Month: March 2021

Jón Bjarki Magnússon, the director of Half Elf, will be presenting his paper, “The elf within: Negotiating dementia whilst filming with my family in Reykjavik, Iceland”, at the RAI Film Festival tomorrow. The presentation is part of a panel organized by Andy Lawrence at the University of Manchester, Martha-Cecilia Dietrich at the University of Amsterdam and Angélica Cabezas Pino at the University of Sussex, called “Empirical art: Filmmaking for fieldwork in practice | Politics and poetics of affect”.

In his presentation, Jón Bjarki looks at how the task of positioning himself whilst doing research with his aging grandparents shaped the form and findings of his research. Furthermore, he explores how ethical considerations, necessary for filming someone with dementia, helped him make sense of the complicated spheres that separates sanity and insanity, truth and lie, reality and fiction.

His case study is his feature-length documentary film Half Elf (2020), which is about his grandparents, Hulda and Trausti, both now recently deceased. The process of filming this story and editing a narrative demanded constant negotiation between what one knows as rational and emotional, closeness and distance, familiar and mysterious. The way he made peace was by merging the more pragmatic enterprise of producing a film with a poetic approach to using the camera. Filmmaking here allowed for a way of bridging seemingly incommensurable spheres revealing what it means to be human at the end of a fulfilled life.

Those interested can watch the panel here: https://festival.raifilm.org.uk/film/p26a-empirical-art/, which will be followed by discussions with William Callahan, researcher at the London School of Economics and Stephen Linstead, at the University of York.

A music video to Teitur Magnússons song, Hvíti dauði, directed by Jón Bjarki Magnússon and featuring footage from the Hálfur Álfur documentary, has been nominated to the Icelandic Music Awards. Eight videos are nominated this year and people can vote between the videos here on Albumm.is.

The Icelandic Music Awards are the official annual music awards given in Iceland to commemorate the musical achievements of the year. The award was established in 1993 with an annual rock award given by the Union of Icelandic Musicians. Since then, it has developed into a multi-category event held usually in January or February for awards of the previous year. Since 2002, the event has been sponsored by the Icelandic Music Association known as Samtónn. This year the award ceremony will be held in April.

In Hvíti dauði, Teitur is joined by artist Gunnar Jónsson Collider, who produced, recorded and mixed the track. The song was written by Teitur Magnússon. The lyrics are also by Teitur but also include passages from the Bible and Icelandic poet Bólu-Hjálmar’s poem, Mismunur, about an old man facing his death. Teitur sings and plays guitar whilst Gunnar adds vocals, instruments and a dreamy pop production. Old friends from Teitur’s own live band Æðisgengið also lend a hand, most notably Erling Bang and Hreiðar Már Árnason who add drums and percussion.

Teitur Magnússon is no stranger to Icelandic music lovers. After a string of releases with pop reggae outfit Ojba Rasta, Teitur stepped into the limelight in 2014 with his solo album 27. The album contained pop music tinged with shades of psychedelia and tropicália, and was followed up with 2018’s Orna to critical acclaim. Teitur was recently nominated for an Iceland Music award for his Orna single Skriftargangur.

Gunnar Jónsson Collider has released electronic and ambient music on Icelandic and foreign labels since 2015, when he caught the attention of critics with his Apeshedder EP. After remixing Teitur and dj. flugvél og geimskip’s single Lífsspeki, Gunnar formed a collaborative relationship with Teitur which has now borne fruit with the single Hvíti dauði.