Heima (tbc)
- Run time: tbc
- Genre: Documentary
- Release date: 2nd November 2007
- Starring: Jonsi Birgisson, Georg Holm, Kjartan Sveinsson
- Directed by: Dean DeBlois
- Official Website: www.heimafilm.com
- Distributor: Shooting People Films
Plot Synopsis
Sigur Rós break their two-year silence to release their first-ever film and a companion album later this autumn. Filmed over two weeks last summer when the band undertook a free tour of Iceland, HEIMA stands as a colossal labour of love - not to say grand folly - typical of this most exacting of bands.
While most people set up a few cameras at, say, a festival, and call it a DVD, Sigur Rós decided they would push the boat (bus and plane) out for their debut venture into live film, hauling 40-plus people round 15 locations to the furthest flung corners of their homeland to create something inspirational.
On their way they went to ghost towns, outsider art shrines, national parks, small community halls and the absolute middle-of-nowhere-ness of the highland wilderness, as well as playing the largest gig of their career (and in Icelandic history) at their triumphant homecoming Reykjavik show.
HEIMA (Icelandic for “at home” or “homeland”), truly shows Sigur Rós as never before. Whereas seeing the group live is normally a large-scale and sometimes overwhelming experience, making full use of lights and mesmeric visuals, HEIMA was always intended to reveal more of what was actually going on on stage. It does this via long-held close-ups and a rare intimate proximity, without ever once breaking the spell.
Loosely based on a documentary format - and including personal reflections from the band - HEIMA also serves as an alternative primer for Iceland the country, which is revealed as less stag destination-du-jour and more desolate, magical place where human beings have little right to trespass.
HEIMA features performances of songs from all four Sigur Rós albums, many radically reworked, as well as two exclusive new songs in ‘Guitardjamm’, which was filmed inside an abandoned herring oil tank in the far West of the country, and the traditional ‘A Ferd Til Breidarfjardar 1922’, performed with poet Steindor Andersen.