On Sept. 7, the RMU Arts and Humanities department held a meet and greet with this year’s visiting documentary filmmaker, Lasse Lau. Students and faculty were able to talk with Lau while enjoying some light refreshments.

Originally from Denmark, Lasse Lau is a filmmaker and visual artist. He is well known for his award-winning documentary films, and his works have been shown in museums and exhibitions across Europe. Lau is also one of the founding members of the Kran Film Collective.

His 2018 documentary film, “The Raven and the Seagull,” which chronicles Greenland’s post-colonial struggle for independence, garnered critical acclaim at various film festivals.

Although there are many genres of film to choose from, Lau chooses to gravitate towards documentary style film.

“I think reality is much more surprising than what you can make up in your mind in fiction,” said Lau . “When you’re planning out what you’re going to do in a documentary, you can only plan so far. You get on set and something is always going to happen. It always surprises you much more than fiction, which is always fully planned.”

During his stay at RMU, Lau will be teaching a documentary production class and visiting other classes to discuss filmmaking with students.

“I’ve been teaching across a lot of different scenarios, but never a class like this,” said Lau. “I’ve taught workshops. I’ll come in and teach full time for two weeks at film schools and art schools and then I leave again. But this will be a very different way of being in one place and having students over time, which is good.”

Lau also provided advice and insight for students who plan on making a career in the arts.

“Accepting failure and seeing failure as an artistic tool. Because of technical challenges, the material doesn’t look like how you imagine it, but there’s a lot of power in that,” Lau said. “It gets your creativity going, and suddenly you have to figure out ‘how do I solve this?’ So these failures are not always failures and are actually just sort of an artistic challenge. Just roll with it.”

For more events hosted by the RMU Arts and Humanities department, visit RMU Revolution.