Icelandic film

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The Icelandic film history is marked by a late international breakthrough in 1980 by Ágúst Gudmundsson debut country and sons (Land og Synir) and takes over the national literature or visual arts one a subordinate role. After the first film products at the beginning of the 20th century, a kind of "film spring" had developed towards the middle of the century, which culminated in the first film festival and the founding of a film funding agency in the late 1970s.

The breakthrough was followed by a recession in Icelandic film culture in the mid-1980s . After countermeasures by the government, Children of Nature - Eine Reise ( Börn náttúrunnar , 1991) by Friðrik Þór Friðriksson and 101 Reykjavík (2000) by Baltasar Kormákur created a new self-confidence in Icelandic films. The Vikings films by Hrafn Gunnlaugsson from the mid-1980s were of particular international significance .

Icelandic film history

First films

When the businessman Glafur Johnson founded a film company in 1904 , Icelandic film history began with what was probably the first Icelandic documentary films . Two years later, the Danish cameraman Alfred Lind opened the first cinema in Reykjavík and Peter Petersen made his first films about current events. Five years after the “New Cinema” (Nýja Bíó) opened its doors in the capital, the silent film Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru (Berg-Eyvind and his wife) first conveyed Icelandic cultural assets on an international level in 1918. The film, made by the Swedish director Victor Sjöström based on a template by the Icelandic playwright Jóhann Sigurjónsson , should actually have been shot in Iceland, which only failed in the First World War .

In 1919 a Danish film team from the film company Nordisk Film traveled to Iceland to film the novel History of the Borg Family (Borgslægtens historie) with Guðmundur Þorsteinsson . The film is considered to be the origin of Icelandic filmmaking, mainly because Óskar Gíslason worked there , who would later influence the development of Icelandic film as a film pioneer. After the Englishman A. E. Coleby shot his film The Prodigal Son in Iceland in 1922 , another film team came to Iceland a year later. Guðmundur Kamban's love melodrama Hadda Padda was filmed with the Danish star actress Clara Pontoppidan in the lead role. The adventures of Jón and Gvendur (Ævintýri Jóns og Gvendar) , a short film based on the American comedy model by Loftur Guðmundsson, which was shown as a short supporting film in the "New Cinema" in Reykjavík, began in 1923 . Two years later, Loftur also produced the first full-length Icelandic documentary for this cinema, Iceland in Film (Ísland í lifandi myndum) , and in 1926 a report on the state visit of the Danish monarch Christian X , Konungskoman .

Icelandic "film spring"

From 1948 onwards, Óskar Gíslason marked the starting point of an Icelandic film culture with numerous films. Óskar's report The rescue act from Latraberg (Björgunarafrekið við Látrabjarg, 1949) even reached German cinemas, while Loftur Guðmundsson published the first Icelandic sound film with the homeland film Between Mountain and Beach (Milli fjalls og fjöru) in the same year . In 1950 Óskar showed his first feature film , the fairy tale film The Last Homestead in the Valley (Síðasti bærinn í dalnum) , in which Icelandic folk tales are taken up. After Loftur staged the plight of the poor in a village during the 19th century in Deportiert (Niðurestningurinn) in 1951 , he died in 1952.

In 1951 Óskar produced The Bakka Brothers in Reykjavík (Reykjavíkurævintýri Bakkabræðra) , a comedy film in the style of the Marx Brothers , which tells of three naive brothers and their adventures. He remained active throughout the 1950s, making the films The Magic Bottle ( Töfraflaskan , 1951), based on the story of a bottle devil , and the drama The Greed (Ágirnd , 1952), based on a play by Svöla Jóhannesdóttir . In addition, Óskar processed a novella by Vilhjálm S. Vilhjálmsson in his film Neue Rolle ( Nýtt hlutverk , 1954), which deals with the everyday life of old people. Apart from the two short films by Ásgeir Long, Mond, Mond, take me ( Tunglið, tunglið, taktu mig , 1955) and Gilitrutt , the Icelandic “film spring” ended at this time.

The film production company Edda-Film founded by Gúdlaugur Rosinkranz in 1949 was able to participate in a number of productions , including the 1954 film adaptation of Halldór Laxness ' novel Salka Valka (1954), 79 af stöðinni (1962, German : 79 von der Basis) and to Hagbard and Signe ( Den røde kappe , 1967), who was also shown in German cinemas, but there was no functioning film funding in those years. In addition, the roles of these films were predominantly cast internationally, although the films were shot in Iceland. Outside Iceland, only the documentaries by Ósvaldur Knudsen are known, whose films about the island have received awards at numerous festivals, including Birth of an Island ( Surtur fer Sunnan , 1964) and Fire on Heimaey ( Eldur í Heimaey , 1974).

