Earlier this year, Hans Olav Brenner surprised many literature-savvy viewers when he
has chosen to give himself as program manager in the book program
.
You’d think that after just over 70 shows and over 200 author interviews, the popular presenter would choose to crawl into a cave to regain his strength. Instead, he worked on three different television and film projects.
Make a documentary about a mysterious house
One of the projects is a documentary program which took him and his NRK colleague, Jan Palmers, across the sea to Canada.
The starting point for the trip was a suitcase that Brenner found in his grandmother’s attic when he was twelve. The suitcase had belonged to his grandfather, who used it when he emigrated to America in 1926. He found a number of items in it that shed light on an unknown part of Norwegian emigration history.
It’s the picture of the house on the prairie that Hans Olav Brenner found in his grandfather’s suitcase when he was little.
Photo: Private
– On the top of the suitcase were a lot of pictures, including a house on the prairie. I am curious to know this house for more than twenty years, to know where it was and who built and owned it. So Jan and I went to Canada to find traces of Norwegian emigrants in general and this house in particular, says Brenner.
Will they find the mysterious house at the end?
– It’s a secret. You’ll see when the program airs! he said laughing.
Watch Jan and Hans Olav talk about their trip to Canada and show parts of the “House on the Prairie” documentary program:
New film and new cultural programming
In addition to work on “The House on the Prairie”, Brenner is busy filming director Joachim Trier’s new film, “Oslo August 31”. Next year he is also back with his own cultural program on NRK, “Brenner”.
– What was fun about the book program was meeting people where they stay and in places that mean a lot to them. That’s a core idea that we’ll bring to the new program, says Brenner.
For four years, Hans Olav Brenner was program officer in the Book Programme. Here in conversation with author Dag Solstad in February.
Photo: NRK
The idea is, as he himself describes it, “to find out what happens and lives in cultural Norway”. During each program, Brenner will meet well-known and unknown Norwegian cultural figures in a specially designed bus, set up like a talk show studio.
It promises good conversations – not just about books, but about all forms of cultural expression – and lots of live Norwegian music.
– The idea is that we take someone on a journey, on a journey from A to Z, and along the way many people will appear, both randomly and on a planned basis, who have something to do with this person. And then you always have to land in a place in Norway that means something to them, that is linked to a very special story, he says.
Filming for the new program will begin in January, and the premiere is scheduled for next fall.
Before that happens, Brenner has reserved time for one last project: six weeks of well-deserved vacation.
