OTHER-GROUNDS FILM FESTIVAL: Day 1 – Community

Other-Grounds Film Festival is a multicultural, collaborative initiative exploring what it means to be human on Earth—and how we can build responsible, connected relationships with nature and each other. In the face of today’s overlapping crises—environmental, social, and ideological—we seek new ways to perceive, imagine, and relate to the world.

Bringing together films, conversations, and diverse perspectives, the festival highlights knowledge systems that have often been silenced. It amplifies voices fighting for sustainability, the rights of nature, and a more-than-human future.

Welcome to day 1 program: Community.

• Doors open at 17:30.

• Opening Ceremony with short speech, drinks and snacks (18:00-18:10);
• The River is Me (17 min) (18:10-18:27);
• Eálat (32 min) (18:27-19:00);
• Break (19:00-19:10);
• Round-table on Rights of Nature, nurtured by Dr. Angela Snæfellsjökuls Rawlings, Ole Martin Sandberg, Vena Naskrecka, Ólafur Páll Jónsson (19:10-20:00);
• Closing word: 20:00-20:10.

Round Table on the Rights of Nature

What if Rivers had legal standing? What if Glaciers could defend themselves in court?

Join us for a round table conversation exploring the Rights of Nature—a growing global movement to recognize ecosystems as living entities with rights.

This event is part of Community Day at the Other-Grounds Film Festival and is co-created with members of Snæfellsjökul fyrir forseta (Snæfellsjökull For President)—a poetic-political initiative reimagining our relationship with the Earth.

Round-table conversation is navigated by following community members:

Dr. Angela Snæfellsjökuls Rawlings is a Canadian-Icelandic interdisciplinary artist-researcher with an ecological emphasis. They work with languages as dominant exploratory material. Rawlings’ books include Wide slumber for lepidopterists (Coach House Books, 2006), Gibber (online, 2012), o w n (CUE BOOKS, 2015), si tu (MaMa Multimedijalni Institut, 2017), and Sound of Mull (Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, 2019). In 2022, Rawlings co-curated SPHERE Festival for the Canadian National Arts Centre’s Orchestra in partnership with the Canadian Museum of Nature, Royal Danish Library, and Nordic Bridges. In 2024, Rawlings founded Snæfellsjökul fyrir forseta (Glacier for president), Iceland’s first rights of nature movement. In 2025, Rawlings’ solo exhibition Motion to Change Colour Names to Reflect Planetary Boundary Tipping Points was opened in a decommissioned fertiliser factory. They teach at Iceland University of the Arts. Website: http://arawlings.is

Vena Naskrecka is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher, and a graduate of Munster Technological University in Cork and Minerva Academy in Groningen. They mostly work with movement-based art, performance, and participatory experimental theatre, often creating site-specific installations.

Vena volunteers with the Icelandic Red Cross, where they run theatre classes for asylum seekers and Red Cross volunteers. They actively advocate for disability and environmental rights, and are part of Iceland’s first rights of nature movement, Snæfellsjökull fyrir forseta (“Snæfellsjökull for President”). In 2024, they founded the NGO Samfélag fyrir Öll (“Community for All”), which creates inclusive and creative spaces for underrepresented groups.

Their work has been shown across Europe, including at the Copernicus Science Centre in Warsaw, Pint of Science in Nottingham, Live Art Festival in Dublin, gallery Sign+ in Groningen, Grimmuseum in Berlin, Reykjanes Art Museum, Kannski Gallery, and RKV Fringe Festival. They’ve received the Klaas Dijkstra Academy Prize, the Minerva Promotion Grant, and an award for an innovative orthopedic corset prototype at the Wawa Design Festival. 

Website: https://vena.works/

Ole Martin Sandberg is a postdoctoral researcher in philosophy at the University of Iceland where he teaches and writes about environmental philosophy, ethics of nature, and the relationship between human and non-human nature. His research project. Climate Crisis and Affect (climateaffect.hi.is) focuses on the interacting aspects of climate change, biodiversity, and society. He is also an active member of the Icelandic network for biodiversity, BIODICE, where  he has participated in Nordic research projects on biodiversity and nature protection as well as in projects aimed at facilitating the integration of the Ecosystem Approach and the Global Biodiversity Framework into Icelandic policy.

Ólafur Páll Jónsson is a professor of philosophy at the School of Education, University of Iceland. He grew up in in Kirkjubæjarklaustur, in the South-East of Iceland, where he learned to appreciate nature from an early age. He studied philosophy in Iceland, then in Canada and finally in the US. After returning to Iceland in 2001, he became active in the campaign for the preservation of the highlands and published a book on environmental philosophy in 2007, Náttúra, vald og verðmæti (Nature, authority and values). In his latest book Annáll um líf í annasömum heimi (An Annal of a Life in a Busy World, 2020) (also published in Spanish as Crónica de una vida en un mundo convulso) he reflects on the moral standing of humans and nature, and on various aspects of human-nature relationship, both in prose and poetry.

Accessibility:
Elissa Auditorium is wheelchair accessible, with a low-threshold entrance, an accessible toilet with changing facilities on the same floor, and a ramp from the parking lot. An automatic button is installed at the main entrance. For further accessibility inquiries, please contact: kolbrun@nordichouse.is