In culture-crazy Reykjavík, the city of 200,000 that spawned Björk, Icelanders have practically everything to get them through the cool-to-cold weather: a symphony orchestra, dance and theater companies, rock bands and poetry readings, and an astonishing number of Euro-hip galleries and art museums. What’s flagrantly missing is even one movie arthouse. The latest Hollywood product is almost all you get in the local chain. No French films, or works from Scandinavian neighbors, or even American indies. And when the occasional Icelandic film does get shown, the price to see it goes up! Skol!

That’s why, for Icelanders, the Third Reykjavík International Film Festival, which took place earlier this month, was such a monumental event. For nine days, Icelanders could enjoy movies from around the world, not on DVD but in 35mm on the big screen, more than 100 pictures, and not one of them from Warner Brothers or MGM. A passionate film student from the University of Iceland told me he felt numb and almost unable to choose from among five international movies showing in the same hour. But after the festival concluded, would Reykjavík face 11 months of art-film darkness and gloom? Hrönn Marinósdóttir, the able festival director, hopes that newly installed 35mm projectors in one of the venues can lead, at last, to year-round programming.

Icelanders would, I’m sure, have been grateful for whatever the festival offered. The surprise for foreign visitors who like me were lured there more for a chance to experience Iceland was one of the best-programmed film festivals on earth, and with some of the most exciting guests. Programming director Dimitri Eipides, a long-time veteran of the Toronto International Film Festival, brought with him many of the splendid movies he’d chosen for Toronto in September, the finest of 2006 world cinema. Also from Toronto came filmmaker Atom (The Sweet Hereafter) Egoyan, who was given a Creative Excellency Award by Iceland’s witty, charming president, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson.

As for attracting cinema guests, who in his/her lifetime wouldn’t want to visit Iceland? I had to return to America before the end, so I didn’t get to hobnob with the closing-night celebrity, Yoko Ono. But I was there for “The Dinner.” “These are our rock stars,” someone also in film whispered to me as, feasting on Icelandic lamb, we gazed in awe about the 50-foot table at Reykjavík’s Holt Hotel. Among the esteemed: Fridrik Thór Fridriksson, king of Icelandic filmmakers; Egoyan; Iran’s great Kurdish filmmaker, Bahman (A Time for Drunken Horses) Ghobadi; Iranian superstar actress Niki (Sara) Karimi; the Russian master of directorial masters, Aleksandr (Russian Ark) Sokurov.

ADVERTISEMENT

In the 1980s, Eipides explained, he had invited Sokurov to the Toronto Festival, where the then little-known filmmaker was snubbed by the Western press. When, years later, Cinematheque Ontario mounted a major retrospective, the proud filmmaker of Moloch, Mother and Son and Father and Son refused to return to Canada. But here he was in Reykjavík! After several glasses of wine, I approached him cautiously and, through his Russian translator, expressed my admiration for his work. And Sokurov? The imposing modernist genius smiled up at me and stroked my hand in thanks, as if I were a pussycat!

Was there any American director he liked? “Orson Welles, of course!” he replied in halting English. “Citizen Kane — it is a beautiful film!”