Icelandic Documentaries Shorts and Animated Films 1966-1991 de Thorsteinsson, Eirikur - 1991

Reykjavik, Iceland: Kvikmyndasjodur Islands (The Icelandic Film Fund), 1991. Soft cover. Very Good/No Jacket. 225mm x 105mm. INTRODUCTION DOCUMENTARIES One of the major problems that all Icelandic film makers have had to face is a small scale home market. Always eager cinema goers, Icelanders appear to have an insatiable appetite for foreign films, and many Hollywood productions arc premiered in Iceland long before they are released on the European mainland. But even with one of the highest rates of cinema attendance in the world, Iceland remains too small to guarantee the financial success of any home production. Documentary film making in Iceland dates from the years after the first world war when two Reykjavik cinemas began showing local newsreels with their main features. Independent documentary films would soon follow and the first full-length documentary dates from 1924. As was customary in those days, documentary film makers would tour the country with their films, often attracting entire villages to their screenings. While early pioneers such as Loftur Gudmundsson, Oskar Gislason, Osvaldur Knudsen and others gained recognition both at home and abroad, they often worked under extremely difficult conditions and with very little support from outside sources. A major surge of activity came in 1966 with the establishment of the Icelandic State Television (RUV), which brought both a new demand for documentary films and the resources to produce them; a large number of film makers suddenly had a working budget. However, increased activity in the area of television documentaries also caused a rift between television production and independent film making, a distinction which was further emphasized by the foundation of the Icelandic Film-Makers Association (F61ag kvikmyndagerdarmanna) that same year. Most of the demand for filmed documentation was now met by RUV which produced a large number of documentary programmes which often took the form of talk shows and travellogues (as opposed to documentary films). Although RUV was never an opu-.....