Fresh Icelandic Film and Music Imported Direct to New York
New York – March 9, 2006 – Featuring documentaries, artist films, and music videos rarely seen outside of the small country in which they're produced, a special program of Icelandic film and music will be presented in lower Manhattan on Wednesday March 22, 2006 at 8pm.
Package Deals.01:Reykjavik, a one-night celebration of the best and boldest Iceland has to offer, takes place at The Tank at Collective: Unconscious, 279 Church Street in Tribeca. The film program, curated specifically for the evening, will be followed by an after-party showcasing internationally-known, Icelandic-born DJ Holmar Filipsson, as well as a music video program and complimentary cocktails courtesy of Reyka Vodka.
All five featured films were produced by female filmmakers living in Iceland, and an unusual motif of fantastically envisioned worlds and lives links the work. This may take the form of stop-motion animation, as in Eyrún Eyjólfsdóttir's Midnight (2005). Produced as part of Eyjólfsdóttir's graduation project at the Akureyri School of Art in northern Iceland, this wondrous yet dark film revisits the Edgar Allen Poe classic, "The Raven." Midnight recently screened at the prestigious Göteborg Film Festival in Sweden, as well as the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in France.
Following Midnight are two short videos directed and scored by young Icelandic artist Unnar Andrea Einarsdóttir. Einarsdóttir, who is also the star of her work, often stages herself in color-saturated settings where food assumes a supporting yet menacing role. In both Music in Cake and Toilet (2005), she infuses violence, innocence, and female sexuality with dark humor, all while testing the limits of her own physical endurance. In its imaginative vision and measured pace, her work resembles that of another artist who has worked in Iceland, Matthew Barney.
"Romantic Undead," a one-minute short by the multimedia artist Kristin Björk Kristjansdottir, known professionally as Kira Kira, imagines a ghost that slithers inside a dictaphone, sings and explodes.
Fantasy of the Package Deals variety may also be realistic in origin, stemming from the proverbial desire for beauty and glamour. Feature presentation I Skom Drekans ( In the Shoes of the Dragon, 2002), a documentary by Hrönn Sveinsdóttir, is a glimpse into the world of the Miss Iceland pageant, a competition looked upon by many Icelanders as their most important national pasttime. The hard-partying director signs up as an unlikely contestant, mostly for the sake of making a film and proving a point about the superficiality of beauty contests, but she soon finds herself getting sucked deeper into the competition than she ever expected. I Skom Drekans was the recipient of the Best Documentary award at the 2002 Eddas (Icelandic Film and TV awards). It was also first film ever to be banned in Iceland, its initial release delayed after a legal battle with the Miss Iceland organization.
The Package Deals after-party will follow directly next door at i- Bar, starting at 10 pm with a complimentary cocktail hour courtesy of Reyka Vodka, Icelandic music from DJ Holmar Filipsson, and Icelandic music videos featuring artists such as Sigúr Rós, Múm, Apparat Organ Quartet, Singapore Sling, and others, courtesy of Fat Cat Records (UK/US) and 12Tónar (Reykjavik).
Ticket price is $7, which includes entrance to the screening and after-party. Advance tickets can be purchased through
http://www.smarttix.com and on site the night of the event. Package Deals.
01: Reykjavik is presented as a partnership between independent curators Kelly Shindler and Deirdre Corley and The Tank. Special thanks to Reyka Vodka, Iceland Naturally, the Icelandic Consulate, Mr. Destiny, the Icelandic Film Centre, Kitchen Motors, and Hamish Robertson. For more information, please visit http://www.packagedeals.org or http://www.thetanknyc.org.
photography: Hamish Robertson |
