ASH/VALENTINE ROAD
As part of the 15th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, a Press Conference was held on Sunday, March 17, 2013 by directors Herbert Sveinbjornsson (Ash) and Marta Cunningham (Valentine Road).
In the film Ash, Herbert Sveinbjornsson records the chronicle of the volcanic eruption of April 14, 2010 at Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull. 70 tons of ash per second was blasted into the stratosphere because of the eruption and Icelandic farmers faced serious survival problems. The film follows three families from the area for a year, and records the effects of the ash on their lives. “It was a challenge for me to follow these people’s lives. What the people of Iceland lived through was something very difficult, but they showed great strength of spirit”, the director said. One of the film’s protagonists says that the serious economic crisis that struck the country was worse than the eruption. The director commented: “In Iceland, there was a time when people were crazy for money. Before the eruption, banks gave loans in yen and other foreign currency and not in Icelandic Kroner, which is a weak currency. When the economy collapsed, the Kroner was devalued by 100% and the loans that people had taken out were doubled in a few hours. This caused serious survival problems, which became even greater because of the consequences of the volcanic eruption. Farming families lost their land because of the demands of the banks”. There will be parliamentary elections on April 27, 2013 in Iceland. The director revealed that, wanting to change things, he decided to abandon directing and founded a political party, from which four members of parliament were elected. But when he saw that no change was happening, he was disappointed and returned to directing. He said: “Things are still difficult, the devaluation of currency continues to affect our lives, but I see that the people will elect the same parties that led us to the collapse. 14 parties will run in the coming elections, out of which 10 are new, but the polls show that the two that were powerful before the economic crisis are winning. Political parties are like religions or football teams. It is hard to change parties. Today I feel we are going back to 2007. People don’t want change, which is a strange thing”.
Then, the self-taught American director Marta Cunningham spoke about her film Valentine Road, which focuses on a gruesome murder: in 2008, Brandon McInerney, high school senior at Oxnard, California shot his classmate Larry King at point blank range. The film touches on subjects such as hate, prejudice, ignorance and homophobia, as the victim was not Caucasian and was experimenting with his sexual identity, while the perpetrator was white with racist tendencies. The subject hit the front page in the USA and focused interest on the problems of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual teenagers as well as the inadequacies of the educational and legal systems. As the director said about the perpetrator: “I didn’t want to demonize Brandon, who shot and killed a person, but was only 14 years old. I wanted to present both sides equally. When you take up such a subject you have to keep in mind that the murderer was a boy; you have to look at where he came from, how he became who he was. I feel that we adults are responsible for incidents such as this, we are responsible for what we say, because the children are listening. Brandon, by killing his classmate, thought he was doing society a favor in the sense that he is the product of his social environment, of ignorance and prejudice”. In order for her to obtain a more comprehensive point of view on the subject, she followed the trial which lasted many weeks closely. She avoided speaking with Brandon himself. “Getting in touch with an accused is a difficult process in California. Moreover however, I was afraid of how the public would react to having Brandon speak in the film”, she said. On the contrary, she spoke a great deal with the rest of the children at the school the incident took place. “These children were never given psychological support. The next day they went to school. So, speaking with them, and most importantly giving them a voice through the film, I believe that I gave them psychological support in some way”, she noted. As she said, her intention was not to moralize through the film. “I don’t tell people what to do, I’m not interested in preaching. But I want to motivate the viewer to react when he sees things happening around him, in his community, that enrage him”.
The films are part of the 15th TDF program, which is financed by the European Union’s Regional Development Fund for Central Macedonia, 2007-2013.
