Film on the Faroe Islands – Trap The Faroe Islands

Viaplay’s TV series *Trom* is based on Jógvan Isaksen’s crime series about the journalist Hannis Martinsson, played by the Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen. The series created new opportunities and connections for Faroese film workers.
TROM/KYKMYNDIR/REINVENT STUDIOS, 2021

Although the Faroe Islands are a new film country with young talents waiting in the wings, the Faroese film history is older than initially assumed. The first film recordings were made by the Danish Ole Olsen in 1907, when Frederik VIII was on a trip to Iceland and called on the Faroe Islands along the way.

At the same time, Ólavur á Heygum had established a cinema in Vestmanna. He had bought a cinema projector in Trondhjem in Norway from the itinerant Heinrich Carl Köpke. Á Heygum, who was fascinated by electricity, hydropower and telecommunications, had in 1905 laid the first telephone line from his home village Vestmanna to the capital Tórshavn. His assistant was Andreas Niclasen, called Dia á Bø. When á Heygum stopped his cinema business in Vestmanna in 1909, the colleague took over and moved the equipment to Tórshavn. Along Tórsgøta, which was later designated as the municipality’s cultural street, the cinema operated in a house that was also a sailor’s school and a soap outlet.

Havnar Bio opened on 28 July 1961 with a showing of North West Frontier in widescreen and cinemascope.
SVEND POULSEN/TJÓDSAVNID, 1963

The first verified Faroese recordings on 35 mm film were made with a lightweight Kinamo camera with Jena Tessar lens, owned by Julius Høgnesen from Oyndarfjørður. Together with his cousin, Ingvald Olsen, he filmed the royal visit to Tórshavn in 1926. Several of the recordings with this camera that are available at Fornminnissavnið were used in an anniversary edition in connection with Tórshavnar Kommuna’s democracy celebration in 2009. Since then, the Faroe Islands have been the backdrop when foreign filmmakers called on the islands to film.

The first film is the black-and-white Swedish silent film Farornas Ö (Great Dimon: Viking decendants on the Färö Islands), which baron Sten Nordenskiöld and photographer Ragnar Westfelt shot among the residents of Skúvoy, Stóra Dímun and Miðvágur in the summer of 1929. The feature-length film was first shown to an audience at Röda Kvarn in Stockholm on 31 March 1930.

Without industry or financial opportunities, Faroese filmmakers have relied on the opportunities of cooperating with Denmark and the Nordic countries to make films, where the foreign actors have had the artistic and production management.

Local business people in Tvøroyri invited Leo Hansen for a visit to make the commercial documentary Færøfilmen (The Faroe Islands) (1930), and after the war, the documentarian Jørgen Roos shed light on agricultural life in Gaarden hedder Vikagarður (The Farm Called Vikagardur) (1947). In 1965, Knud Leif Thomsen filmed the visual artist Steffan Danielsen on Nólsoy, while Ulla Boje Rasmussen composed contemporary portraits of the residents of Gásadalur (1990) and on the island of Mykines (1992). Later, she summarised the political independence negotiations in the film Færøerne.dk (Rugged road to independence) (2003).

Jørgen Roos got the visual artist Jack Kampmann and the author William Heinesen to write the text for the film Færøerne – Føroyar (1961), which was awarded the golden Evreux prize. In the 1970s, a similar collaboration between Denmark and the Faroe Islands arose, when the authors Gunnar Hoydal and Steinbjørn B. Jacobsen wrote the script for a Danish-produced film for the Danish Broadcasting Corporation.

Other foreign feature films that have used the Faroese nature as a backdrop are the East German DEFA production Schatten über den Inseln (East Germany, 1952), Selkvinnen (Norway, 1953), Tro, håb og trolddom (Denmark, 1960), Barbara – wild wie das Meer (Germany, 1961), Barbara (Denmark, 1997), Dansinn (Iceland, 1998), Buzz Aldrin, hvor ble det av deg i alt mylderet? (Norge, 2011), Submergence (Germany, 2017), Fågelfångarens Son (Sweden, 2019) and No Time to Die (Great Britain, 2021).

