The Weight of Mountains // Jayne Amara Ross

A LITTLE ABOUT ME

I am a Franco-Australian poet and filmmaker, co-founder of the collective FareWell Poetry. For almost ten years now, I have been making super 8 and 16mm films, and performing my poetry live with the collective. My films have been screened in various cinemas and galleries in Europe and I have toured France and the UK with FareWell Poetry.

An example of my work:

For the past few months, I have been looking for new challenges to enrichen my personal experience and my body of work. I stumbled upon The Weight of Mountains call for applications last summer whilst researching artistic residencies in Iceland, and I couldn't believe what I was reading! Everything about this residency excited me: the isolated setting, the relationship with the landscape, the symposiums and mentorship program... I applied and thanks to some kind of magic, I was accepted!

Unfortunately, have been unable to source funding in France meet the financial imperatives of this trip, and this is why I am calling on your generosity to help me make this dream come true!

A LITTLE MORE ABOUT THIS PROJECT

N. B. At the top of this page you will find a little video illustrating this project!

I am in love with Iceland. And I have been ever since I first set foot there, four years ago.

The drumming landscapes. The ferocious mythology of the Edda. The rambunctious individuality of the Icelandic culture...

I have filmed Iceland, a little, without pretension, just for myself.

Every year I pine for the lava fields, trying to find new ways to get back there!

The Weight of the Mountains is a new residency program created by Nes Artist Residency in Skagastrond, a remote fishing town in the North Fjords. Skagastrond is home to as few as 500 people and surrounded by lava fields and snowy mountains.

During the 3 month filmmaking intensive, I will experiment alongside 9 other International Filmmakers, take part in regular symposiums and create a new, personal and site specific work.

In Skagastrond, I will confront myself, and the Icelandic winter.

But I need your help!

This residency is partly self-funded, and Iceland is absent from the lists of residency destinations for French funding institutions.

Your generous contributions will fund: super 8 and still film and the chemicals that I will need to process them, a digital copy of my raw footage for editing and enough food to keep me alive during those three months!

Here is a more detailed breakdown of my costs:

Motion Picture Film: 450 €

Still film: 120 €

Chemicals: 230 €

Telecinema and negative scans: 550 €

Food for three months: 650 €

TOTAL: 2000 €

MORE ABOUT THE RESIDENCY (from www.twom.is)

The Weight of Mountains is a pilot-project to explore our humanity within the throws of the vast, overwhelming expanse of our surrounding environments. Be those environments geographical, political, physical, emotional, or immediate peripheries of our existent nature, one thing we know is that they shape us.

Our humanity is a bent, twisted, moulded, and defiant structure that (like we all may know) can be influenced by our immediate circumstances and spaces that we make for ourselves, that we chance upon, or inhabit daily. Our humanity is pushed and tested, tried and victorious, downtrodden and delivered to us; sometimes in contorted shapes we had never imagined, wanted, or thought possible. For our inaugural Weight of Mountains project we will come to immerse ourselves, face to face with the Nordic winter, delving into the depths of Icelandic environments and phenomena, and journeying to a remote, rural, and isolated locale: Skagaströnd, northern Iceland. We want to challenge, push, deprive, and innovate, to soar above the expectations of remote areas to create new film works from difficult or extreme locations. 2014 will see us test ourselves creatively, geographically, and remotely. Our key focus for Iceland is the character of landscape: the treachery, the drama, the control it has over us. This is no landscape painting, this is 360° immersive space that pushes us on our face from arctic winds and pulls us into ice caves and lava fields amidst snow blizzards and 100km/hr winds. You must respect mother nature here, as she sure as hell does not respect you.

The filmmaking residency program is designed to allow up to 10 professional filmmakers to attend Nes Listamiðstöð Artist Residency for 3 months to create, produce and develop a new film work (1 short film each) based site-specifically. The artists will be provided an audience platform to present their new short films at the end of the residency at The Weight of Mountains Film Festival presented by Nes Artist Residency (February 2014). The filmmakers will be provided cross cultural and international collaboration or networking opportunity with the selection of filmmakers ranging from many international regions. The residency program will include a heavy focus on creative process, with a monthly 2 day symposium of talks and workshops held by guest film professionals from Iceland. The residency program will also enable participating filmmakers to present a discussion, lecture, artist talk, or workshop of their own. Filmmakers will be able to connect and develop new ideas or collaborations over a provided breakfast each morning (Mon- Fri), enabling reflection and new ideas, collaborations, or developments to be established informally. The residency program will include a heavy focus on development, enabling filmmakers to make an entirely new film work that is experimental or innovative, and develops ideas of our humanity in its surrounding environments. Viewing landscape as a character. New works will relate to ideas of the Nordic geographical/site-specific identity or the new interpretations of the Nordic region from an Icelandic environment/landscape/location perspective.