Next April, eighteen Icelandic movies will be shown at the Lincoln Center in New York, with films spanning from 1950 to present day.
The festival, called Images from the Edge: Classic & Contemporary Icelandic Cinema, will run at the Lincoln Centre from April 18 -26. The showing was the brainchild of Laufey Guðjónsdóttir, the director of the Icelandic Film Centre. According to a press release from Icelandic organisers, she contacted Richard Peña, the art director of the Lincoln Center, with the idea, and his response was enthusiastically in favour, having visited Iceland last year.
Laufey said Peña and the other organisers have decided to place the emphasis on the development of Icelandic cinema over the decades, from an artistic point of view and within historical context. After months of preparation which included, in some cases, technical repairs on some of the older films, the festival will be launched within a matter of weeks.
According to the English listing of the films to be shown, “Despite the ever-real presence of a cinematic globalization (read: Hollywood) that threatens to engulf especially the cinemas of small nations, Iceland has more than held its own in the face of considerable overseas competition. … The “edge” in the title of our series refers not only the borders of the continental shelves of Europe and North America that jut against each across Iceland (a rather spectacular sight), but also the quality of many of the films included here.”
Buy subscriptions, t-shirts and more from our shop right here!
