REYKJAVIK INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 1.10.-4.10.2008

Reykjavik International Film Festival's website

ICELAND AND AN IDENTITY AT BREAKING POINT

I arrive in Iceland on Wednesday, where one Euro buys 122 Icelandic kronor. When I leave in three days time, one Euro already buys 155 kronor. A 20 per cent drop in currency value in three days. The pace continues after my departure. The bank system, built in a bubble on greed alone, crashes and the state takes hold of the banks one by one. Risk investments and profiteering on borrowed money becomes a reality. Putin and Russia offer financial aid to Iceland, obviously trying to buy into a significant strategic base. A NATO country up for sale. Quite a script, but unfortunately non-fictional. Many Icelanders - representatives of cinema and culture, at least - take the situation admirably calmly, although the crisis has an effect on everyone and shakes the foundations of ordinary households as well as the state's. The chairman of our jury, the great local director and actor Baltasar Kormákur encapsulates the situation well: of course it is tragic, but it's also important that things like values and foundations get shaken up. Otherwise nothing is learned, and one cannot move forward.

Snowstorm took over Reykjavik

As if to underline the catastrophe, the first snowstorm of the autumn arrives in Reykjavik bringing along its monsoon winds. I shiver in my Mexico gear and my thin Guinness jacket - at least I manage to buy new socks and a hat from the shops. The floor in my fancy design-hotel, in which I continue my DVD-watching shift, is ice cold. From the window I can see the city's music hall being built up, which is threatening to remain unfinished as the building's financier Landsbankinn comes crashing down and, like the other banks, drifts into the lap of the state.



A huge music house is still being constructed, at least for now

Good, impressive works begin to emerge from the 14 films in the New Vision competition series. The hotel room work starts to fill me up inside, too. With some films I feel moved and experience a sense of catharsis and pride in the importance of cinema - its possibilities to move and awaken our deeper levels. Such moments are arresting as a viewer, and also encourage belief in my own cinematic author self.

Working in the jury is interesting in many ways: one has the chance to get to know and exchange thoughts with unique, gifted people - which on this occasion aptly describes all the members of our jury. In addition to Baltasar, it includes the Icelandic actress Margrét Vilhjálmsdóttir (who is featured in a leading role in Baltasar's latest film From Reykjavik to Rotterdam), the Armenian-born actress Arsinée Khanjian and Faroese director Katrin Ottarsdottir. We give the main prize to Sergei Dvortsevoy's (who was with me in another jury in St. Petersburg in June) magnificent film Tulpan, and an honorary mention to the skillfully constructed and moving Blind Loves (Juraj Lehotsky). The competition series is for so-called first- or second-time fiction directors, and the festival's programme director Dimitri Eipides has compiled it of films premiered at Cannes, Toronto, Venice or other large-scale festivals. It is pleasing to see that many of the featured directors have a background in documentary film, and are therefore able to use their documentary expression as an enrichment of the fiction world.

Actress Arsinée Khanjian and programme director Dimitri Eipides

Dimitri Eipides, together with the active and helpful festival staff, has compiled an excellent programme . It includes a strong documentary series, in which Shadow of the Holy Book features, and fictional films from various perspectives and continents. In conjunction with the festival, a previously independent event focusing on "gay and lesbian subjects", has joined up, enriching the programme nicely. The festival's honorary guest the previous year was the great Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki, whose visit has left behind a plethora of epic stories about this fairytale island. This time the festival honours the master of political cinema, Costa-Gavras, in the form of a retrospective and a lifetime achievement award. He still seems like an energetic and enlightened observer of our society.

Political directors Arto Halonen and Costa-Gavras

Dimitri Eipides has his fingers in many pies. He has a deep love of film, both on the fictional and documentary side. Dimitri is the director of the successful Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, and the programme director of the large-scale Toronto International Film Festival. In addition, he is the founder of a new documentary film festival in Cyprus, and also runs a festival in Montreal. Dimitri is a great believer in the power of cinema. Films are his life, and he their exceptional, big-souled representative.

Shadow of the Holy Book gets a good audience, and the discussion, as the nation fights an economic catastrophe, is an interesting and memorable one. I also give a lecture at the Talent Campus, aimed at film students, on making documentary films and the possibilities of political cinema.

My pick-up for the airport is at 5.30 in the morning. I hang around in bars until then with the other festival guests. Finally we end up at a packed drinking hole (previously owned by Baltasarin Kormákur) in the city centre, which is full to the brim even at 5 o'clock in the morning. Icelanders know how to party without frills, and move forward in the crowd using their elbows. Gender equality is strong here, as women push, shove and hover around just like the men. The atmosphere is equal to stock markets at the worst times of a currency boom. Maybe the markets will crash some day in the nightlife world, too.

Perhaps jostling in the crowd will somehow get politer then.

