Skjaldborg, the Icelandic documentary film festival, will finally be held next weekend, 18th-20th of September, in Bíó Paradís in Reykjavík. Half Elf is amongst the fourteen films screened at this years festival, but the screening will be at 19:30 on Saturday evening, the 19th of September.
The Icelandi premiere of Half Elf was postponed due to the cancellation of Skjaldborg, the Icelandic documentary film festival, following rising numbers of covid 19 cases in Iceland, last July.
This was the second time the premiere of the film was postponed due to the virus. It was supposed to premiere at Ethnocineca – International Documentary Film Festival Vienna, last May, where it was also nominated for the “Excellence in Visual Anthropology Awards”.
Half Elf has been selected for the international competition at ASTRA FILM FESTIVAL, also known as Sibiu International Film Festival, Romania’s largest documentary film festival and one of the bigger documentary film events in Eastern Europe.
The outside screening of Half Elf is scheduled for the 8th of September this coming week, but due to the fact that the premiere of the film has already been postponed two times, we think its best to leave any grand statements out, and hope for the best. If everything goes according to plan, it will be a great honor to premiere the film at this beautiful event, although director Jón Bjarki Magnússon and producer Hlín Ólafsdóttir, will not be able to attend, due to travel restrictions.
ASTRA FILM FESTIVAL is a major event in the European film community. The Festival is located in the picturesque town of Sibiu – Romania, and it is unique in this part of Europe. Besides the four AFF Competition Sections, International, European, Romanian and Student Film, it offers a variety of programs showing the diversity and the current tendencies of documentary film.
The 27th edition of the festival will take place online and outdoors in the picturesque town of Sibiu in Transylvania in central Romania, and will be organized in two parts: Astra Fim Festival Online (16-25 October), and Astra Film Festival Open Air (4-13 September), where films in the international competition will be screened. Half Elf will be screened in Amfiteatru on the 8th of September.
The festival promotes the use of documentary film as a means for cultural and cross-cultural understanding, and promotes the study, research and initiatives in the field of visual anthropology. Films must have cinematographic qualities, artistic commitment and strong presence of the filmmaker’s point of view both in form and content.
Half Elf has been selected for the “Best New Nordic Voice” competition at Nordisk Panorama this coming September.
Nordisk Panorama – Nordic Short & Doc Film Festival, or just Nordisk Panorama, is an annual film festival for short and documentary films by filmmakers from the Nordic countries. It was founded in 1990 and since 2013 held every year in Malmö in Sweden.
This years festival will be held online, due to the covid 19 pandemic. The New Nordic Voice competition introduces promising Nordic filmmakers. The works have not previously been screened in the Nordisk Panorama competition programme, and selected films are among the first releases by the filmmaker.
The premiere of Half Elf has been postponed due to the cancellation of Skjaldborg, the Icelandic documentary film festival, following rising numbers of covid 19 cases in Iceland.
This is the second time the premiere of the film is postponed due to the virus. It was supposed to premiere at Ethnocineca – International Documentary Film Festival Vienna, last May, where it was also nominated for the “Excellence in Visual Anthropology Awards”.
Jón Bjarki Magnússon, director and producer of Half Elf, will present his paper, Visualizing my grandparents: Filmmaking as a way to make visible the experience of elderly people, at the 16th EASA (European Association of Social Anthropologists) Biennal Conference tomorrow, Wednesday.
In his presentation, Jón Bjarki looks at how documentary filmmaking becomes research practice when the lens is focused on the everyday life of an elderly couple. Further, he explores how an ethical approach to filmmaking for fieldwork and the use of editing as an analytical tool are affected when working with those familiar to us. His case study is Half Elf(2020), a feature length documentary film made during his Masters in Visual Anthropology program at Freie Universität in Berlin. The film is about his grandparents, Hulda and Trausti, both recently deceased but previously and when he was making this film, sharing life on Icelandic shores for over seventy years.
As his one hundredth birthday nears Trausti begins searching for a coffin and tells his wife that he wants to change his name to “Elf”. Hulda warns him that if he does this his family will abandon him and she retreats into a world of poetry with the help of an electric magnifying glass. The process of filming this story, editing a narrative and raising funds to bring the film to a wide audience were all fraught with familial difficulties. Jón Bjarki needed to navigate these obstacles and use the problems they presented to support the filmmaking and deepen the research.
The presentation will be a part of the Illuminating Futures of the Life Course through Visual and Digital Mediapanel of the Age and Generations Network, which explores an emerging trend in the Anthropology of the Life Course to use visual and digital methods to generate and disseminate anthropological knowledge. Presentations examine how visual/digital engagement changes the experience of ageing, and the act and product of ethnographic fieldwork.
The 16th EASA Biennal Conference was set to be held in Lisbon, Portugal, during the week of July 20th-24th but was moved online due to Covid 19. More information about the panel here.
We are glad to announce that SKAK bíófilm has made an agreement with international distributor Feelsales in Madrid, Spain, about the worldwide distribution of Half Elf.
Feelsales is an international sales agency dedicated to documentary films and short films. Feelsales is part os a unique group of companies known as The circular Group, that includes Freak Independent Film Agency, an agency specialized in international film festivals distribution, and Feelmakers.com, a VOD platform dedicated to documentaries, animation and short films.
The three companies together offer a complete service of film management that spans across all stages of distribution: from film festival and international sales to VOD worldwide, and offer a unique strategy that achieves the best results for each film.
It is now official! Half Elf will be premiered at Skjaldborg – the Icelandic documentary film festival in Patreksfjörður during the first weekend of August (July 31st – August 2nd).
The festival normally takes place during the Whitsun weekend (a holiday weekend in Iceland celebrated fifty days after Easter Sunday with dates varying from May to June each year), but was postponed this year due to covid.
Founded in 2007, the festival is the only specialised platform for the premiere of Icelandic documentaries and the home of the Icelandic documentary scene.
The Icelandic documentaries premiering at the festival compete for the the coveted audience award Einarinn and Ljoskastarinn, the grand jury award. Half Elf is one of fourteen films selected for this years festival. More information about the festival here.
This competition highlights “outstanding works in the field of visual anthropology” and emphasizes the specifics of ethnographic film: “Half Elf is a sensitive and powerful story about love and the search for meaning, which celebrates life in the middle of the icy landscape and even in the face of death.”
The festival has unfortunately cancelled planned screenings due to the current world situation, but selected works will be available through the Ethnocineca 2020 – Online Edition. The premiere of Half Elf has been postponed.
Today sees the release of a new single by Teitur Magnússon called Hvíti dauði. This time around, Teitur is joined by artist Gunnar Jónsson Collider, who produced, recorded and mixed the track. The single comes with a video directed by Jón Bjarki Magnússon, featuring footage from his upcoming documentary Hálfur álfur (English: Half Elf).
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.
Teitur and Gunnar host together a concert at Mengi on the 12th of March.
Hvíti dauði 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.
As previously mentioned, the video is directed by award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Jón Bjarki Magnússon. Jón studied creative writing at the University of Iceland and graduated with an MA in Visual and Media Anthropology from Freie Universität, Berlin in 2018. He is currently finishing production on his latest documentary, Half Elf, which tells the story of a 99 year old lighthouse keeper preparing for his earthly funeral while trying to reconnect with the elf within. Jón’s video for Hvíti dauði includes footage from this upcoming film.
