Reykjavík Grapevine - 26.08.2011, Qupperneq 32

32
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 13 — 2011
Your film seems unapologetically
biased. It tells a one-sided story
about righteous activists, faced
with a state that you mock as a
paradoxical mix of brutal, stupid,
powerless and cute. What sort of
filmmaking is this?
Some stories have to be told this way.
Actually, I'd like to leave this notion
of story behind—a film is not mainly a
story. A film is first and foremost an im-
age, an aggregate of images, making,
hopefully, some sort of whole. In gen-
eral, there is no such thing as an objec-
tive image. Simply the choice of subject
material is already a biased decision
that this deserves to be shown. 'Here, I
want to show you this' is the basic ges-
ture of any image. What drove me was
a desire to show these people, these
political animals. Thinking bodies. The
powers they stand against don’t need
my support to be visible, they shows
themselves off all the time. With make-
up and proper lighting, of course. Open
any newspaper—it will be split in half:
half business, half mainstream politics.
Most of the imagery will be as the poli-
ticians or the businesses themselves
prefer it. Very little space is given to re-
veal anything actually human, let alone
any real passion.
WHERE ARE THE RVK9?
I was mildly surprised to learn how
small a part the protests and actual
RVK9 case played in the film, serv-
ing maybe more as a background
or framework for the actual docu-
mentary to work within. Is there
anything to be said about the RVK9
case still?
The case itself is important, but in my
mind mostly as an expression of how a
state operates. A state remains a state,
whether a republic, democratic and lib-
eral one or something else. Before any-
thing else, it wants to survive. The non-
violent action in Alþingi, that the people
were prosecuted for, probably felt like
an attack for some state officials, be-
cause of its surprise-factor. Things like
this were not supposed to happen in
Iceland. Nothing was supposed to hap-
pen in Iceland. So the state fights back,
goes to lengths to quell anything that
feels like rebellion.
You choose to interview the RVK9
at various locations that at first
glance have little to do with the
case or the person being inter-
viewed. Do the locations bear any
significance, or were they chosen
merely for their aesthetic qualities?
Were they chosen by yourself or
perhaps the interviewees?
They did have a certain significance at
the outset, but currently I am more cu-
rious to hear other people's interpreta-
tions of those than mine.
Were there any obstacles you had
to overcome during the filmmaking
process?
There were two locations that we did
not get license to use: we wanted to
film one interview next to German
fighter jets that stayed in Keflavík in
2010, and we wanted to film inside an
aluminium smelter. Neither proved pos-
sible. The military-industry complex is
very neurotic about cameras.
But in what could foreseeably have
been my major obstacle, finding a crew
willing to work on the project for, let's
say, very uncertain financial gains, I
was almost miraculously fortunate.
Producer and sound designer Bogi
Reynisson believed in the project from
early on, and working with him has sim-
ply been a joy. Top professional. Same
goes for cinematographer Miriam Fass-
bender, who stayed in Iceland for three
weeks of shooting—our cooperation
was more turbulent, but every drop of
sweat payed off. Her contribution to the
film is invaluable. A lot of other people
have been unbelievably generous with
their time and talent: composers, mu-
sicians, extras, and managers at most
locations.
Whence do you derive the film's
title?
Gegn means several things in Iceland:
'against' and 'versus' is the most ob-
vious translation. But it also means
'through' and it means 'obedient.' It hits
several key notes. The 9 is then some
sort of direct action against the title it-
self—9 forces its way into an otherwise
rather tranquil little word.
IS IT TRUE?
To what extent are you choreo-
graphing and editing your subjects'
statements to fit your own? The
group is comprised of vastly dif-
ferent people that seem to adhere
to differing ideologies, with maybe
only their willingness to be radical
or go against the grain as unifying
factor (and maybe a shared dis-
content with the current state of
affairs). Yet one leaves ‘A9ainst’
feeling as if a message or state-
ment has been imbibed, even a
coherent one (although one might
be hesitant to point out specifically
what that statement is). This leads
one to imagine that the cunning
filmmaker has created a narrative
out of these different voices (per-
haps this is what a filmmaker's job
is), but again I guess the question
is: did that message or statement
come before or after the fact? Or
maybe there isn't one and I'm imag-
ining the whole thing?
