I am not such a beautiful landscape
screening: 19th of March 2016, 7 p.m.
A film by: EMILIANO MONACO
With: Sigfùs Stefansson and Hjalti Gislason and with Fanney Björk Björnsdottir, Ólöf Gerður Sigfúsdóttir, Uni Pétursson
Italy/Iceland, 2011, 63’
A production Astarte
In co-production with Bíohljóð ehf
Distribution Vivo film
© 2011 Astarte
tranzit. ro/ Iași,
Al. Lăpușneanu St. 7-9
Two old fishermen going to sea, in Hofsós, in the North of Iceland.
Lifelong friends, Sigfús e Hjalti, united by fifty years of fishing in the North Sea, are a reference to each other. Although they are in pension, they insist on going to sea, as they once did to earn their living. Now that fishing should only be leisure, they repeat the same acts and gestures, as if nothing ever changed, as if they were still working. What urges them going into water, carrying quintals of fish to the shore, and then cleaning it for days and days?
Behind their stoutness in reproducing the job they made for their whole life, their difficulty is in accepting old age. In the end, this old age itself will force them to take off their fishermen overalls, those overalls that lifelong has imposed them a social masque of stubborn, taciturn men – according to tradition.
The difficult acceptation of old age will be a step forward in their own life: to learn how to understand their own fragility, in a bittersweet ironic mood, will be a way to face their own dawn.
Directing, photography and editing: Emiliano Monaco
editing supervision: Sigurður Eyþórsson
sound mixing: Ingvar Lundberg per Bíohljóð ehf
Color correction: Steinþór Birgirsson
The event is part of a series of screenings and discussions initiated by Florin Bobu that will take place in 2016.
Emiliano Monaco was born in Rome in 1975. In 1994 he starts studying business economics, which he abandons some weeks later, choosing arts and music disciplines (DAMS) at Rome’s university, “La Sapienza”. In 1998 he attends a course in Direction at New York Film Academy, where he makes his first short film, Saxplayer: in a documentary-film mood, shooting in 16 mm, he tells about the daytime of a sax player, through a series of key-details. With his first short film, he wins a grant for a further course at NYFA, which he attends in 2000. In 2003 he accomplishes his studies in performing arts at Roma3 University. At the end of 2004 he moves to Iceland, where he starts teaching at Iceland University “History of (Italian and European) Cinema” and “Theory and Practice of Documentary”, devoting himself particularly to cinema verité. In 2006 he founds Reykjavik Documentary Workshop (directing it until 2008), an association that devoted itself to monthly screenings of international documentaries and to the organisation of masterclasses, collaborating with the directors of the chosen works. In parallel to the didactic activity, he makes public videos and installations, exposed both in Iceland and abroad. Among his videos, Summer Solstice, a 24-hours video shot during the longest day of the year and screened in Reykjavik’s centre during the winter solstice, six months later; Steambath, a video shot with a macro lens, which describes the birth and death of a drop of water on the mirrors of a sauna. In 2005 he starts shooting I am not such a beautiful landscape, whose making of lasts six years. Since 2008, he lives some time of the year in Iceland, where he carries on his activity as director and artist, and the rest in Apulia, where he devotes himself to 150 centuries-old olives in Salento, where he produces biologic oil he then imports in Iceland.
