with virtual reality. The POV device can do magical things, especially when you get so close you feel like you’re actually looking out the character’s eyes. You feel controlled. Like you’re a prisoner in your own body. That’s how Ewa feels. You’re a passenger, a witness. On the one hand, it can be a relief not to be responsible for your own life. On the other hand, it’s claustrophobic. You want to get out, be free.”
– Lars Fiil-Jensen, interview in DFI, online film magazine, May 4, 2016
SKAMMEKROGEN // THE DOGHOUSE (2014)
“The Doghouse is what we in the 90’s dreamt about.”
“It’s really a new territory. For the body, the mind, and for the arts.”
– 5/6 review, Politiken, Danish national newspaper, February 8, 2014
“Virtual Reality film installation puts a dissociative twist on awkward family dinners.”
– Beckett Muffson, interview in VICE, Motherboard, May 3, 2015
“The camera’s movements were completely defined by the characters. We made an autonomous camera because we put it on an actor. We had this human medium walking around recording what we needed.”
“When your are inside the mind of someone very different from yourself, you’re not in for an immersive experience, but a bona finde emotional transformation.”
“The leap through the 4th wall is now possible.”
“The setup in The Doghouse is well chosen. Everyone can relate to the awkward family dinner, where all the good intentions are slowly replaced by unproductive drunkenness and embarrassing behaviour.”
“A fragrance of shame is hoovering heavily over the ovale dinner table. I feel like I am in a miniature version of Thomas Vinterberg’s dogma film, Festen. This is film and social experiment in one.”
– Rune Bruun Madsen, review in Ekko film magazine, February 16, 2014
“The film installation The Doghouse is not just storywise efficient and technically well done. It might also be a turning point in film history.”
“You take off your goggles and look around. You start to share your experience (with the other audience members). You’re not trying to smart it up, you share lived experience. Completely shut off with yourself during the experience, the following social space feels like a liberation.”
“I had been so much in character, that it actually felt like me. The film experience won over me… It knocked over my analytical skillset.”“There is a before and an after The Doghouse. What more can you wish for in a work of art?”
– Sebastian Cordes, review in Atlas Magazine, February 29, 2014
VERDENSSØN // A COPENHAGEN LOVE STORY (2012)
“Among last year’s films was director Johan Knattrup Jensen the most delightful one, docu-teasing with his hallucinatory (self-)discovery Road To Paradise. The cool, black-and-white, opening shot in his new, very different chamber piece Verdenssøn, is instantly attention demanding. The frenzied love power is filmed quivering dangerous and stylish by Adam Wallensten. At times very fragile, at other times very theatrically, but consistently endearing, cool, and beautiful.”
– Katrine Hornstrup Yde, review in Information, Danish national newspaper, October 3, 2012
“(The top score) is fully earned, because Verdenssøn is a film, that grows every time you watch it.”
“More than anything the film is carried by the actors. Peter Christoffersen and Iza Mortag Freund is very convincing. You believe in their intense and very painful love.”
– Claus Christensen, editor’s comment in Ekko film magazine, May 13, 2013
“Knattrup Jensen’s stylish, exclusive-looking black and white Verdenssøn is flawless. Especially because it is an emotional recording of two young artist souls and the paper thin border between mania and exaggerated joy.”
“Strongest is Verdenssøn in the portrayal of the ungovernable, intimate space of love and exuberant imagination that emerges between the two lovers ahead of the irreversible, tragic downfall.”
– Jacob Ludvigsen, review in Ekko film magazine, October 6, 2012