iceland

I really felt that since this was our first visit to Reykjavik, and to RIFF, that I should talk about some of our exper­i­ences out­side of the films them­selves. In fact, we had some of the best and worst exper­i­ences of the fest­ival when we weren’t at reg­ular screen­ings, and these stories are worth telling, at the very least for pos­terity, but also in the hope that they’ll help the RIFF organ­izers fine-tune their fest­ival to make it better for inter­na­tional vis­itors and journalists.

I’d say that first and fore­most we were taken aback a little by the overall char­acter of Icelanders them­selves. Though I’d been warned a little bit by my new Icelandic friend Alda that Iceland didn’t pos­sess much of a “ser­vice men­tality,” I was still under the impres­sion that Nordic coun­tries were all very dis­cip­lined and organ­ized. I’ve vis­ited Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark and have found that assump­tion to be gen­er­ally accurate. Not so in Iceland. The best way I can put it is that Icelanders pos­sess a com­bin­a­tion of self-reliance (not sur­prising con­sid­ering that for most of their his­tory, they were a rocky and barren out­post dependent on fishing) and bohemi­anism (everyone is an artist, musi­cian or film­maker, and often more than one) that makes them com­pletely unique. Unfortunately, it also makes them a little bit indif­ferent to what vis­itors might want or need. I’m hes­itant to provide the fol­lowing examples for fear of seeming ungrateful, so I’ll post a dis­claimer first. RIFF was incred­ibly gen­erous in providing press accred­it­a­tion to both me and my wife, and everyone we met was friendly. But there were a number of fail­ures of organ­iz­a­tion which, for a fest­ival in its fifth year, are a little hard to understand.

1. Though we were accred­ited as press, there didn’t seem to be any sort of press centre in evid­ence, nor was there someone func­tioning spe­cific­ally as a press coordin­ator. We weren’t con­tacted to set up inter­views with film­makers, nor was there any oppor­tunity out­side of reg­ular screen­ings to see the films.
2. Though there were only three venues for screen­ings, the pro­gramme neg­lected to provide any sort of map. We ended up seeing films at only one loc­a­tion since it was the only one we could find. Our exper­i­ence in trying to locate one of the others, the Nordic House, will illus­trate: After a late dinner, we attempted to get to a 10:30 screening of Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg. On the map provided by the tourist office, it looked like a fif­teen minute walk. After walking for more than half an hour and finding ourselves in the middle of what looked like a deserted office park, we gave up. Some sort of sig­nage or guid­ance would have helped.
3. The tiny schedule printed on the back cover of the pro­gramme was far too small and cramped to make much sense. To make mat­ters worse, on some days the sched­uled screen­ings were half an hour earlier. But when we showed up early, we were told that because of the con­fu­sion, they’d have to start at the later time. We weren’t clear if that was an adhoc decision or was now policy.
4. Two of the films I saw were pro­jected in the wrong aspect-ratio, squeezing what should have been lovely widescreen images into a TV-shaped frame.
5. Volunteers didn’t seem to have answers to our ques­tions. The head volun­teer at one of the major ticket out­lets was a British woman who spent more time making cracks about Icelanders than providing any useful information.
6. I have two stories about one of my most-anticipated events, a screening of Danish silent film Sons of the Soil (1920), the first fea­ture ever filmed in Iceland. Up-and-coming Reykjavik band Hjaltalín had written a score and were sched­uled to per­form it as live accom­pani­ment to the film. Since this was a spe­cial event, there was a charge of 2000 kronur (about $23 at the time) for tickets. When we first attempted to buy tickets, a week before the show, we were offered tickets to the film screening (at 900kr), which our press passes gave us free acess to. Then the above-mentioned British woman scolded the Icelandic volun­teer and said tickets weren’t actu­ally avail­able there, and that we’d have to buy them at the venue. But what to make of 900kr tickets to a 2000kr con­cert? There was no other screening of the film sched­uled. About two days before the con­cert, we were finally suc­cessful in pur­chasing our tickets at that very same ticket desk. I was a little dis­mayed to see the num­bers “003” and “004” on them, but at least we had them in hand.
7. We’d read in the pro­gramme that buses would be dis­patched to take us to the con­cert since it was at a dif­ferent venue, simply listed as “Bæjarbíó” with no address given. Though the tickets stated the screening started at 8:00pm, the prom­ised buses were also sched­uled to pick us up at 8:00pm across the street from the book­store where we’d pur­chased tickets. When we asked the British volun­teer chief, she assured us that buses would be there and that film fest­ival volun­teers in their yellow t-shirts would be there to help us. Being cau­tious, we showed up at about 7:45pm but couldn’t see any volun­teers. The weather was too cold to be standing around in t-shirts anyway, but no one appeared to be around, neither volun­teers nor other people waiting for the bus. Worst of all, there was no bus, even by 8:10pm, when we decided to hail a taxi. After showing the driver the tickets to see if he knew where to go, he had to call his dis­patcher, which is never a good sign. After that he hap­pily set off for the southern suburb of Hafnarfjorður, where we’d spent that very morning in our rental car, looking around. 3000kr later (about $35), he dropped us out­side of a building we’d walked past that very morning. My temper was begin­ning to boil. As we walked into the theatre at about 8:25, we spotted Yung Chang, dir­ector of Up the Yangtze (review), whom we’d met the night before, and I made a note to find out how he’d gotten him­self there. Since we were late, we had to take seats in the second-to-last row and as we settled in, we could hear a man giving a rather lengthy intro­duc­tion to the film only in Icelandic. Then the band came out and the film started. We had no idea what the run­ning time of the film was, but I was treating it like a con­cert, so expected about 90 minutes or so. Nearly three hours later, we emerged, dazed and con­fused. There were no English inter­titles for the film, which seemed to have sev­eral false end­ings. The score, though beau­tiful in stretches, was dis­cordant in others, and simply score-like for most of the rest. We headed out­side hoping to see a bus, and were not com­pletely sur­prised to see none. I was able to find a volun­teer and asked where it was. She had no idea and went to find her super­visor. “Oh, it’s not out front?” she asked me. “Let me go and find out.” After finding and asking the fest­ival dir­ector without suc­cess, she wandered off across the street. Luckily for us, Yung offered us a ride back to Reykjavik with his Icelandic friend Hana, and we gladly accepted. I still don’t know whether any buses existed.
8. Earlier in the fest­ival, there had been a drive-in sched­uled to take place in the parking garage of a local mall. Though the listing was duly trans­lated into English in the guide, I noted that both Icelandic and English text said the audio would be broad­cast over the car radio on the 91.9 fre­quency. Though the guide prom­ised that all films would be screened in English or with English sub­titles, I also noted that one of the fea­tures of the drive-in would be the season premiere of a pop­ular Icelandic tele­vi­sion show. Suspecting that there might not be any English trans­la­tion avail­able, I sent an email with my ques­tion to the festival’s guest coordin­ator. I also men­tioned our con­fu­sion with the Hjaltalín con­cert tickets. Three days later, I got an email thanking me for my mes­sage, which she would “get to later” and then inviting us to a dinner sponsored by the Icelandic Film Centre that evening. I never did get any reply to my questions.

