Reykjavík Grapevine - 21.09.2012, Síða 22

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22 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 15 — 2012FILM
Offering Icelanders a window to world
cinema, Hrönn says, was the goal at
the time of the festival’s inception.
“Like in so many other countries, most
of the productions come from just one
place in the world: Hollywood. And
great films come from Hollywood,
but it's not the world,” Hrönn says. “In
the beginning, I didn’t think about
anything else… I wanted to help bring
this culture to Iceland.”
Since then, the festival has set its
sights outward, hiring experienced
programmers and seeking out sig-
nificant filmmakers: honoured guests
have ranged from Abbas Kiarostami,
in 2005, to Dario Argento, this year.
But then, Hrönn adds, “we of course
realised that this is so important for
the Icelandic film industry to have
an international event, because we
found out, very soon, that the interna-
tional film world was curious.” Why
shouldn’t Iceland’s film culture be an
active player as well as a receptive au-
dience?
LAUNCHING ICELANDIC CINEMA
Why not indeed. Beyond a new aware-
ness of the Icelandic films playing
alongside offerings from the global
arthouse, there are tangible ways in
which the festival has made Iceland
a collaborator in the same commu-
nity. Hrönn likes to tell the story of
the wooly Russian mystic Aleksandr
Sokurov, a guest of honour at the 2006
festival, who toured the country with
a local production company and then
returned to film portions of his Faust,
which won the Golden Lion at Ven-
ice last year (and played at RIFF the
month after that).
There’s also the festival’s unique
character, remarked upon by many
a foreign guest—RIFF is, as far as
anyone knows, the only international
film festival with an annual screening
in a swimming pool, a tradition con-
tinuing this year with ‘Back To The
Future’ playing Laugardalslaug—and
exemplified by the fest’s major award,
the Golden Puffin. (Venice has the
Golden Lion, Hrönn reasons, and Ber-
lin the Golden Bear, “so we thought,
ok, why not choose the puffin?”).
Only first or second-time feature
filmmakers are eligible for the com-
petition, called New Visions: identify-
ing talent early is one function better
served by festivals like RIFF than by,
say, glamour-crammed Cannes, and
indeed the RIFF slate, in and out of
competition, is peppered with atten-
tion-getting titles from Toronto as well
as American indie breakouts from ear-
lier this year.
Also of gratifying interest to the
up-to-date viewer is the documentary
lineup. RIFF’s
evolution has
coincided with
an explosion in
the production
of new films—
as the means of
production have
become ever more ac-
cessible to an ever wider
pool of would-be moviemak-
ers, a proliferation of nonfiction inqui-
ries has been a significant result. This
has enlarged the world-cinema pie for
festivals such as RIFF, and gives lo-
cal audiences more points of entry to
world culture and politics.
Docs are frequently among RIFF’s
most sought-after tickets. Hrönn puts
it down to the declining space for in-
vestigative or research-based televi-
sion, and the natural inquisitiveness
of Icelanders, citizens of a island
nation eager for the opportunity to
interface with a much larger world.
This is especially true, perhaps, in
the case of the A Different Tomorrow
programme, with its emphasis on eco-
logical documentaries of great interest
to local audiences.
BRINGING THE WORLD TO ICE-
LAND
The goal of making Reykjavík a rel-
evant destination in world cinema has
perhaps taken on a new urgency since
the collapse of the Icelandic banking
system. Hrönn allows that the festi-
val’s international profile has risen
parallel to that of Iceland itself in the
international imagination. In 2010,
for instance, the festival and govern-
ment brought the New York Magazine
film critic David Edelstein over to give
a talk, tour the country, and report
back to his readers; he did
so in a blog post rhapso-
dizing the festival and
the country, while
also noting that
his most-expenses
paid trip was “part
of a campaign that
has also put ‘You
Could Be in Iceland’
[or words to that effect]
posters all over New York
subways,” as part of the na-
tional shift towards emphasis in
cultural and heritage tourism.
But if Icelandic culture has led the
recovery, it’s still living with the con-
sequences of the crash when, Hrönn
notes ruefully, “we lost most of our
important sponsors.” The festival as-
pirations to do more year-round pro-
gramming, like a film club in Tjar-
narbíó next door to their offices, have
been stalled—“you can’t do every-
thing when a country goes bankrupt.”
Still, the foundation and ambitions
are there, as is the secure place RIFF
has made for itself. Or, rather, places:
the place it has made for world cinema
in Iceland, and the place it has made
for Iceland in world cinema.
- MARK ASCH
Lions and Bears and Puffins, Oh My
The Reykjavík International Film Festival finds its
world-cinema niche
Ah, autumn in Reykjavík when, as Reykjavík International
Film Festival Chair Hrönn Marinósdóttir observes, “it starts
to rain, the leaves start to fall, it gets dark again, and it’s
very traditional to go to the movies.” The ninth annual RIFF
runs from September 27 to October 7 this year—quick on
the heels of late August and early September’s prestigious
festivals in Venice and Toronto, making Reykjavík a natural
part of the roll-out for new titles from the international fes-
tival circuit: “We thought it would be clever to be the first
festival after those big events to get the new films.”
INTER
VIEW
“The festival aspirations
to do more year-round
programming, like a film club
in Tjarnarbíó next door to their
offices, have been stalled—“you
can’t do everything when a
country goes bankrupt.„
Nanna Dís