16/04/2025 - The duo tell us more about their work at the National Film Archive of Iceland and about discovering forgotten filmmakers – and their own country

(© Marta Bałaga)

Following screenings of Flug 401 (1966) and Slys (1962) by Reynir Oddsson at the Stockfish Film Festival in Reykjavík, as well as Ósvaldur Knudsen’s Sveitin milli sanda (1964), Ester Bíbí Ásgeirsdóttir and Gunnar Tómas Kristófersson from the National Film Archive of Iceland talk about discovering forgotten filmmakers – and their own country.

Cineuropa: What’s the biggest problem now when it comes to restoration or showing this kind of material? The lack of funding?
Gunnar Tómas Kristófersson: Definitely. I was hired through grants that we got. If we could get a little more funding for other researchers to come in, that would be great because the interest is already there. Recently, we collaborated with national television on an eight-episode series, showing all sorts of archive footage and telling people about these filmmakers. It has been very popular.

Ester Bíbí Ásgeirsdóttir: Money is always an issue, so we try to support other Nordic archives, and they support us. We share the best – and the cheapest – methods and try to collaborate. We were always the little brother tagging along, but in 2018, we finally got the funding to buy a good scanner. We became the big brother! That was a huge moment for us, and we’ve been scanning and restoring ever since. It all started with private collectors. The archive got officially recognised in 1978, but it wasn’t until 2004 that they got cooling rooms and proper facilities for storage. But many films are still coming to us from small museums in the countryside or people’s attics.

Are you actively trying to discover any forgotten filmmakers?
GTK: Just through the research we’ve been doing these past few years, we’ve discovered at least one who was completely unknown: Kjartan Ó Bjarnason. He was the first filmmaker in Iceland to quit his side job and just work as a filmmaker. He did so in 1945. Then he just travelled, filmed and screened his work. Abroad, too – we can find newspaper articles from Denmark or Sweden about his screenings there. He was working as cheaply as possible, so after a while, he would take material from one film and use it in another. He would just rip them apart and put them back together, so we have very few of his original movies. In Iceland, we’re still in the process of writing our film history.

He was the first filmmaker to “quit his side job”?
GTK: Icelandic filmmaking was usually connected to municipal bodies of the government or other publicly funded programmes. They used to hire filmmakers to explain what they were doing. They were amateurs, and they had other jobs, but they would take on these projects. This was the only thing we had. We didn’t have artists working on big feature films; we had individuals who were just trying their best. They would put everything on the line to make their own films, even though they were commissioned by a milk factory or the municipality of Reykjavík.

From 1935-1960, our filmmakers weren’t educated. Only later did they start coming back from abroad, after studying at universities, and that was the first generational divide in Icelandic filmmaking. Their filmmaking language was completely different from that of their predecessors, but they were still returning to the same system! They had to make films about heating houses or inflating lifeboats, but they would always spice them up.

When you decide to show restored films at a festival like Stockfish, what are you focusing on? Personal stories? Historical snippets?
EBÁ: On something that feels timeless, like the work of Reynir Oddsson. If there’s an artistic approach to a subject, it’s always relevant. It feels fresh, even though it’s old. In Slys, about an accident, everything is so desolate, and Reykjavík is still so small. It almost feels like sci-fi. In Flug 401, soft-spoken stewardesses leave a place that’s very rural and end up as world citizens in New York. The way people talk about the history of Icelandic cinema, you would think it’s only about fiction. But documentaries are such a big part of it.

Are you screening them throughout the year?
EBÁ: We wish! Even Icelandic people aren’t aware of these films, so we want to make sure they keep on coming. We are collaborating with [arthouse cinema in Reykjavík] Bíó Paradís, and we also try to engage specific communities. There’s a big group of people interested in old photography, for example, and sometimes, I sneak in there with a still, just to talk about our new film. They haven’t thrown me out yet.

We always want attention because, well, we want money, and we want people to understand how precious it all is. You watch Ósvaldur Knudsen’s film, and you realise how remotely people used to live. It was only a short time ago! We have this website called Ísland á filmu [Iceland on Film], where we keep adding old footage. You can pick a place on the map and find films from there. Sometimes, you can see familiar faces. I found my own grandparents picnicking somewhere, going on a trip. My mum is a teenager in it, and her siblings are small. It’s so much fun to discover these things and your own country.