Weather: cloudy, mostly clear, no rain
Walked: 6 km
The most interesting bits of this day was delivered by
Jan Berg Jørgensen, a young and friendly movie- and media dude (see link to Wikipedia;). We were given an introduction to the
Faroese movie industry and movie culture. It couldn't be called anything but an "introduction" because the movie "industry" is very small and still taking small baby steps into the big wide world.
In the lecture we were presented with the idea of the Nordic region as something which is politically motivated and hence socio-politically "constructed". This construction has it's roots in the history that the Nordic countries have together - and Denmark's still existing colonialism over the Faroe Islands (from now on FI for short!). In my opinion, geographically speaking, The FI could very well be a part of Great Britain, Iceland or "The United States of Greenland" (or be independent).. But at the moment, the fact is that the FI are a part of Denmark, and via Denmark (together with its geographical location), the Nordic region and Scandinavia.
We also discussed whether or not the Nordic countries have something uniting them, something beyond the history that we share, and I believe we all can agree on that we share some similarities in how we perceive ourselves: we see ourselves as something peripheral, the Faroese probably even more than the other Nordic countries (pure geography, I'd say). So there are similarities in the identity of a Nordic homo sapiens, and to some degree these similarities can be seen as a product of nature in this part of the globe. We draw upon these similarities, they help us when we try to interpret and understand pop culture from another (Nordic) country.
The Nordic countries have always (when not in war with each other;) lent a helping hand to their neighbors and therefore the co-operation of Nordic countries is something that the rest of world sees as a very positive thing.
When it comes to co-operation within the movie industry, and here discussing mainly the FI and Nordic countries, we must see the facts and admit that some ties are more natural than others. Here I'm pointing at the fact that what we call "Nordic co-operation" means different things, depending on the country that you live in. For Finns it means (often) joint projects with Swedes, for the Faroese it means getting funding and help from Denmark.
The Nordic co-operation is a positive thing. BUT within the movie industry it also hinders the FI from developing an independent and a national "filmographic" identity. BUT on the other hand, this country is (still) too small to produce good quality movies on its own. So some compromises have to be made.
According to Jørgensen, the Nordic co-operation is willing to lend a helping hand when a movie project is aiming to produce a movie with uplifting and prestigious qualities. Therefore art(istic) movies are not a priority when granting funding.
Also, according to Jørgensen, the FI are mentally too locked in reproducing the few good things that have come from this country (as in, "we have made it once, we have proved this to be good, this is a best seller") and/so thinking outside the box is hard (and difficult to finance).
To complete the guest lecture we saw the movie
Bye Bye Bluebird (1999), a road movie by
Katrin Ottarsdóttir. The film tried to combine this small country with the big world through some pop-culture references, such as
Thelma&Louise and
David Lynch's movies. Some questions arose during the movie but they were never answered. It wasn't marvelous, it wasn't a masterpiece, but I liked it!:)
Nokia. Connecting people.
Even on the tiny island of Nólsoy!