With a rare eye for detail, Jákup Andreas Arge filmed the daily grind of the 1960s, especially when the locals were harvesting the cornfields. In the early 1970s, the Faroese production company Tór Film discussed the present and the three authors William Heinesen, Christian Matras and Heðin Brú in the documentary film Tríggir varðar (1977). In the mid-1970s, Spanish immigrant Miguel Hidalgo gathered local actors and made the three feature films Rannvá (1974), Páll Fangi (1975) and Heystblómur (1977) on an amateur basis. Furthermore, he himself made an experimental horror film in a Catholic church crypt.

Sjónvarp Føroya has so far produced very few Faroese feature films. These include Alfred (1986) by Eir í Ólavstovu and Stjórin er á floti (1987) by Øssur Winthereig.

In the late 1980s, the Danish director Henning Carlsen tried his hand with a new collaboration with William Heinesen on Don Juan fra Tranhuset. The Danish Film Institute refused to support the project on the grounds that the director was too old to capture the erotic glow of the literary original. The Faroese film club, Filmsfelagið, was involved in the decision. Since 1962, Filmsfelagið has organised showings of artistically interesting films in Havnar Bio and in Leikhús Bio in Sjónleikarhúsið in Tórshavn.

Katrin Ottarsdóttir is the first Faroese film director to have made a name for herself on the international stage. In 1989, at the 8th Official Nordic Film Festival in Tórshavn, she showed the first feature-length Faroese fiction film, Atlantic Rhapsody, to an international audience under the auspices of Filmsfelagiðs. Shot in 16 mm and blown up to 35 mm for cinema distribution, it is a kaleidoscopic story consisting of 52 scenes from Tórshavn. The festival was featured in Variety, and Derek Malcolm from The Guardian compared the film to Woody Allen’s loving portraits of Manhattan. Atlantic Rhapsody won first prize at the festival Nordische Filmtage in Lübeck in 1989.

After the turn of the millennium, Teitur Árnason heralded a new approach to Faroese film art with the poetic depiction of his native town Burturhugur (2002) about life in Hattarvík on Fugloy. The film premiered at the internationally ambitious Listastevna Føroya in the Nordic House.

Since 2005, Klippfisk has been a municipal gathering place for young film workers in Tórshavn. Ever younger Faroese have since worked with the film medium and presented new film art, mainly in the short format. Among the first talents was Sakaris Stórá with the short films Passasjeren (2009), Summarnátt (2012) and Vetrarmorgun (2014). For Summarnátt, Stórá received the Geytin award, instituted the same year. The award is named after the agronomist Herálvur Geyti, who until 1976 travelled to villages without a cinema to show films. Together with Tórshavnar Kommuna’s audience award, Geytin has revived interest in domestic film production and established connections with foreign film festivals. Andrias Høgenni is the film artist who has received it most often.

In 2014, the Faroese Ministry of Culture decided to support Faroese film workers, in 2015 with an amount of DKK 700,000. In 2016, DKK 1.5 million and in 2019, DKK 2.6 million were granted. Since then, the grant, which is managed by two consultants, has not increased.

In 2017, Sakaris Stórá was able to present his first full-length feature film, Dreymar við havið. The film received excellent reviews in the Faroese press and was mentioned in the Faroese Government’s newsletters abroad.

A Faroese Film Institute was established in 2018 with support from the Ministry of Industry, and Minister Poul Michelsen appointed Danish Tina í Dalí Wagner as Head of the Film Institute. The purpose of the Faroese Film Institute is to support a Faroese film industry and to promote the Faroe Islands as an attractive film location. In addition, a local reimbursement scheme is to make it attractive for film crews to transfer productions or parts thereof to the Faroe Islands. This proved to be a success with Wim Wenders and his film Submergence already the year before the opening of the Faroese Film Institute and finally with the James Bond film No Time to Die. Although the Faroese elements in the films are barely seen, the Faroese Film Institute as a public institution is highly important in spreading knowledge of the Faroe Islands as a film country.

Further reading