World Film Locations: Reykjavík

Description

Though the creative community of Reykjavík, Iceland, has earned a well-deserved reputation for its unique artistic output – most notably the popular music that has emerged from the city since the 1980s – Reykjavík’s filmmakers have received less attention than they merit. World Film Locations: Reykjavík corrects this imbalance, shedding new light on the role of cinema in a country that, partly because of its small population, produces more films per capita than any other in the world. The contributors to this volume trace cinema in Iceland from the 1979 establishment of the Icelandic Film Fund – before which the country’s film industry barely existed – through to today. In a series of illuminating scene reviews, they show how rapidly the city has changed over the past thirty years. In thematic spotlight articles, they go on to explore such topics as the relationship between Iceland and its capital city; youth culture and night life; the relationship between film and the local music community; cinematic representations of Scandinavian crime; and filmmakers’ response to the 2008 banking crisis. Together, these varied contributions show how films shot in Reykjavík have been shaped both by Iceland’s remoteness from the rest of the world and by Icelandic filmmakers’ sense that the city remains forever on the brink of desolate and harsh wilderness.

Maps/Scenes Scenes 1-7 1962 - 1992 Scenes 8-14 1995 - 2005" Scenes 15-20 2005 - 2007 Scenes 21-26 2008 Scenes 27-32 2009 - 2010 Scenes 33-38 2010 - 2011 Essays Reykjavík: City of the Imagination - Jez Conolly & Caroline Whelan 'A Stupid Man Built His Home On Sand': A Filmed Response to the Icelandic Banking Crisis - Júlíana Björnsdóttir Urban/Wilderness: Reykjavík's Cinematic City-Country Divide - Björn Norðfjörð Cultural capital and corrugated iron: The 101 Reykjavík postcode on film - Heiða Jóhannsdóttir Violently Funny: Comedic capers, claustrophobia, and Icelandic crime cinema - Bjorn Thor Vilhjalmsson Björk and Beyond: Reykjavík's Onscreen Relationship with its Music Scene - Helga Þórey Jónsdóttir A Moving Story: Reykjavík as a Global/Transnational Cinematic City - Marcelline Block

Sujets

• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinema
• Film
• Digital
• Electronic
• General
• General officer
• Película fotográfica

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 20 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841506760
• Langue: English

Extrait

First Published in the UK in 2012 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First Published in the USA in 2012 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2012 Intellect Ltd
Cover photo: Noi the Albino ( 2003 Zik Zak Kvikmyndir)
Copy Editor: Emma Rhys
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written consent.
A Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
World Film Locations Series ISSN: 2045-9009 eISSN: 2045-9017
World Film Locations Reykjavlk eISBN: 978-1-84150-641-8 eISBN: 978-1-84150-676-0
Printed and bound by Bell Bain Limited, Glasgow
EDITORS Jez Conolly and Caroline Whelan
SERIES EDITOR DESIGN Gabriel Solomons
CONTRIBUTORS Egill Arnarsson sa Baldursd ttir Nicola Balkind David Owain Bates J l ana Bj rnsd ttir Marcelline Block Jez Conolly Hilmar Gudlaugsson Scott Jordan Harris Hei a J hannsd ttir Helga P rey J nsd ttir Sebastian Jakub Konefal Gunnar T mas Krist fersson Sylwia Kucharska Neil Mitchell Bj rn Nor fj r Bjorn Thor Vilhjalmsson Atli Sigurj nsson K ri Tulinius Caroline Whelan
LOCATION PHOTOGRAPHY sa Baldursd ttir (unless otherwise credited)
LOCATION MAPS Joel Keightley

PUBLISHED BY
Intellect
The Mill, Parnall Road,
Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
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Bookends: Tj rnin ( sa Baldursd ttir) This page: City State (2011) Overleaf: Future of Hope (2010)
CONTENTS
Maps/Scenes

Scenes 1-7
1962 - 1992

Scenes 8-14
1995 - 2005

Scenes 15-20
2005 - 2007

Scenes 21-26
2008

Scenes 27-32
2009 - 2010

Scenes 33-38
2010 - 2011

Essays
Reykjav k: City of the Imagination Jez Conolly Caroline Whelan

A Stupid Man Built His Home On Sand : A Filmed Response to the Icelandic Banking Crisis J liana Bj rnsd ttir

Urban/Wilderness: Reykjav k s Cinematic City-Country Divide Bj rn Nor jj r

Cultural capital and corrugated iron: The 101 Reykjav k postcode on film Hei a J hannsd ttir

Violently Funny: Comedic capers, claustrophobia, and Icelandic crime cinema Bjorn Thor Vilhjalmsson Bj rk and Beyond:

Bj rk and Beyond: Reykjav k s Onscreen Relationship with its Music Scene Helga rey J nsd ttir

A Moving Story: Reykjav k as a Global/ Transnational Cinematic City Marcelline Block

