Face to Face with... Kristoffer Borgli

Last week, Oslo-based director Kristoffer Borgli uploaded a clip from his new short film Internet Famous to popular urban entertainment site WorldstarHipHop without any explanation or background to support the post. The piece sees the star of the film, Amir, approach a bouncer with a baseball bat and what ensues is a graphic, physical altercation between the two.

The full film - sponsored and co-produced by Bacon - sees fame-hungry Amir walking around Oslo on a self-destruction mission as he bids for online stardom by starting fights, filming them and uploading the footage to the internet.

Notching up over 1.2 million views within just 24 hours and still currently provoking comments with divided reaction about whether or not the footage is genuine, the clip has proved a success in attracting attention and causing a stir.

Here, Borgli tells us how he came up with the film’s concept, how he cast the main role and about drip feeding the content to a mass online audience.

How did you conceive the idea for Internet Famous?

It started out as a thought on the relevance of success these days. I might think what a person is successful for is totally ridiculous, but that person’s feeling of success is probably valid, and there’s no objective truth.

Where was it shot and how did you cast Amir’s character?

It was shot in Oslo, and I got to know Amir when we did a web series for NRK (the national broadcasting channel of Norway). In the series we had Amir as a fake news reporter from Iran, to report in the neighbouring country Azerbaijan. He was in character the whole time; so much so that he got interrogated and threatened at the airport.

It was all over the Norwegian news. He had a hard time explaining that he was acting and that’s something we brought in to the film also. How can he control his public persona? Just look at Shia Labeouf and his struggle.

How many fights does Amir get into and was it difficult to create all the violence?

I think we shot around five [or] six fights. They were staged in public and shot on the iPhone. This was to create authenticity, but also conceptually because one of the film’s questions is how far you can you push something in the name of art or entertainment when it affects real people? It created some complications; security guards and even the police stopped us.

Why did you decide to post teasers?

The clip that appeared on WorldstarHipHop.com was something we talked about doing, because in the film the character states his initial fame came through that very site, so I thought it would be very interesting if we actually got the clip on that site, as an experiment.

Did you envisage it being as popular as it has been?

I’ve been following that site for so long; it’s one of the main inspirations for even doing the film. It’s become a cultural phenomenon, whenever a fight happens on the streets in the US, it seems that someone, almost by law, has to start recording the fight and yell “Worldstar!” during the fight, and send it in.

The site is extremely popular, so I had no doubt it would get views if it got on, I just wasn’t sure how it worked and if it would get on.

Have you enjoyed reading all the comments and reaction to the clip since posting it?

This is the thing, the comments are poetry. Seriously, it’s a humour and a way of writing that amazes me.

When and where can people see the film?

It will hopefully play at a couple of film festivals before releasing online.

To see Borgli’s clip on WorldstarHipHop and read the reaction click here.