Icelandic television went on air in the autumn of 1966 and the national filmmakers formed the Icelandic film producers association Félag kvikmyndagerðarmanna , but there were no further impulses at first. Television should at least teach some later filmmakers the craft. Many others, however, studied at film schools across Europe. Over time, more and more large television productions emerged, such as the two-part NDR production Das Fischkonzert ( Brekkukotsannál , 1972) by Rolf Hädrich. In the same year, the Icelandic Cultural Council began to award grants to individual filmmakers with whom Reynir Oddson, for example , was able to realize the family drama The Story of a Murder (Morðsaga) in 1977 .

In the summer of 1978, the first film festival took place in Reykjavík, and from now on it has been held every year. As part of the Listahátíð í Reykjavík art festival , the films The Farmer (Bóndi) , a documentary by Þorsteinn Jónsson , and Lilie (Lija) , a short film by Hrafn Gunnlaugsson, were awarded a prize. During the ten-day festival, the then Minister of Culture Vilhjálmur Hjálmarsson announced that the film archive Kvikmyndasafn Íslands and the Kvikmyndasjóður Íslands film funding agency would be set up next year .

breakthrough

From 1980, Iceland appeared on the Scandinavian film stage and a little later also in the European film scene. With Ágúst Guðmundsson's debut film Land and Sons (Land og synir, 1980) , which was funded by the newly founded film fund , film historians saw the “necessary transition stage in the development of film art” as over. The film, which tells of urbanization as part of a love story, was broadcast by numerous international TV stations and received several festival awards. Almost as many people saw the film in Iceland as the country had adult residents. The topic of "rural exodus" appealed to people emotionally; it was part of “social reality”.

Now that many filmmakers - including Ágúst - returned from film schools in Europe, a national film culture suddenly developed. Other films were made that also received international attention. Including the children's film Punkt, Punkt, Komma, Strich ( Punktur Punktur komma strik , 1980) by Þorsteinn Jónsson and the feature film debut Vätererbe (Óðal feðranna, 1980) by Hrafn Gunnlaugsson . The first film funding budget at that time was just over 153,000 euros and had to be spread over a number of films. For an average film, the money was only enough for about ten percent of the production costs , directors and producers produced with high financial risks. But they produced in the Icelandic language and were very popular. Until then, only foreign-language films had been shown in local cinemas, and Iceland's population paid double the entrance fee for new films in the local language . No film at that time had fewer than 60,000 viewers.

The filmmakers were also supported by Icelandic television, which had at times strongly influenced the number of visitors in the cinemas. None of the films ran on television during this period, so that the number of moviegoers rose to 2.5 million by 1981 (1970: 900.00). This enabled the films to recoup their production costs in Iceland. When choosing a topic, favorites were always literary films and later old sagas and Viking stories.

While the first internationally acclaimed films were made with a comparatively small budget, the 1981 film The Outlaw - The Gisli Saga (Útlaginn) by Ágúst already had a budget of more than one million euros. The film about the Gísla saga shows everyday life in the Middle Ages and could neither recoup its production costs nor meet the ambitious expectations of an Oscar nomination .

In this prime of the film adaptations of the Icelandic sagas , Hrafn Gunnlaugsson, who broke away from the literary models and wrote his own scripts, should stand out. In 1984 he published the Viking film The Flight of the Raven (Hrafninn flýgur) based on his own script. The film was shown in a special screening in 1984 as the first Icelandic contribution to the Berlinale . In 1988, Der Schatten des Raben (Í skugga hrafnsins) followed , which again uses Icelandic sagas, but also uses ancient Greek tragedies and borrowings from Tristan and Isolde .

recession

From the mid-1980s, the number of visitors in the cinemas fell drastically; a well-running film could not count on more than 35,000 viewers. After the sudden start, the influx of the Icelandic audience was no longer enough to recoup the film costs. Although the Icelanders had been willing to support Icelandic films with in some cases three times the entry price, no one could expect that "every time around a quarter of the population goes to the cinema to see a local film". Some directors saved themselves in international co-productions, but ran the risk of losing their handwriting. Many filmmakers worked part-time as cameramen , film editors or television. The latter, always grateful buyer for local productions and responsible for film production orders, could not provide any impetus either.

The government had to intervene a second time after 1979. In line with the government directive to limit the growing influence of US media products on the Icelandic language and culture, a new film law was passed in 1984. Now all tax revenues from the cinema ticket sales have been transferred to the Filmförderungsanstalt. However, due to the economic crisis of these years, the fund was only able to post the resulting additional income of 26 million Icelandic kroner (about 660,000 euros) in 1986. In 1984, Iceland's first contribution was Filmorsteinn Jónsson's atomic station (Atómstöðin) at the Cannes International Film Festival (in the parallel event La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs ). The film was a flop with the audience, but internationally recognized because of "its clear commitment against armament and war in the time of the NATO double resolution ".

