PUNK IN ICELAND
Iceland 1978. Beer was illegal, cold war ghosts were everywhere and no one was aware of this thing called punk rock canned disco and left over hippie music ruled the music scene. Suddenly punk rock invaded quiet iceland and kicked the feet from under the old music foundations. Nothing was the same after that. Punk was raw, fresh, newand dangerous. Anyone could play punk, the less you knew, the better. The punk rock scene ignited the icelandic rock bonfire that burns bright today. This film contain footage never seen before such as deleted scene from fridrik thors rock in Reykjavik (1982) and footage from the first punk concert held in iceland. This film shed light on the first sparks of punk rock in iceland and has been hailed as masterpiece by critics and rockfessors.
Örn Marinó Arnarson graduated as a director from the L.U.C.R. film school in Rome, Italy.
Thorkell S. Hardarson studied filmmaking in the C.L.C.F. in Paris, France.
Together they have worked in more than 50 feature films, domestic as well as international productions. As well as hundreds of commercials and TV-productions.
After working side by side for some years they decided to join their forces and founded Markell Productions in the spring of 2001. Their goal is to produce documentaries of outstanding quality as well as feature films. Besides producing films, Markell productions has been working in the theatre life of Italy where Markell has produced Defending the Caveman (premiered 2002, Rob Becker) and Cellophane(premiered 2003, Björk Jakobsdottir)
For the last two years Markell has won the only short film competition held in Iceland, the Grandrokk Festival. The shorts Full House and Wine of the House took the gold prize in 2003 and 2004.
Markell productions is currently preparing two feature films, Siracusa-Siracusa (a comedy/roadmovie from Sicily to Iceland and back) and A Day Without a Beer (a comedy based on the characters of the award winning shorts mentioned above).