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Ari Alexander Ergis Magnússon

Directing

Biography

Ari Alexander Ergis Magnússon was born in Reykjavik, Iceland, to an Icelandic father who was a playwright, film and theatre director and a Siberian-Yakutian mother who is an actress and visual artist. Magnusson's mother graduated from the acting school GITIS in Moscow and his father graduated from the legendary film school VGIK where his parents actually first met. They moved to Reykjavik, Iceland from Moscow in 1966 after his father lost faith in the utopian dream of the USSR. Magnússon lived in Aarhus, Danmark 1979-83. He moved to Paris in 1989, studied at the Sorbonne University 1989-90. He earned a BFA in fine arts from Parsons Paris School of Art and Design, 1991-96. Since then he has exhibited his paintings, installations and video work in galleries in Iceland, Danmark, France, England, USA, China, Argentina, Russia and Siberia. Magnusson has received several awards and was nominated to the Nordic Council Film Prize in 2005 for his music documentary Screaming Masterpiece, led by Björk and Sigur Rós. Magnússon premiered his first narrative feature film MIHKEL, at the 2018 Busan International Film Festival in South-Korea, in competition at the Warsaw International Film Festival in Poland, cinema release in Estonia and Iceland same year. It's a dramatic film based on a real-life tragedy that took place in Iceland in 2004, involving two childhood friends from Estonia. The film was produced by Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, Evil Doghouse, Amrion Production and Truenorth with full production support from KMÍ the Icelandic film Centre and development support MEDIA Programme of the European Union. Ergis Film Production, owned by Ari Magnusson, was established in 2002. The company's focus has been on documentaries, mostly on artists, and the company has been involved with major working artists: Björk, Erró, Sigur Rós, Gudbergur Bergsson, Thor Vilhjálmsson, Ólafur Elíasson, Sigurdur Gudmundsson, Alain Robbe Grillet, David Lynch, Kristján Gudmundsson, Matthew Barney and Yoko Ono. Magnusson has worked closely with a team of experienced professionals: producer and film director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson, Los Angeles based film producer Sigurjón Sighvatsson, writer Jón Proppé and co-director of the Serpentine Galley in London, Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Known For

Mihkel
5.8

Mihkel boards a ferry from his small town in Estonia to Saint Petersburg in Russia, on his way to Iceland, where he wants to make a new life for himself and his fiancée, Vera. His friend Igor, who emigrated to Iceland a few years earlier, convinces Mihkel to smuggle two bottles of liquid amphetamine and then seek payment from an 
Estonian priest, who is a business partner of Igor’s in Saint Petersburg. The priest is then to set him up in his new home and bring Vera over to join him. Rather than getting paid, he is instead coerced into swallowing seventy drug capsules to take on to Iceland. He arrives in Iceland and is picked up by Igor and his two Icelandic accomplices, Jóhann and Bóbó. However, in the next two days it becomes clear that something is wrong and Mihkel cannot pass the drugs. The Icelandic criminals become very nervous, and more and more frantic activity ensues as the situation becomes more serious.

Mihkel

2018
Epilogues
N/A

An old man comes home with the ashes of his dead wife in an urn. As he waits for the kettle to boil, the relentless hissing of boiling water brings to mind memories. There is nothing ahead for the old man, only lack of purpose, sense of loss and loneliness. He embarks on a journey.

Epilogues

2024
60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero
4.2

An anthology of one-minute films created by 51 international filmmakers on the theme of the death of cinema. Intended as an ode to 35mm, the film was screened one time only on a purpose-built 20x12 meter public cinema screen in the Port of Tallinn, Estonia, on 22 December 2011. A special projector was constructed for the event which allowed the actual filmstrip to be burnt at the same time as the film was shown.

60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero

2011
Little Cosmonaut
7.0

A short film about a young boy's escape from reality, the search for love and security, about cryptic messages from outer space and an invisible friend in the cellar. Based on the director's own memories, this is the story of a young boy's world filled with fantasies and dreams of distant worlds. His eccentric grandmother is his best friend and his partner in the world of the imagination.

Little Cosmonaut

2011
Poor Iceland
N/A

When the Icelandic banks collapsed in the autum of 2008, taking most of the economy down with them, Ari Alexander took his camera and started to film what was happening in this tiny but relatively stable and affluent society. He filmed the ever-larger protests that in the end led to the downfall of the government. He took interviews with people shocked and confused by what was going on around them. He went to conferences and seminars where scholars tired to work out what had happened and what should happen next. He followed the endless debates and negotiations around the Icesave-accounts set up by Icelandic banks abroad. Every day brought fresh news of the complicated and often illegal deals made by financiers and bankers in the years leading up to the collapse.

Poor Iceland

2016
Possibihilities
N/A

Gudmundsson has spent most of his life outside Iceland after he first moved to the Netherlands in 1963. He has homes and studios in Amsterdam, Reykjavík and Malmo, and in the past few years in Xiamen and Beijing in China. Gudmundsson has displayed his works in most countries in Europe and major public works of sculpture have been commissioned from him in the Nordic countries and in central Europe.

Possibihilities

2002
Imagine Peace
N/A

Four years in the making, the film features interviews and footage never seen before, as well as older scenes of John and Yoko together, in private and performing in public. Yoko Ono talks about her and John Lennon’s love and life together, about the art they made together and their struggle for peace and justice, including the imaginative methods they used to get their message across: “Give peace a chance.” Lennon’s music provides an inspirational soundtrack to a story that that began more than forty years ago and is still unfolding. In 2007, when Yoko Ono dedicated the Imagine Peace Tower to John’s memory she added: “My love for you is forever.”

Imagine Peace

2010
No image
N/A

A collage-like film that mixes interviews with painter Erró and his collaborators, family and friends with visuals of his paintings and extracts from experimental films made in the sixties with Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Carolee Scheemann, Christo, Matta and Adami. Also including many of the luminaries of twentieth century art, the film takes us from Paris and New York to the appropriately surrealistic landscapes of Erró's native Iceland.

ERRÓ - North - South - East - West

2000
Screaming Masterpiece
6.6

A documentary about the bustling Icelandic musical scene. This documentary covers some of Iceland's most talented and well-known musicians.

Screaming Masterpiece

2005
As If We Existed
N/A

The repetition and the circumstances increasingly take their toll when isolation, claustrophobia and paranoia set in. As if We Existed is an interpretation of an art piece by Ragnar Kjartansson who represented Iceland at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. His piece, The End, was a six month long performance.

As If We Existed

2010
No image
N/A

The fate of a crosseyed sheep in the highlands of Iceland.

She Talks Icelandic

2006
The Word Music: Magnus Blondal Johannsson
N/A

Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson is remembered as one of the pioneers of modern Icelandic music. The conversation between Hans Ulrich Obrist and Magnúsar Blöndal took place in Reykjavík on August 9, 2004. Nine days later, he lapsed into a coma and died on January 1, 2005.

The Word Music: Magnus Blondal Johannsson

2009
The Word Music: Jorunn Vidar
N/A

No description available.

The Word Music: Jorunn Vidar

2009
Slurpinn & Co.
N/A

No description available.

Slurpinn & Co.

1998