In 1986 the first Icelandic private broadcaster Stöð 2 started . Together with the development that more and more video recorders found their way into living rooms, this again resulted in a decline in the number of visitors to the cinemas. Again the government had to take countermeasures. It has supported the Film Fund with around 1.5 million euros annually since 1987, so that in 1988 (1.3 million viewers) and 1989 (two million) the number of cinema-goers recovered somewhat. Iceland has participated in the Nordic Film and TV Fund since 1990 ; The film funding agency and the film archive were put under joint management as a kind of film institute .

present

Friðrik Þór Friðriksson, 2007

In 1991 Friðrik Þór Friðriksson brought out his second feature film Children of Nature - A Journey (Börn náttúrunnar) , which received the highest grant ever awarded in Iceland. This “ road movie about older people”, as Friðriksson himself put it, was nominated for an Oscar in 1992 .

From 1992 the number of Icelandic films increased significantly. It is remarkable that many of the films were made by previously unknown directors, including Ingaló by Ásdís Thoroddsen, Sódóma Reykjavík by Óskar Jónasson and Wallpaper (Veggfóður: Erótísk ástarsaga) by Júlíus Kemp (all 1992). In addition to new directors, new digital technology is responsible for the increase. It made both filming and post-production of the films cheaper and easier. Icelandic filmmakers gained confidence with the success of Children of Nature , but the post-recession recovery of Icelandic film was not to come before 2000.

Baltasar Kormákur, 2007

Since 1999, the Edda Film and Television Award has been presented in Iceland by the Icelandic Film and Television Academy Íslenska kvikmynda- og sjónvarpsakademían . Critics questioned whether the manageable number of annual film productions made the attractiveness of the award, which is only awarded every two years. A short time later, two films were released that were supposed to bring Iceland back onto the international film scene. In 1999 the Swedish-Icelandic co-production Tsatsiki - octopuses and first kisses (Tsatsiki, morsan och polisen) made a first mark with numerous awards. In 2000, 101 Reykjavík by Baltasar Kormákur was published and received international recognition and awards, including in Toronto and Locarno.

The Icelandic film center Kvikmyndamiðstöð Íslands was founded in 2001 and, together with the seven-member Film Council Kvikmyndaráð Íslands, oversees the awarding of grants for the production of films and television films. In the next few years, more films were made than in the entire past decade combined. Productions with the aim of international marketing became the norm. The films were hardly in demand at the Icelandic box office. Icelandic production companies now increasingly offered themselves to international producers, so that, for example, Simon West's adventure film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider , which appeared in 2001, was partly shot in Iceland. To take advantage of these opportunities, the Reykjavík City Council announced a campaign in autumn 2006 to make Iceland even more attractive as a film location.

To this end, a committee was established with representatives from the city of Reykjavík, Icelandic film companies, the Icelandic Film Center and the Reykjavík Film Festival, which was supposed to present proposals on the subject by July 2007. In mid-November 2006, Minister of Education and Culture Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir signed an agreement between the Icelandic state and the filmmakers' union. The aim of this agreement was to produce at least four Icelandic theatrical films per year. The film fund grants are to be increased from 40 to 50 percent and the total state contributions from three million euros in 2006 to 5.6 million euros in 2010.

literature

  • Michael Lachmann, Hauke ​​Lange-Fuchs : Film in Iceland . In: Film in Scandinavia . 1st edition. Henschel, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89487-178-4 , pp. 97-121 (development until 1993).
  • Agnes Schindler: Icelandic National Cinema. Film and review analyzes of national identity. WVT - Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 2015, ISBN 978-3-86821-580-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Lachmann, Lange-Fuchs: p. 98
  2. ↑ a b Lachmann, Lange-Fuchs: p. 97
  3. ↑ Lachmann, Lange-Fuchs: p. 99
  4. ↑ a b Lachmann, Lange-Fuchs: p. 100
  5. ↑ a b Lachmann, Lange-Fuchs: p. 101
  6. ↑ a b Lachmann, Lange-Fuchs: p. 102
  7. ↑ a b Lachmann, Lange-Fuchs: p. 107
  8. ↑ Lachmann, Lange-Fuchs: p. 109
  9. ↑ a b c Lachmann, Lange-Fuchs: p. 111
  10. ↑ Reykjavík verði kvikmyndaborg , accessed November 14, 2007
  11. ↑ Stefnt að því að árlega verði gerðar 4 kvikmyndir hér í fullri lengd , accessed on November 13, 2007
  12. ↑ Samkomulag um stefnumörkun til að efla íslenska kvikmyndagerð , accessed on November 13, 2007