Little Cosmonaut

A documentary about the bustling Icelandic musical scene. This documentary covers some of Iceland's most talented and well-known musicians.

Mihkel boards a ferry from his small town in Estonia to Saint Petersburg in Russia, on his way to Iceland, where he wants to make a new life for himself and his fiancée, Vera. His friend Igor, who emigrated to Iceland a few years earlier, convinces Mihkel to smuggle two bottles of liquid amphetamine and then seek payment from an 
Estonian priest, who is a business partner of Igor’s in Saint Petersburg. The priest is then to set him up in his new home and bring Vera over to join him. Rather than getting paid, he is instead coerced into swallowing seventy drug capsules to take on to Iceland. He arrives in Iceland and is picked up by Igor and his two Icelandic accomplices, Jóhann and Bóbó. However, in the next two days it becomes clear that something is wrong and Mihkel cannot pass the drugs. The Icelandic criminals become very nervous, and more and more frantic activity ensues as the situation becomes more serious.

An anthology of one-minute films created by 51 international filmmakers on the theme of the death of cinema. Intended as an ode to 35mm, the film was screened one time only on a purpose-built 20x12 meter public cinema screen in the Port of Tallinn, Estonia, on 22 December 2011. A special projector was constructed for the event which allowed the actual filmstrip to be burnt at the same time as the film was shown.

Four years in the making, the film features interviews and footage never seen before, as well as older scenes of John and Yoko together, in private and performing in public. Yoko Ono talks about her and John Lennon’s love and life together, about the art they made together and their struggle for peace and justice, including the imaginative methods they used to get their message across: “Give peace a chance.” Lennon’s music provides an inspirational soundtrack to a story that that began more than forty years ago and is still unfolding. In 2007, when Yoko Ono dedicated the Imagine Peace Tower to John’s memory she added: “My love for you is forever.”

Gudmundsson has spent most of his life outside Iceland after he first moved to the Netherlands in 1963. He has homes and studios in Amsterdam, Reykjavík and Malmo, and in the past few years in Xiamen and Beijing in China. Gudmundsson has displayed his works in most countries in Europe and major public works of sculpture have been commissioned from him in the Nordic countries and in central Europe.

When the Icelandic banks collapsed in the autum of 2008, taking most of the economy down with them, Ari Alexander took his camera and started to film what was happening in this tiny but relatively stable and affluent society. He filmed the ever-larger protests that in the end led to the downfall of the government. He took interviews with people shocked and confused by what was going on around them. He went to conferences and seminars where scholars tired to work out what had happened and what should happen next. He followed the endless debates and negotiations around the Icesave-accounts set up by Icelandic banks abroad. Every day brought fresh news of the complicated and often illegal deals made by financiers and bankers in the years leading up to the collapse.

Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson is remembered as one of the pioneers of modern Icelandic music. The conversation between Hans Ulrich Obrist and Magnúsar Blöndal took place in Reykjavík on August 9, 2004. Nine days later, he lapsed into a coma and died on January 1, 2005.

The repetition and the circumstances increasingly take their toll when isolation, claustrophobia and paranoia set in. As if We Existed is an interpretation of an art piece by Ragnar Kjartansson who represented Iceland at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. His piece, The End, was a six month long performance.

An old man comes home with the ashes of his dead wife in an urn. As he waits for the kettle to boil, the relentless hissing of boiling water brings to mind memories. There is nothing ahead for the old man, only lack of purpose, sense of loss and loneliness. He embarks on a journey.