audience about what the pictures show (this is a theme inSolvorn, and more
enigmatic inKarins Ansikte).
Año Uñadoes not present singular shots from different locations, like many of
the frames in Bergman’s photo album. Rather, it composes scenes and sequences
from images of the same location, images of a limited set of characters perform-
ing their activities as part of a narrative universe, which is kept constant during
the whole film. We find Diego in his room early on in the story, troubled by his
toenail, fantasizing about his cousin Emilia. The scene is composed of stills of
the kid in one single narrative situation, with just slightly altered positions, vi-
sually framed in nearly identical manners from shot to shot. His voice-over also
supports the unity of the scene both as continued sound bridging the change of
images and as an inner monologue directing the audience’s attention towards
the experience of the boy rather than towards the pictures as such. But the sheer
number of images of the same object, presented in the same place in one and the
same situation distinguishes it from the scenes composed inSolvorn. Whilst
Solvorncreates a virtual scene from a small collection of photos of the same
environment,Año Uñamake us look at the scene as if there had never been a
photographer. The scene does not look staged, like most of the pictures in Berg-
man’s album and many of the photos in Breien’s film. The story does not appear
to be the result of an investigation of images, likeKarins AnsikteandSol-
vorn, even if its production history may show this to be the case.Año Uña
focuses on characters interacting, their motives and feelings and how they
change during the story, rather than on the existence of photographs (likeSol-
vorn) or what a particular collection of preexisting photographs may reveal
about a particular person’s identity (likeKarins Ansikte).
The three films are all based on photographs.Karins AnsikteandSolvorn
present preexisting photographs. But they create a filmic space where the
photographs are only one of several ingredients. InAño Uña, this second char-
acteristic supersedes the first. The images inAño Uñaappear as series of
photographic stills, but not as photographs. There are no cameras filming
photographs and moving among the picture’s elements. This is not a film pre-
senting photographs of events, but a film about the events, the visual dimension
of the film appearing as stills.Año Uñaappears, in other words, less a double
layer of photographic presentations (photographs and film), with all the impli-
cations this may have for narration and temporality rather than simply a filmic
presentation of events employing a slightly unusual form of visual expression.
The same can be said forLa Jetée, a film with a visual image comprised al-
most entirely of optically printed photographs, containing only one brief shot
by a motion-picture camera, but nevertheless a film in which the static frames
appear as photographic stills, but not as photographs.Just likeAño Uña, Mar-
88 Liv Hausken