Story of my heart Erasmus Project

Project Title

Story of my heart

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Creativity and culture; EU Citizenship, EU awareness and Democracy

Project Summary

The project originally named Story of my Heart now named “Seasick” is a transnational filmmaking project between creative, young filmmakers in Iceland and Lithuania.

The objective of the project is the production of the short film Seasick by Andri Freyr Ríkarðsson a Icelandic, living in Denmark aspiring filmmaker. Seasick is to be his and the production teams first funded short film to put us on the map as filmmakers of high professionalism and capability.

The film tells the story of a young couple that work together out at sea and have to hide their relationship out of fear of discrimination. Through intense visuals and sound, the film tells the story of their struggles through a day that will make waves in their lives. The film shows the feelings and fear of two young lovers. Who love each other even though they share a strong relation to each other. Many will not agree with the films message. But as the film tries to answer the question. Who has the right to decide who you can love? Also as family relation in a relationship has always been a large taboo in Iceland. We all know that it happens and can happen anytime. Due to the small nature of the country and its culture.

On the other hand the projects objective is to document the process of the filmmaking and the collaboration of the two countries and their young filmmakers – a collaboration that was established with a filmmaking seminar for young filmmakers, Scanorama Shortcut in Iceland and Lithuania in 2015.

The group in Iceland and Lithuania will aim to make the film as professionally as our knowledge goes and our diverse background and passion for filmmaking, and with network already starting to establish we are confident about taking on the project and execute it on transnational ground as it fits best and will serve it’s educational purpose best that way with wider reach.

In the project young adults will be given the opportunity to work on their filmmaking skills and honing their talent, which they might otherwise find difficult since it is always hard to get funding for a starting projects.

We hope that the co-operation between the countries will be beneficial to both partners. Each company brings different people with different set of skills to the table who can then learn from each other. We also hope that this partnership will lead to a continuing collaboration on a larger project in the future.

One of the emphasis of the project is gender equality and there will be put effort into keeping gender ratio as close to 50 / 50 as possible. The two groups will be lead by the film production companies New Age Icelandic Films now know as Behind the Scenes, who will provide main support and management of the project, and Lithuanian VsI Sviestas, who will provide minor support and management and also technical supervision in post-production.

Both companies with recorded filmmaking successes as well as being run by young, talented and aspiring filmmakers. This is an Icelandic-Lithuanian co-production where the script is written in Iceland, pre-production is handled jointly by both participant companies, the film will be shot on location in Western Iceland over a period of one week with Icelandic actors and a mix of Icelandic and Lithuanian crew and post-production will be done at a good mix between Iceland and Lithuania.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 29975 Eur

Project Coordinator

New Age Icelandic Films & Country: IS

Project Partners

• VsI Sviestas