A film course taught by Lee Lynch, an American filmmaker living in Iceland, aims to both introduce young people to a broad range of experimental film as well as to give them the opportunity to create their own, mbl.is. Called “Teenage Wasteland of the Arts” (a title inspired by the song “Baba O’Reily” by the British badn The Who, the course which is now being offered for the sixth time at Hitt Húsið.
Lee, who holds a master’s from the University of Southern California and has shown his own films at festivals such as Sundance, Rotterdam, and Tribeca, says the class introduces students to “video art and sound art…and we look at New Wave filmmaking, theater, experimental animation, and sound collages.” In addition, students are given the opportunity to make their own video art and learn, among other things, how to produce and edit their own YouTube videos and use a variety of analog effects.
Lee says that film played an important and empowering role in his young life and he hopes it will do the same for his students. “…I was fourteen years old when I started making movies. Sometimes, I hated school and at that time, my parents were going through a difficult divorce. Filmmaking got me through that difficult time but I was the only teenager who was involved in stuff like that in the little town I grew up in. I hope to be able to offer young filmmakers and video artists a space where they can be free from everything else that is going on in their lives and that they have no control over. Space where they can express themselves among similarly minded people and help Iceland’s fantastic film scene grow and flourish.”
Learn more about the course – which is offered for students aged 16 – 25 and taught in English – on its Facebook page, here.
