About The Company
Joyful Production is an independent film production company creating stories about life with highly skilled freelancers. The aim is to explore the complexities and magic of our personal stories by creating shorter and longer experimental movies and documentaries. The company is based in Oslo, Norway where its founder Melanie Ekholdt lives and works.
The Founder’s Journey
Melanie Ekholdt is a creative psychiatrist and filmmaker.
As a medical student Melanie often brought along her video camera to explore life, both in the real world and the world of imagination.
As a young mother and a young medical doctor, she had to set her video camera aside.
Then in 2015, just when Melanie had finished her specialization in child and adolescent psychiatry, she was inspired by the personal story of a young rap artist Michael Kildal. She invited him to cowrite a book about the troubled young boys. He said yes.
Instinctively, she brought her video camera along when they started the book project.
The film clips of the conversations became a 20 minute documentary about Michael’s life co-produced with documentary film company «House of Gary». The book is still a draft. http://www.forelskaigalskap.no/
About The Company
Joyful Production is an independent film production company creating stories about life with highly skilled freelancers. The aim is to explore the complexities and magic of our personal stories by creating shorter and longer experimental movies and documentaries. The company is based in Oslo, Norway where its founder Melanie Ekholdt lives and works.
The Founder’s Journey
Melanie Ekholdt is a creative psychiatrist and filmmaker.
As a medical student Melanie often brought along her video camera to explore life, both in the real world and the world of imagination.
As a young mother and a young medical doctor, she had to set her video camera aside.
Then in 2015, just when Melanie had finished her specialization in child and adolescent psychiatry, she was inspired by the personal story of a young rap artist Michael Kildal. She invited him to cowrite a book about the troubled young boys. He said yes.
Instinctively, she brought her video camera along when they started the book project.
The film clips of the conversations became a 20 minute documentary about Michael’s life co-produced with documentary film company «House of Gary». The book is still a draft. http://www.forelskaigalskap.no/en/index.html
In the style of an intimate audio-visual diary, we join Michael on his turbulent adolescent journey and are reminded of the importance of simply listening to young people. The ability to transform resides in every human and we are all continuously changing, even after adolescence.
The mental health field showed an interest in the story of Michael and invited Melanie to show the documentary at conferences. Through the public’s emotional reactions, she discovered the transformative power of the art of filmmaking. Melanie was inspired to continue exploring documentaries.
Melanie planned a new documentary project with the working title “Our Sins”. This time the story was autobiographical, based on her separation with her husband.
In cooperation with Helene Knoop, one of Norway’s foremost figurative painters, she documented the creation of a painting called “The Flood” where she was the model.
In the atelier, during the three 2-3 hours painting sessions, Melanie shared her thoughts and emotions about the separation, in a free flow of association.
After the painting was complete Melanie asked an old friend their view of the divorce.
The artist Helene and the friend were sitting on a couch with the painting “The Flood” hanging on the wall in the background. Melanie was behind the camera and the dark parts of the separation process became much clearer. With the camera as a kind of witness, Melanie realized that she was not ready to share the personal issues of her divorce publicly. The shadow sides of herself were still not enough explored.
Instead she made a series of artistic short films named “Dance of Sins” and brought in Nora, a famous theater fiction figure, as main character in the stories.
Melanie planned a new documentary project with the working title “Our Sins”. This time the story was autobiographical, based on her separation with her husband. In cooperation with Helene Knoop, one of Norway’s foremost figurative painters, she documented the creation of a painting called “The Flood” where she was the model.
In the atelier, during the three 2-3 hours painting sessions, Melanie shared her thoughts and emotions about the separation, in a free flow of association.
After the painting was complete Melanie asked an old friend their view of the divorce. The artist Helene and the friend were sitting on a couch with the painting “The Flood” hanging on the wall in the background. Melanie was behind the camera and the dark parts of the separation process became much clearer. With the camera as a kind of witness, Melanie realized that she was not ready to share the personal issues of her divorce publicly. The shadow sides of herself were still not enough explored.
Henrik Ibsen’s masterpiece “A Doll`s House” became a big source of inspiration, and 3 short movies were produced in less the one year. “Nora`s Wedding anno 1905” and “A Dollhouse 2020” have already received quite a few festivals awards. Melanie’s vision is to present all three short films together in a 360 film and a digital exhibition platform. The project is named “Nora’s Ark”.
Meanwhile Melanie was still working on documentaries. In 2021, the same summer she started the production of the experimental short movies “Dance of Sins”, she organized a festival named “ Joyful Festival”. She invited musicians to make cover versions of well-chosen songs from 1880 to the 1980s. The process of making cover versions in studio, preparing the show and performing the songs in the festival was documented.
The plan is to create a character driven documentary with the working title “Hunting the Spirit of Time» based on a psychiatrist´s search for the zeitgeist.
