Iceland review - 2012, Qupperneq 42

40 ICELAND REVIEW
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IR: And… when will you start directing?
AGG: I got a sponsorship from the EU’s youth in Action program
to work on a project with a young relative of mine, Bjarney Anna
Jóhannesdóttir. We want to base it on her artworks: paintings,
poems, sketches, cartoons, short stories, songs and lyrics. I guess it
will be my first work as a director, which will premiere this winter.
My goal is to study theater or film directing in the U.S. in the near
future but right now I have plenty of projects as an actress and I
believe it is the best preparation for becoming the director that I
know I want to be.
IR: Are you more excited about directing in theater or working on
motion pictures?
AGG: I have often asked myself the same question and the dream
is to mix the two. I’d like to enter a course of study that empha-
sizes the development of pictures, the visual aspect. Costumes, sets,
lighting, colors and form are very important in my job and it has
to work as a whole. The film process is more complicated in many
aspects but both forms are ways to tell a story. I want to, and I will
do both.
IR: As a child, what did you want to become when you grew up?
AGG: An actress.
IR: Always?
AGG: If there were times when I didn’t it was because I doubted
myself. But I still wanted to be a director. I went to university and
tried psychology and literature, both of which I believed would
make a good basis for directing. After graduating from the Iceland
Academy of the Arts, I went on to learn how to surf in Spain
because I wanted to do something totally different. What suits me
best is the art scene but it’s a gift to try new things because they
may always prove useful to me in some way.
IR: A little bird whispered to me that you were a good singer. I won’t
ask you what you sing in the shower, but is there some genre of music
that fascinates you more than others? Or a particular musician?
AGG: There are all sorts of lies going around… Eivør, Emilíana
Torrini, Cher and Madelaine Peyroux spring to mind first. I some-
times sang for my director, Reynir, ‘Ég er kominn heim’ [a classic
Icelandic ballad] during the worst fits on the glacier when no one
could hear me but him and maybe the sound guy because the
weather was crazy, they were the only ones wearing headphones
and I had a mic under my parka. So I suspect Reynir is the bird!
IR: These are all women; don’t you like male singers?
AGG: I do, I love good male voices. Frank Sinatra, Michael
Jackson, Bob Dylan and Otis Redding come to mind. I choose the
music I listen to depending on my mood, and the music is often
related to my work as well.
But I also find silence wonderful. 
Anna Gunndís in her role as the
scientist Agla on location at
Langjökull glacier.