On Wednesday, my wife Brooke and I will be flying to Iceland for the fifth edition of the Reykjavik International Film Festival. We’re staying for the entire duration of the festival, which runs from September 25th through October 5th, and in addition to seeing films, we’ll be doing some sightseeing. We’ve rented a car for the entire time, and are hoping to see as much as we can, including the Golden Circle (the geyser at Geysir, the waterfall at Gullfoss and the site of the world’s oldest parliament at Þhingvellir National Park), the Blue Lagoon geothermal spa, and possibly an overnight stay on Vestmannaeyjar, the Westman Islands. Other planned activities include whale-watching and horseback riding, depending on the weather.
All that to say that I haven’t quite decided how I’m going to cover the film festival yet. Ideally, I’ll be able to blog as usual, posting reviews shortly after seeing the films, but because it’s a vacation, I might just be having too much fun to post right away.
Though the entire schedule hasn’t yet been posted, the main program (Open Seas) features the following 18 films:
Some of these played at TIFF this year and some others were released earlier, but I haven’t seen any of them. So far, I’m planning on seeing the ones marked with asterisks based on either recommendations from friends or just my own interest. If you have any recommendations I haven’t marked, please comment and let me know why I should see them.
Country Wedding (Sveitabrúðkaup) (2008, Director: Valdís Óskarsdóttir): For a country of just 300,000 souls, Iceland has a remarkably creative and productive population. It’s practically crawling with artists, musicians and filmmakers and normally we get a good selection of Icelandic films at TIFF each year. Strangely, this year there are only two, and they are both about weddings in the countryside. I chose to see this one based on the trailer, which made it look more like a comedy than Baltasar Kormákur’s White Night Wedding (Brúðguminn), which is in all likelihood an equally worthy film. Director Valdís Óskarsdóttir is a well-known editor who has worked on the films of Gus Van Sant, Michel Gondry, Lars von Trier and others; it makes sense that for her directorial debut she would return home to work with a talented group of actors who were comfortable working in an unorthodox way.
The barebones story concerns a couple traveling in two rented buses with their families, friends and assorted hangers-on to their wedding ceremony in a country church. The film is more interesting for the methods used in its making than the actual story itself. Óskarsdóttir gave each of her actors a sort of character outline and asked them all to come up with their own backstories and at least one “secret” that they could choose to reveal or not reveal during filming. They rehearsed, but only events that would have happened before the actual events portrayed onscreen. The actual shoot was just seven days long and was completely unscripted and largely improvised. The results are genuinely funny and uncomfortable in equal measure, with the plans and relationships going off the rails at every opportunity. The best part of the cast Q&A after the screening was learning that several of the onscreen obstacles and revelations were actually real.
Entre Les Murs (Director: Laurent Cantet): Winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, this film was shot documentary-style in a real French classroom with nonprofessional actors. The teacher (François Bégaudeau) plays himself in a screenplay he wrote based on his own novel, which follows the life of a young teacher of the French language in a multicultural classroom. I’ve read about the wonderfully naturalistic performances of the students, who collaborated and rehearsed together well before shooting began.
Waltz with Bashir (Director: Ari Folman): Animation can sometimes be a good way to deal with difficult subjects. In this case, it’s the memories (or rather, the lack of memories) of the director, an Israeli soldier who took part in the 1982 Lebanon war. In one of the war’s more gruesome atrocities, the Israeli army stood by as “Christian” Phalangist militias entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps and massacred men, women and children for three horrific days. More than 3,000 were killed. Despite the militias’ stated aim of rooting out Palestinian fighters, the vast majority of these fighters had been evacuated weeks before. The bloodbath was widely seen as revenge for the assassination of the Phalangists’ leader, the recently-elected President Bashir Gemayel. This sounds like a very personal film, and also promises to explore memory and issues of post-traumatic stress disorder in an innovative way.
