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.