Lyrical, stunningly beautiful, and delightfully otherworldly, HULDUFOLK 102 expolres the relationship between traditional folk culture and modernity in its examination of the Icelandic belief in "hidden people," the huldufolk of the film's title. Vestiges of the country's Scandinavian and Celtic forebears, the huldufolk occupy a niche somewhere between Tolkien's elves and contemporary neopagan nature spirits. The interviews with Icelandic natives range from transportation department officials (road construction and maintenance take the huldufolk into account), journalists, university professors, politicians, priests and a sorceror. At the screening I attended, the SRO crowd gasped at the gorgeous, eerie footage of Iceland's's natural wonders -- glaciers, volcanos, seascapes -- but also laughed delightedly at the ultimate strangeness and sheer wonder of a world of belief that defies our own mundane preconceptions of the supernatural.
Review of Huldufólk 102