Brúðguminn (White Night Wedding) (Director: Baltasar Kormákur): As a longtime fan of Icelandic cinema, I try to see as many of the country’s films as possible, and after enjoying Kormákur’s Mýrin (Jar City) (review) at last year’s TIFF, I’m interested in seeing this one, too. This looks like more of a comedy, and it’s apparently based on a Chekhov play. The scenery of rural Iceland looks spectacular, which means it will be a good warmup for my own visit to the country later in September for the Reykjavik International Film Festival.
Screaming Masterpiece (Gargandi snilld) (2005, Director: Ari Alexander Ergis Magnússon): Iceland is a nation of just 300,000 and yet over the past twenty years, it has produced a huge number of brilliant musicians, including such globally-known artists as Björk and Sigur Rós. This film vaguely tries to figure out what makes Iceland so special, but wisely keeps the talking heads to a minimum, instead treating us to lots of performances. This allows us to get an overview of just how diverse the music scene is, with everything from feedback-drenched rock to orchestral to electronic to metal to folk. And yes, even hip-hop. My wife and I are travelling to Iceland in late September for the Reykjavik International Film Festival and I wanted to discover a few more bands to seek out while we’re there. Happily, this documentary has added a few new names to my list (Bang Gang, Múm, Apparat Organ Quartet) as well as reinforcing my love for stuff I’ve already heard (Mugison, Amiina, Singapore Sling, Slowblow, Quarashi, and of course, Björk and Sigur Rós).
There is a bit of historical perspective, tying in some of the very old chants and songs created by Iceland’s first inhabitants, but more interesting to me was footage from Fridrik Thor Fridiksson’s 1982 documentary Rokk í Reykjavík, which showed a very young Björk performing with a band called Tappi Tíkarrass, and documented the popularity of punk rock and the rise of the modern music scene there. I think I’ll need to track that down next. Here she is on the cover of the VHS tape:
Overall, this wasn’t groundbreaking filmmaking, but it did a good job of surveying the scene and giving viewers a taste of what makes Icelandic music so special. Special thanks to Thora Gunnarsdottir from the Icelandic Film Centre for hooking me up with a copy of the film. And check back in the fall for coverage of the Reykjavik International Film Festival, where hopefully we’ll be able to see a number of new Icelandic films. If you think the music scene is good, consider that almost every creative person in Iceland expresses himself in more than one medium. Slowblow’s Dagur Kári Petursson, for instance, also directed Nói albínói (2003) (review). So we’re excited to be spending some time in this creative hotbed, and will have plenty to report, I’m certain.
Steypa (2007, Directors: Markús Thór Andrésson and Ragnheidur Gestsdóttir): I’m not a contemporary art connoisseur by any means, but my reason for choosing Steypa was simple. It’s about Iceland. My husband and I are travelling to the island country in September this year for the Reykjavik International Film Festival, so any chance I get to see the Icelandic culture and environment, I jump.
Steypa is an enjoyable film. The film’s title has two meanings. Steypa is the word for concrete, as in the material used in construction. It also can be used to refer to something that is weird, different or unusual. And looking at the contemporary art scene in Iceland, weird, different or unusual is certainly fitting. The directors focus on seven artists, following them as they choose their materials, display their art in galleries and work on their creations. Amid the quirky pieces of art, however, I found myself more amused and charmed by the artists themselves. Or rather, at their Icelandic sense of humour (if you’ve seen films by Icelander Robert Douglas, you’ll know what I mean). One artist fills Fanta bottles with Pepsi, but admits that he is actually using Coke. “It’s cheaper,” he says. Another steals plant clippings from a seniors’ apartment, noting that no one will really notice if they’re missing.
Even though I would not actually hang any of the artists’ work in my apartment, I appreciate their focus and integrity to their art. There is no limit to their resourcefulness and creativity.
The one criticism I have is that even though each artist is always titled (through a rather snazzy bit of rainbow-coloured animation), I found it rather confusing to remember which artist was which. Barring that, Steypa really is true to a North American meaning of concrete: solid, but with a little weird thrown in.
(7/10)