Of course there is a common line there—
at least the one that made it possible for
those nine to unite in that one particular
action. I definitely chose the subject-
matter partly out of sympathy with their
action and their common struggle, but
during the process of making the film I
don't think I 'choreographed' them so
much according to my own beliefs as
according to the demands of the film
as some sort of totality. I'm probably in
the film no less than the subjects are,
but it is not intended to be my personal
propaganda machine. Rather some sort
of truth-extractor. What truth gets ex-
tracted however will definitely depend
on the viewer—I think many foreigners
will see quite a different film than most
Icelanders. What may be novel in an
Icelandic context, for example to hear
a friendly elderly female poet noncha-
lantly explain: 'Of course I was a com-
mie' is measured on a different scale in
an international context, where such a
line remains, perhaps, mostly cute. I'm
very curious about how foreign viewers
will respond to it, if at all.
During the protest wave of 2008-
2009 you founded and operated
a news and analysis website,
Nei., which provided some rather
thoughtful and often radical com-
mentary on the ongoing events,
as well as articles and disserta-
tions that seemed to probe deeply
into Icelandic society in apparent
attempts to understand what was
happening and why? Could tell our
readers a bit about that medium
and its story, but more importantly:
To what extent if any can ‘A9ainst’
be construed as a continuation of
your work at Nei.?
The website-called-newspaper was
something that felt very urgent when
other media completely failed to satisfy
the public. I think at some point every
participant in the uprising read Nei.
The lengthiest articles had the biggest
readership, up to 6.000 or 7.000 visi-
tors in a day. 5–17 pages, you won't find
such material in any printed newspaper
today. But this was a strange year, cer-
tainly. Obviously there is a continuation
in the sense of subject matter between
Nei. and ‘A9ainst’, but they also func-
tion in very different ways. One being
invested in the moment, during much
turbulence, the other stopping by to
dive into one point in time.
HYPE!
After the film’s premiere at Skjald-
borg, Ásgeir H. Ingólfsson wrote in
this magazine that it was a very im-
portant film that had the potential
to shake and stir Icelandic society.
Wow, huh?
If it has any impact, I would think it is
a rather slow-breeding one. I hope the
film may be around for a new genera-
tion coming along to ask its parents
tough questions. Most adults already
have too much invested in the status
quo to seriously question the founda-
tions of society.
How do you envision the movie to
affect the community it is targeted
at, i.e. what are your 'desired re-
sults' with this particular piece of
work?
I would like people to see it, obviously.
Where it goes from there is really not
something I have thought about. I think
seeing what is in the world has intrin-
sic value—seeing it and sharing it. How
people then react to what is shown,
that's not really my business. We are all
stuck in a political reality but I'm not a
politician. And a film is not a politician.
What are your future plans in the
field? Are you making more mov-
ies? Would you make 'fiction'?
This film has to be marketed as 'docu-
mentary' to give it a place in a shelf. But
I don't think of this as a significant line
of separation. Valid fiction is as much
documentary as a decent documen-
tary is. I don’t know, you’re supposed
to advertise your next project in an in-
terview like this, but I just don’t know
what I will do next. And it is never yours
alone to decide—you need people to
work with, you need money. I’m lucky
to be as interested in writing as film-
making. It makes me less dependent
on financing of projects. Filmmaking
remains somewhat expensive. I just
came from a conference of small pub-
lishers in Oslo, on behalf of ‘Perspired
by Iceland’, which we now call a non-
publishing non-house, and found it
very inspiring to realise that some of
the world’s most influential publishing
houses, such as Semiotext(e), are run
and have been run for decades, with-
out any superstructure: without offices,
without a phone system, without fund
applications—literally publishing their
books from their kitchens, bedrooms
and cafés. That’s sort of how I’ve al-
ways worked, but in Iceland I always
start felling like that’s something I must
outgrow. We really need to rethink what
it means to be an adult. .
Do we maybe seem 'too excited' about this film? Is all this just a bunch of hype? We don't think
so. We were genuinely excited when we saw it. It's a great movie in our opinion, and it offers a
new and much needed perspective on Icelandic society. So our excitement is at least honest,
although we might well be entirely wrong (we often are).
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“The case itself is important, but in my mind mostly as an
expression of how a state operates. A state remains a state,
whether a republic, democratic and liberal one or something
else.”
Films | Interview