The dream team of Icelandic dir­ectors and pro­du­cers we met at a “sneak peek” event

Whew. I didn’t intend for that to be as long and ranty as it turned out. If you’re still with me, I don’t want to give the impres­sion that we didn’t have any fun. In fact, the best times we had were at a number of smaller events that we were spe­cially invited to. For those, I’d like to spe­cific­ally thank the Icelandic Film Centre (in par­tic­ular Thóra Gunnarsdóttir and Laufey Guðjónsdóttir) who have always seemed nothing but pro­fes­sional in my con­tacts with them.

1. Brooke and I were delighted to be invited to a “sneak peek” event early in the fest­ival where we met sev­eral Icelandic dir­ectors and saw clips of upcoming releases. This was held at a beau­tiful res­taurant with a lovely view of the har­bour. I think we may have been among the first to see the trailer for Júlíus Kemp’s Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre, which looks to be a scream (lit­er­ally). We also saw clips from Sunshine Boy, an upcoming doc­u­mentary about autism by Friðrik Thór Friðriksson, per­haps the god­father of Icelandic cinema. Steeled by some free wine, we actu­ally spoke to sev­eral dir­ectors we’ve been fans of for a long time, including Friðriksson, Baltasar Kormákur (101 Reykjavik, Jar City (review)), Valdís Óskarsdóttir (Country Wedding (review), and editor of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and many other “Hollywood” films), and Icelandic author Andri Snæer Magnason, whose best­seller Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual for a Frightened Nation is being made into a doc­u­mentary. When we left, we were presented with a gift bag full of DVDs of Icelandic films as well as press material for the upcoming films we’d seen previewed.
2. Later in the week, as I men­tioned above, we were invited to an intimate dinner where we were among not only the Icelandic film­makers but all of the inter­na­tional film­makers and guests who were at the fest­ival. At our table of ten, guests included Friðrik Thór Friðriksson and Canadian act­ress Arsinée Khanjian (serving on the jury). Scattered around the room were Costa-Gavras and his wife, Finnish doc­u­ment­arian Arto Halonen (Shadow of the Holy Book (review)), Faroese film­maker Katrin Ottarsdottir, Irish doc­u­ment­arian David Kinsella, Canadian doc­u­mentary film­makers Gwen Haworth (She’s A Boy I Knew, awarded a Special Mention at the Queer Cinema Awards in Reykjavik) and Yung Chang (Up the Yangtze), and Dimitri Eipides, pro­grammer for RIFF, TIFF and the Thessaloniki Film Festival. A deli­cious meal of Icelandic lamb was fol­lowed by drinks including Brennivin, the legendary schnapps nick­named “Black Death.” A good time was had by all.
3. At the dinner, we met RIFF dir­ector Hrönn Marinósdóttir, who made sure we knew about the closing party which was being held aboard a whale watching boat in the har­bour on the final Saturday night of the fest­ival. In fact they had attached three boats together to acco­modate everyone, including the boat that Brooke and I had gone out on the week before. There were many more people there, undoubtedly attracted by the open bar and the inter­esting loc­a­tion. There was a DJ (and our new friend Yung Chang even jumped in and played a DJ set off his laptop) and it was def­in­itely a young and local crowd. The fest­ival handed out its awards and later, we spotted Björk in the crowd. In fact, we were prob­ably within a foot or two of the pix­ie­like singer, per­haps Iceland’s greatest export. In this con­text, Icelanders’ lack of form­ality was actu­ally a benefit, since nobody seemed to treat her too much like a celebrity.

All in all, we had a won­derful time, and spent quite a few of our days driving around the coun­tryside seeing the sights. I’ll look for­ward to seeing how RIFF matures, and would def­in­itely be inter­ested in coming back again soon. Next time, I’ll just carry a better map!

Here are our photos from the entire trip (warning: many non-film-related ones, but you’ll enjoy them, I assure you!)

Tagged as: iceland, reykjavik, RIFF

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