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| The End Of Quiet Photo: Tribeca Festival |
Swedish director Mikael Lypinski and Danish director Kasper Bisgaard's documentary, The End Of Quiet, is set in the secluded small West Virginian town of Green Bank. Home to the world’s largest radio telescope, the area is known as the Quiet Zone, where a near-total ban on cell phones and other electronic devices has been enforced. Over time, however, restrictions on WiFi have been deregulated, allowing it to creep into the secluded town deep in the West Virginian forest, penetrating the sanctuary for anyone seeking to escape digital noise.
Lypinski and Bisgaard explore the lives of the small community, reckoning with humanity's relationship to technology and its place in our world. The End Of Quiet also asks bigger questions and shows concern about the larger implications of human noise.
In conversation with Eye For Film, Lypinski and Bisgaard discussed fulfilling a shared desire to make a film together. They also reflected on the place of technology and social media in our lives, and seeing technology through the lens of a biblical metaphor.
Paul Risker: Why filmmaking as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or defining moment for you personally?
Mikael Lypinski; Well, I was always drawn to film, but I don't come from an artistic family. My parents had regular jobs, luckily, so I could play and fool around with cameras. I started doing this way before film school, back in elementary and high school. And then, it just seemed natural for me to apply to film school because my interest and passion kept growing.
At some point, I realised this is what I wanted to try to do with my life. So, I applied to the Polish film school in Łódź because in the film world it's a legendary place. For a 19-year-old, it seemed like a really cool adventure to go there, and I was lucky to be accepted. During the entrance exams, I met Kasper and that was 31 years ago.
Kasper Bisgaard: It's more or less the same story for me. At an early age, I was drawn to the medium, and it must have been when I watched The Godfather for the first time, that I realised that there's more than James Bond on the planet. I was drawn to being completely swallowed up by films, and then, I just started to make them. I did photography as well, and I applied to the Łódź film school when I was in my early twenties, where I met Mikael.
We have been speaking for many years about making a film together and this is the one. The idea literally hit us when we were in a bookstore. I was looking through some photographic books and, all of a sudden, I saw the giant dish at the Green Bank Observatory, and I thought that would be interesting. I saw some people walking underneath the giant dish and telescope, and I thought, 'Who's living there?' So, I pitched that idea to Mikael, and he said, "Okay, this is the one we're gonna make together" and we never looked back. We spent six years together on it.
PR: Directors at one time were able to hone their craft by directing multiple films a year. Now, films take years to make and so the opportunity for a director to hone their craft is more limited.
KB: It's very true that it takes a long time to go from the idea to the finished film, as well as finance it. As you said, in the old days, they made two films a year or something like that. Now it's not uncommon for a film to take four to six years from the idea to the finished film. So, you have to have a lot of persistence, and it's like a marathon. You are going on a journey, and it's going to be a long one. There will be ups and downs, but somehow that core of the idea is worth spending six years of your life on.
With this film, we just had the feeling that it was worth it. On a personal note, I had three kids during the production and Mikael had one, so there were four production babies born during the making of The End Of Quiet. It's part of our lives, and it's something extraordinary — the film is like a child in that way. You bring it up, you nurture it, and coming to a festival like Tribeca, you hope it will start to live its own life.
PR: The End Of Quiet grapples with the subject of technology, and to say the film is timely is to point out the obvious. With conversations about our relationship to technology and its place in our world growing, you cannot see it ceasing to be timely.
KB: There are two things I want to mention about Green Bank. One is how would we make the place cinematically captivating? We realised during our research and the early experiences of encountering this place that we would have to shoot at the magic hour and nighttime to get this otherworldly feeling of reflection, space, and intimacy. And we also realised the characters were a part of the bigger thematic issues.
ML: The place is framed by silence and the people there are used to living life at a slower pace, and they're used to actually talking to each other face to face. And because of that, it was easier for us to strike up all these interesting conversations and to also gain access to the more intimate and secret parts of our characters. They were willing to open themselves up to us, perhaps because they are not so spoiled by doing that on social media and elsewhere on a daily basis.
To us, it was like going back in time to our teenage years or even our childhood when things were exactly like that. You would hang out with your friends outdoors and play and talk rather than do anything else. We found that inspiring, and we hope this feeling of intimacy reaches the viewer.
PR: One of the compelling aspects of the documentary is observing the way signal-based technology creeps into the secluded town of Green Bank and is a disruptive and transformative force.
KB: […] We had the idea that WiFi is like the snake in Paradise, and the characters will slowly change because it's eroding their lives. They can't see it, but they can feel it, and we observe it because you have that feeling of time having passed and the things that have changed in their lives. And also with science, there's the fear that we are running out of time, and will we ever get these answers to the big questions of are we alone in the universe and what is out there? Maybe they have to get all the data now because of all the technology that is poisoning the planet, but also this area and us.
PR: A director once told me that we are more connected than at any other time in history and yet, we're more divided than we have ever been. It's an intriguing paradox and something we will have to reckon with, individually and collectively.
ML: What you said taps perfectly into the second part of our film, where we expose some of the challenges of the quiet zone and some of the issues that we noticed when we first arrived. It appeared to be a quiet place, full stop — untouched, innocent and so on. But then, several years later we realised that the snake has crept into Paradise, and people are struggling or suffering with the same problems, so to speak, as we are on the outside.
KB: It's a paradox that we have never been more connected on the planet and, to some extent, we have never been more disconnected and diverted. What a strange paradox, and that's what we're digging into. And there are some incredible statistics. I think the average American spends 44 days glued to a phone.
The End Of Quiet premières at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival.
