Iceland Cinema Now (ICN)
- What? News and analysis, articles, blogs, trailers and various information about films from Iceland, the filmmaking community and the general cinema scene – while acknowledging that film is a truly global medium and national cinema needs an international context.
- Who? ICN is an independent website, not affiliated with any company or institution. The owner and editor is Ásgrímur Sverrisson. He can be contacted here.
- Acceptable Use: Reader’s comments are provided for the exchange of lawful, relevant, fair and appropriate information, opinions and comment. Use of the website that is inconsistent with those stated intentions is strictly prohibited. Such postings will be removed.
Iceland Cinema Today At a Glance:
- Iceland has a tiny population of around 320.000 people, but we are avid moviegoers with over 1.6 million tickets sold annually (with Hollywood product at around 85% market share and local films around 10%).
- That‘s five annual visits per head to the cinemas, one of the largest averages around.
- We make between 6-8 features a year and 3-5 feature documentaries.
- Local films are quite popular, with over 6% of the population attending them on average – again one of the highest in the world. In recent years we‘ve seen attandance figures for local films occasionally approaching a third of the population.
- Icelandic films regularly appear at major festivals all over the world, including Toronto, Karlovy Vary, Sundance, Cannes, Berlin and Pusan, in addition to many smaller ones.
- Additionally, there are three main TV stations in Iceland; RUV – the public broadcaster, Stöd 2 (Channel 2) – independent and subscription based (with commercials) and Skjár einn (Screen One) – independent and recently (late 2009) turned subscription based (with commercials). All the stations carry their own programming and/or buy programs from independent producers, but majority programming remains foreign with a strong American slant. RUV also carries Nordic and European programs.
- Between four and five TV series are made in Iceland every year; a rather new development. Ratings have been very high. Additionally between 30-40 shorter documentaries of various size, are made each year and mostly screened at RUV.
For the short (and the longer) version of Iceland’s film history, click here.
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