27/04/2013 - "If you know how to cook, you know how to make a film"

Icelandic director-producer Thorkell Sigurdur Hardarson discovered his brother – if not in family, then in spirit – Örn Marinó Arnarson on a film set almost 15 years ago, and since they have worked together as the Markell Brothers, making feature-length documentaries. They started out with rockumentaries, Ham – Living Dead (2001) and Punk In Iceland (2004); after studying geopolitics and terrorism they resurfaced with Feathered Cocaine (2010), about the true location of Osama bin Laden a year before he was killed. Their latest outing was The North Atlantic Miracle (2011), “a poetic account on the lifespan of the Atlantic salmon”.

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Currently, the brothers are in production with two documentaries on very different subjects – Trend Beacons and New Hands. Trend Beacons, which will be ready next year, follows Dutch trend analysts Christine Boland and the Ravage Duo in their work dissecting past and present to predict the future of fashion and design two years ahead. Co-produced by Icelandic veteran Gudbergur Davidsson, of Ljosop Productions, to be readied for 2015 delivery, New Hands depicts new cutting-edge technology – an Icelander, who lost both arms in a high-voltage accident 15 years ago, is about now get a double-arm transplant in Lyon.

How did you meet Örn Marino, and how did your teamwork begin?
Hardarson: Marino and I first worked together on other directors’ films – he was a gaffer and I was in the art department. We soon found out we were both great cooks, so we started to host extravaganza dinner parties. We were going to start a punk-rock band, but due to lack of instruments we decided for films instead – we had also been to some film schools in Italy and France. Our company’s motto is ‘if you know how to cook, you know how to make a film,’ and true enough, almost all of our favorite filmmakers are also great chefs.

Do you always agree on what you will be doing – and what if you don’t?
Sometimes we are not in unison on aspects of a project – that is OK – we let it simmer for a little while, and in the end we usually reach the same conclusion. So far, there has not been any major disagreement.

How do you divide the work between you?
No person can be on all the time – sometimes you are not, be it in the approach or the handling of a subject. In a tandem there is always one of us aware of what is really going on. To shoot an intimate interview, the fewer people around the better, so we have boiled the operation down to a two man army: Marino does most of the shooting, although I shoot too on occasion, and I record most of the sound, Marino slips into the role of a soundman when needed. But you have to do it properly - and so far our sound and images have been in the top layer of what our post-production people receive.

Your subjects for documentaries vary from punk to bin Laden and salmons – what do you require from a subject to be interesting enough for a film?
A good subject can range from something going on inside a person's mind to something that government lies about - the keystone of a film is how you handle the subject, how you present it and how you close the film. The core must be strong enough to stand alone and also to attract all the side stories that turn into the mosaic mass of the final version. A lot of ideas come to you, but as soon as you say them out aloud you realise how feeble they are, and that’s where you benefit from being two.

Anything you are particularly good at – and anything certainly not?
The forte of the Markell brothers is to take a subject and place it within a big picture – to put things that otherwise seem non-related into context so people see the world in a different way than they ever saw it before.
What didn’t work was when we tried to commercialise our projects - we cannot do a film without adding our quirky stamp on it. To do otherwise would be a sellout. There are projects destined for mass consumption getting a lot of funding, and you can’t see any signs of an auteur.

What is it with you Icelanders? There are only 320,000 of you, yet you sometimes produce six films per year?
Iceland is a micro-sized nation on a rock in the North-Atlantic, striving to reach a 350,000 population. It can be an asset, giving you a perspective on issues different from the US and the European mainlands. It can also be counterproductive: a society that tends to bicker a lot about things, and takes action grudgingly. But there is a quite good support system, and it helps that the Icelandic ego is quite big - both individually and collective - so if you want to make things happen, it helps to be a descendant of overachievers, multitalented jacks of all trades, yet masters of none. It works in filmmaking, for example, but I would never recommend Icelanders as bankers, lawmakers or politicians. As creative artists, we are excellent.

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