Josephine Amalie von Bülow

Josephine Amalie von Bülow is a cross-disciplinary filmmaker and artist born and raised in Denmark. She grew up watching Dogma 95 films, her first significant encounter with filmmaking and the impact of social realistic stories. From early on, Josephine has been engaged with political work, non-profit organisations, theatre, art and music. She initially studied Journalism in Denmark but realised that the knowledge and research she acquired needed a visual output. She moved to London and changed her studies to fine art, using extensive research and anthropology in her mixed media art work and graduated with a BA (Hons) Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in 2017. During her time at Chelsea College of Art, Josephine co-founded the art collective BordersBorderless with a group of European art students, creating political works of art over a period of 3 years in partial collaboration with the Wonder Foundation and Counterpoint Arts.

BordersBorderless participated in the 2016 Refugee Week with a multi-media exhibition at Southbank Centre and later on that same year they were invited to do an exhibition at the SANfest art festival in Spain. While studying fine art and in the time after Josephine has, together with her collective and with other artists, organised workshops for students at Chelsea College of Art and in the 253 Hoxton Art Project Space.

Josephine’s focus on storytelling in her work led to a natural progression from art into films and in 2019 she began her Documentary Animation Degree at the Royal College of Art.

Alongside working on her graduation film at the Royal College of Art, Josephine is directing a short animated documentary, Tales of a Child produced and animated by FedUP Studio Lab, graphic designer Dana Riesgo Menéndez, in collaboration with the Baytree Centre Brixton and narrated by Rakiba.

Josephine’s passion and drive is rooted in storytelling. She approaches any kind of work, that be film, painting or installation by researching the storyline before initiating a process of visualisation. She believes that the story will decide what medium and materials are needed to best showcase the piece, not the other way around. Having always collaborated with others, not only in her studies of art but in many different disciplines, Josephine is fascinated by human behaviour/interaction and the strength of interdisciplinary work. Psychology, cultural theory, anthropology, social science and history often intertwine with her work and are essential when researching a new story. She reckons that though fictional narratives have a wondrous power in filmmaking and art, stories experienced and told by people - especially the stories we like to avoid - have an even greater impact on our lives and our ability to wonder, evolve and change.

Currently working with animation, Josephine finds inspiration in 2D creations using different materials and a mixture of hand crafted and digital design. Experimentation, curiosity and play is the heart of her working process, failing and failing again until new skills, knowledge or perspectives have been acquired.

Moments with my Mother (Øjeblikke med min Mor)

Moments with my Mother (Øjeblikke med min Mor)

This short animated documentary depicts different moments in time between a mother and a daughter, of what has been and never will come to be. In a composition of fiction and reality, the gravity of loss and grief slowly unfolds through the slow moving image-like animation as the mother character starts to glitch and interruptions appear. In a combination of memories, wishful thinking and sounds stuck in your head, the animation is trying to capture the significant need of having a mother by your side and the lifelong sorrow that comes when losing her too early in your life. As the moments progress, the beating drums increase in volume and pace, slowly becoming a steady beat highlighting the visuals. An almost echoing ambience of vocals and disturbing noise comes and goes like something from a dream as the sound of radiation, heart rate monitors and heart beats take over, drowning the sound of nature, laughter and life.

The animation is a 2D mixture of hand painted background drawings in watercolour, charcoal and pastel with the characters and objects drawn in TV-paint, combined with snippets of home video footage.

Directed & animated by Josephine Amalie von Bülow

Sound design: Josephine Amalie von Bülow & William Thorlund von Bülow

Music: William Thorlund von Bülow

Voices: Olivia Thorlund von Bülow

Voices recorded & edited: Søren Reith-Hauberg

Sound Mix: Dan Hibbert

Sound mix at the National Film and Television School

The Royal College of Art, 2021

A special thanks to all of my tutors