On Thursday, 19 September the Arctic Festival in Tromsø begins
The Embassy of the Czech Republic in Oslo and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic (MFA) in cooperation with Norwegian partners in Tromsø (UiT The Arctic University of Norway, the Sámi House, the City Library and Archive, the Cinematheque and the Bastard Bar), the Prague Film School FAMU, Czech Television and other Czech, Greenlandic, Swedish and Norwegian film partners, and the music band Už jsme doma (UJD) organise the 6th edition of the Arctic Festival (AF), which will take place in Tromsø, North Norway, on 19-21 September 2024.
This year’s AF edition devotes a lot of space to the two indigenous ethnic groups of the Arctic – the Sámi (lecture by Lukáš Košner, exhibition by Luboš Drtina and the new Swedish film “Historjá – Stitches of the Sámi”) and the Inuit (exhibition by Martin Velíšek and the first Czech-Greenlandic co-production film “The Price of a Story”). The Czech-Slovak-Norwegian film “Visitors” documents dilemmas people experience in Svalbard, both environmentally and socially. A series of films by Nordic FAMU graduates is reminiscent of a similar project at AF 2022 in Reykjavík. Czech Television, together with the film production company SMK, will contribute a documentary about the unsuccessful voyage of a Czech sailing ship in the footsteps of the expedition of the Sudeten German Julius Payer to Franz Joseph Land, which the polar explorer, mountaineer, painter and writer discovered in 1873. An exhibition of his illustrations from his adventurous North Pole expedition will symbolically open the festival at UiT. The university will also host a series of lectures by eight experts on Arctic topics from the natural and social sciences. AF 2024 will end with a traditional concert by the punk-rock band Už jsme doma, whose frontman Miroslav Wanek is a co-founder of the Arctic Festival.
The AF 2024 logo and posters of AF 2024 and its individual parts (science, film, exhibitions, music) are available for download in A4 and print quality (A0) on the AF website in the Festiva/Press section (https://arktickyfestival.cz/en/press/).
Arctic Festival 2024 programme
The AF 2024 programme traditionally consists of a sci-art conference and a cultural programme (film festival, exhibitions and a concert). A summary information and sub-programmes are listed and continuously updated on the AF website (https://arktickyfestival.cz/en/arctic-festival/). A FB event has been set up: (1) ARCTIC FESTIVAL 2024 Tromsø | Facebook. The entry fee for AF events will not be collected, except for the concert.
The AF will be officially opened on Thursday, 19 September at 10.30 at UiT’s Great Auditorium with the vernissage of the exhibition “Julius Payer: The North Pole Expedition”. H. E. David Červenka, Czech Ambassador to Norway, will open the subsequent Sci-art Conference with welcoming remarks. Professor Josef Elster (Centre for Polar Ecology, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice), will deliver a lecture on the development of low-temperature algal bioprospection and will shortly introduce the Czech Arctic Research “Josef Svoboda Station” in Svalbard. Dr Kim Holmén (Norwegian Polar Institute) will highlight the rapid changes in Svalbard’s natural environment due to climate change. Zdeněk Lyčka (MFA) will talk about the Czech-Austrian polar explorer, mountaineer and prominent painter Julius Payer. Lukáš Košner (UiT) will give a lecture about the efforts of Northern Norway’s historical minorities to reclaim their languages, and Martin Hajman (UiT) will introduce the audience to an arctic-alpine plant species from the Czech mountains to Svalbard and Greenland. Ann Eileen Lennert (UiT) will deliver a lecture on kelp as the forests beneath the sea and Lauri Laanisto (Estonian University of Life Sciences, Tartu) will speak on Estonian polar research. Zdeněk Lyčka (MFA) will conclude the conference with a paper on the philosophy and history of the Arctic Festival.
The cultural programme will consist of film screenings, two exhibition openings and a concert of a punk-rock band Už jsme doma (UJD).
The Arctic Film Festival will open on 19 September at 16.00 at the Cinematheque with a series of short films by FAMU Nordic graduates – “Northerners at FAMU” (SE/IS/DK/FI/NO/CZ 2004–2024, 110 min.) and will continue on 20 September from 16.30 to 21.00 with the Swedish film “Historjá – Stitches for Sápmi” (SE 2022, 88 min.), the first Czech-Greenlandic co-production “The Price of a Story” (CZ/GL 2024, 17 min.), the documentary by Vladimír Šimek and Czech Television “Ice Adventure” (CZ 2024, 53 min.) and the co-production documentary “The Visitors” (CZ/SK/NO 2022, 83 min.).
The City Library and Archive will host the exhibition “The Dog with a Bun – Greenlandic fairy tales and legends / Illustrations by Martin Velíšek” (opening on 19 September at 15.00) and the Sámi House will show the exhibition “Just Knud Qvigstad: Sámi Fairy Tales and Legends / Illustrations by Luboš Drtina” (opening on 20 September at 15.00). Both exhibitions will be on display in Tromsø until 20 October 2024, and then they will be shown in other locations in northern Norway and in Denmark.
The AF programme will be closed by a punk-rock concert by the band UJD at the Bastard Bar music club on 21 September 2024, from 22.00.
13 September 2024
Zdeněk Lyčka, founder of the Arctic Festival and main organizer of all its previous editions
ARCTIC FESTIVAL 2024 TROMSØ – Programme
Thursday 19 September
10.30 UiT (Medicine and Health Studies Building 1: Great Auditorium) Arctic Festival 2024 opening
10.50–13.00 UiT (Great Audit.) Sci-Art Conference
15.00 City Library Velíšek Exhib. opening (on view until 20 Oct.)
16.00-18.00 Cinematheque Arctic Film Festival opening + FAMU series
Friday 20 September
15.00 Sámi House Sámi Exhib. opening (on view until 20 Oct.)
16.30–21.00 Cinematheque Arctic Film Festival
Saturday 21 September
22.00 Bastard Bar Concert by UJD (entry fee)