Backpages Resources Contributor Bios Filmography
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would firstly like to thank everyone who contributed articles and scene reviews to the book. It would simply not exist without you. We are also extremely grateful to Sunna Gu nad ttir and Steff Thors, co-founders of Icelandic Cinema Online, for providing a place to view many of the films covered in the book. Thanks must go to some of the film-makers themselves who provided information and help upon request. Special thanks also to El as J natansson, Mayor of Bolungarvik, for arranging the remote location photography that accompanies the Noi The Albino scene review, and immeasurable thanks to sa Baldursd ttir who battled the elements to get so many great scene location shots.
JEZ CONOLLY AND CAROLINE WHELAN
INTRODUCTION
World Film Locations Reykjav k
ONE OF THE AIMS OF World Film Locations, in complementing the coverage of cinema s iconic cityscapes, is to shed light on places that perhaps do not always get noticed on the movie map. The first volume in the series that we edited, covering Dublin, was one such example; not a city as synonymous with film as the likes of London, New York or Paris perhaps, but one that is nevertheless rich in relatively undiscovered gems, making it especially worthy of scrutiny. The book that you are now holding steers a path towards a place that may appear as only a dim flicker in the peripheral vision of international film-makers and audiences. But it is this very remoteness that rewards the intrepid cinematic psychogeographer hungry for a sui generis onscreen interpretation of place.
This volume in the series focuses on the world s northernmost capital city. Reykjav k s creative community has developed a well-earned reputation for its uniquely resourceful output, most notably through popular music since the 1980s, but its filmmakers have perhaps received less exposure than they deserve, a deficit that this book in part seeks to address. With just a few exceptions Icelandic cinema barely existed before 1978 when the Icelandic Film Fund was established, since then an increasing number of entirely home-grown films have been released. Thanks to its small number of inhabitants (around 320,000) it can be said that Iceland produces more films in proportion to its population than any country in the world, and for the same reason regularly tops the rankings of annual national cinema attendance per capita. The nature and character of the films being produced, and the representation of Reykjav k in them, stems from and owes much to the response, both native and international, to the place s geographical distance from the rest of the world coupled with the sense of a city forever on the brink of violent wilderness.
The natural turbulence that surrounds Reykjav k has been matched in recent years by the well-documented banking crisis that affected Iceland, which not surprisingly has defined many of the recent film releases. The book contains 38 scene reviews selected to illustrate those aspects of the city especially affected by the rapid changes that Reykjav k has experienced in the last thirty years. These are accompanied by six in-depth spotlight articles examining a range of issues: the city/country interface, youth culture and the city s nightlife, the local music community s relationship to film, Reykjav k s cinematic take on Scandinavian crime, the city s transnational and multicultural experience through the lens, and its film-makers response to the 2008 banking crisis. It is our hope that these insightful essays, along with the multitude of scene fragments, take the reader on a voyage of discovery around this amazing city and in so doing bring new audiences to a collection of innovative, challenging, and relevant films that deserve more attention.
Jez Conolly and Caroline Whelan, Editors
REYKJAV K
City of the Imagination

In few other places (if anywhere) will you find such a high percentage of people with the urge to save, if not the world, then at least their own soul through some artistic endeavour.
The poet and novelist Thor Vilhj lmsson on Icelanders, as quoted in Peter Cowie s book Icelandic Film (Icelandic Film Fund 1995)

THE PACT THAT THE city of Reykjav k exists at all owes a good deal to the power of imagination. The laws of nature would suggest that the chances of a thriving young capital emerging from those ancient black lava fields, so close to the Arctic Circle, so far from most everything else, are slim at best. And yet here it is; a one-off against the odds, a pastel-toned and corrugated improbability fixed in the dark rafters of the world like a luminescent dream-bubble above us. The emergence of modern day Reykjav k as a creative force of nature finds an echo of sorts in the eruptive behaviour of the recently notorious Eyjafjallaj kull and its volcanic cousins; it is a source of startling energy, originating in the ancient and yet in a state of constant rebirth, with a by-product that assaults the senses.
The extraordinary landscapes of Iceland have attracted many international filmmakers in recent years, especially those in search of spectacular, off-world backdrops for their action and fantasy epics. You will spot the country s interior region in films such as Die Another Day (Lee Tamahori, 2002), Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan, 2005) and Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012). However impressive this use of the natural vistas has been, and however financially advantageous to the local economy, it is tantamount to typecasting the country as a visual source of hellish locations. It also draws the attention away from the small but quietly confident output of indigenous films, many of which feature Reykjav k, the singular metropolitan point in Iceland, as their setting. It is an incomparable city, one that has sparked into extraordinary life within living memory yet has found a way to draw on collective race memory to define itself amid its new found modernity, a feat that recurs in the films and themes discussed in this book.

It is worth briefly charting the legacy of film in Iceland and the path that led to the vibrant Reykjav k that we see on film today. The city saw the opening of its first cinema in 1906, but for many years with only a handful of exceptions when cameras rolled in Iceland they were operated by overseas film-makers, primarily Danish and Swedish, and were pointed at the countryside not the city. It was not until 1948 that Iceland produced its first feature film with sound and in colour - Loftur Gu mundssons pastoral love story Milli fjalls og fj ru/Between Mountain and Shore - indeed from the early 1960s for a period of nearly twenty years hardly any home-grown feature films were produced at all. However, leading up to and during that time a number of documentaries and short films were being made, and the importance of these two forms can still be seen in today s output. Among the intrepid local documentarists the work of Villi Knudsen and his father svaldur is worthy of attention. Since the 1940s they have been risking life and limb to capture the country s volcanoes on film. The collective result, The Volcano Show , can be seen throughout the year at the small and wonderfully sweet Red Rock Cinema on Hellusund close to the Pond in central Reykjav k. They may be merely a tourist attraction but the Knudsens films illustrate a characteristically Icelandic res