Regarding Stundin´s report on The Icelandic Film School

The board of directors and dean would like to start by going through the response from The Icelandic Film School regarding the MeToo movement and the accounts of sexual offences within the film industry, among them at The Film School.

On Monday the 27th of November the accounts were published publicly. That day work was started to form a response team. The work was done in cooperation with the student council to man the team. An announcement was made to the students about the newly formed team on Wednesday the 29th of October. The official response of the school was then published in the news on the 1st and 4th of December. An outside professional, a nurse with both experience and qualifications in the subject, has been hired to assist the team and the first meeting will be held on Tuesday. From there there working standards will be set with the expressed point of eradicating anything that may be construed as sexual offences within the schools operation. The response team will also go through any older complaints in regards to how to handle them and will be sending out a report, likely by the end of next week.

During the time that the accounts are referring to, about 600 students have been at the school and teachers/counselors have been about 160. During this time many problems have been faced, as you can expect within a school, and response teams, both for bullying and violent matters have been formed, to successfully conclude these issues.

The expressed accounts that are being reported by Stundin have never been formally addressed by the schools board of directors. The complaints that were made seven years ago do not seem to have been handled in the proper manner. The schools directors and dean are extremely disturbed by the accounts published in the article, as by the account there was clearly inappropriate behavior by a counselor. There is full cause to apologize for the school not confronting this issue appropriately when the complaint was made. It should be made clear that this particular counselor no longer works for the school. This incident will however be fully explored from the standpoint of what we can learn from it and how we can improve.

The Metoo movement is a clear message that there are many cases of women being treated unjustly and trod upon in the film industry. The Film Schools board of directors and dean are well aware of the responsibility the school has in implementing a new and better culture within the industry. The Icelandic Film School should be exemplary, it being an educational institution for the people within the industry. The school is extremely saddened by this criticism and will be decisively handling the issue. We will announce the progress during the next days and weeks. Students taking the spring semester will notice different working practices.

Kind regards,
The board of directors and dean of The Icelandic Film School