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28.09.-01.10.2008. NORDISK PANORAMA

Nordisk Panorama website

NORDIC BUREAUCRACY AND HOTEL ROOM EXPERIENCES

The flight from Mexico City to Copenhagen is a long one, but I'm so tired that I sleep successfully for most of the trip. From Copenhagen Airport one can get easily and effortlessly to Malmö by train.

Nordisk Panorama, the festival spanning five Nordic countries, tours around every year in a different northern location. Last year the event took place in Oulu, and now it's the turn of Sweden and Malmö. The empty streets of a Sunday afternoon, the cleanliness and order, stick out in the Malmö streets after lively Mexico.

Filmkontakt Nord is the event's umbrella organisation. Every year, the festival selects and screens the short films and documentaries it deems the best of the Nordic countries' output. The organisation is homespun but at the same time somehow arrogant: just like a family unit, into which, in principle, all the Nordic filmmakers belong to (most of which through forced adoption). In addition to film screenings, the Nordic finance forum, panel discussions and Master Class events form an important part of the festival. The leader of the Master Class, from outside the Nordic countries, is Kim Longinotto.

Even though the festival offers the so-called best of Nordic short and documentary films, it feels as though the films and their makers are the event's cross to bear. The Panorama's sideline activities and especially the running of the finance forum have developed into the central core of the event. Succesfully executed project presentations, i.e. pitches, at the forum are hyped up, which raises the spirit of the project and its crew. The most vital part of the pitches made for the financiers is a vivid and sexy presentation, which manipulates the situation and the general energy into a positive one for the project. The financiers, high on the positive energy, will then finance the project more easily and hope that the "hype" will maintain itself until the end of the process. A Nordic producer colleague of mine brushes off the "content/lack of content issue" in a way typical of our time: "if the project's well-made presentation manages to bring out laughs and to wake up the financiers, the project is bound to have levels of depth. Even if only on a hidden level." Exactly.

The finance forums have spread all over, and their behavioural rules and modes of action have met with amused approval. The filmmakers, financiers and organisers are aware that playing with manipulation skills is what it's all about. Real discussions about content are often secondary, and the show and the atmosphere it creates are more important. From the financiers' side it's of course important to get a good overall image of the project, as rich in content as possible. And there aren't many options on offer.

A Swedish producer colleague invites me to a meeting at the location of the Forum, but because I haven't bought a so-called spectator pass for the event, I am harshly shut out of the venue. After a long wait, the colleague and I find each other, and are not allowed to have a discussion in the venue. In the end, we have our meeting a few metres away from it.

Elsewhere, some American financier colleagues visiting the Panorama, representatives of ITVS, ask me along to a financier's dinner, but again the event organisers are watchful and send me back from the door of the restaurant. Here, the filmmaker has its place.

That place is found safely at the cinema, at the screening of my own film. Shadow of the Holy Book has two screenings, in fact. The first has 25 people present, and the second only 9. The second smallest audience in our festival history. I watch the crowd, and can't find a single so-called native who has dared to turn up. The audience appears to consist purely of film industry people accredited at the festival.

One problem with activating the local audience is that when a festival changes its location every year, it's difficult to creat a culture and a relationship between the audience and the event. Another reason might be that most of the organisers' energy is focused on the Forum and other sideline events, not so much on the screenings and their marketing. This so-called audience problem can be seen at Nordisk Panorama every year. And when it's about a so-called quality product, after all, "the best Nordic films", then why doesn't the organisation ask for consulting help from the organisers of, for example, Docpoint and/or the CPH-Dox in Copenhagen, who have succesfully managed to get big audiences for documentary films. But maybe this is not so important here. Maybe the internal communication within the family unit is more significant here than flirting with outsiders.

Well, in any case, the organisers and those responsible for the Malmö event this year are nice and active people, albeit trapped inside a recurring event, hands tied and modes of action programmed into their minds beforehand. In my opinion, the event needs some shaking up and revitalisation - no more formulaic bureaucracy. The festival's closing party, however, is very nice - the filmmakers can, after all, meet each other and exchange methods. That's always productive. It's also productive to have short fiction and animation as well as documentary filmmakers around, giving the communication a wider scope.

A bunch of DVDs have been delivered to my hotel from Iceland for me to watch. I am going to the Reykjavik International Film Festival, and have promised to join the Jury there to judge feature-length fiction films. As I will only be spending a few days in Iceland, I have received the "pre-assignment" in Malmö. On the table of my hotel room lie 14 films, each nearly 2 hours long. I won't have a lack of things to do then, even if the doors are closed to the Panorama events.

So I'm sitting in my hotel room for hours - sometimes "freshening up" in near-empty cinemas. When coming out of one film screening, tens of riot police are waiting outside with their horses and shields. What?! I am astonished. Has Nordisk Panorama or one of the films ignited some movement in people, a real mass movement? Of course not. Football fans from Malmö have started a rampage in a nearby bar. A football match is coming up, after all. Here, it is football that raises emotions. Not Nordic films.

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