Title: “Arctic light”
Genre: Travel documentary
Running time: 40 minutes
Format: 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio; colour; stereo soundtrack
Resolution: shot in 4K and transcoded to HD for projection
Narration: the film’s introduction is narrated in English with subtitles
Synopsis
Join mature-age adventurers and film makers Arnold and Marilyn Kopff for a month of off-the-beaten-track hiking in the remote Lofoten Islands.
The Lofotens sit off the coast of northern Norway. They’re above the Arctic Circle so they experience Midnight Sun during the northern summer.
There are about 100 islands in the Lofoten Archipelago, and as you will see most of them are extremely mountainous. They’re of the hardest known rock so they’ve largely resisted glaciers and weathering, making the scenery breathtaking.
Awe-inspiring peaks often rise straight out of the fjords to heights of more than 1,000 metres. Sometimes the islands have only a few metres of shoreline, but mostly, there’s no shoreline at all.
To visit the Lofotens is to travel back in geological time – the entire archipelago is one continuous mountain range, with peaks so jagged they look like they’ve only just been formed. And even in the Arctic summer, many are still draped in ice and snow.
Dotted around the islands, tucked into safe corners in fjords, are dozens of small fishing villages. There’s always a breakwater protecting the trawlers, with the fishermen’s homes, fish drying racks and fish processing factories close-by.
The iconic red rorbu fishermen’s cottages add a flourish to nearly every scene.
Come hiking with us in the Lofoten Islands and enjoy stunning Arctic vistas.
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Title: “Coastal Express”
Genre: Travel documentary
Running time: 61 minutes
Format: 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio; colour; stereo soundtrack
Resolution: shot in 4K and transcoded to HD for projection
Narration: the film is narrated extensively in English with subtitles
Synopsis
Come on-board the Hurtigruten Coastal Express with film makers Arnold and Marilyn Kopff. Over the course of 6 days the ship sails 1,250 nautical miles, from Kirkenes in Norway’s arctic north, to Bergen in the south.
The Coastal Express is a working vessel, not a glamorous cruise ship. It’s small, and designed for Norway’s coastal waters which require it to manoeuvre in tight inlets and pass through narrow fjords. It carries less than 250 passengers, and the only shipboard entertainment is watching the extraordinary beauty of the Norwegian coastline glide past.
And it glides past constantly because this is the realm of the Midnight Sun.
Along the way the ship stops at 34 coastal communities – many of them tiny hamlets and small fishing villages – to drop-off and pick-up cargo and passengers. It docks at villages and small towns for between 10 and 45 minutes, and in cities for an hour or two.
The intricate coast of Norway is always within sight; the ship is often only tens of metres away from reefs, strings of small islands and the towering walls of fjords.
You’ll see the incredible wall of mountains that comprise the Lofoten Islands; you’ll watch mesmerised as the ship ventures into the amazingly narrow Trollfjord, where it has to pivot about its axis in order to sail out again.
Experience the tranquillity as the ship crosses the Arctic Circle.
As the Coastal Express works its way south, you’ll see fishing villages give way, little by little, to tiny farms clinging to the rare patches of flat land along the fjords.
You’ll sail under blue skies and glorious sunshine, below low overcast, and through fog, which, when it moves aside to allow the ship to pass, reveals yet more wonders of the arctic.
The journey is the reward
About the Presenter:
When Arnold finished school in the 1970s he really wanted to be a cinematographer but that didn’t eventuate. Instead, he wrote computer software for a living and eventually established his own software engineering business.
Starting in his mid-teens, Arnold cultivated keen technical and artistic interests in cinematography and film editing, so when he sold his software business in 2008 he decided to pursue his first dream, and these days Arnold is a successful mature-age film maker.
As well as continuing to create his own observational ethnographic and travel documentaries, Arnold was a founder and the President of the Eumundi World Cinema film society. He was also a founder, the principal organiser and the Festival Curator for the Noosa International Film Festival (NIFF) in 2016 and 2017, and the festival’s Technical Consultant in 2018.
In 2016, Arnold received a Queensland Day Medal for his work organising the inaugural Noosa International Film Festival (NIFF). He is also an Honorary Life Member of the Noosa Film Society.
Arnold has received an international award for his cinematography and his films have been televised in Shanghai, in Charlotte North Carolina, and in San Francisco.
In 2022 and 2023 his film “By longboat to Samkar” received the award for Best Short Documentary at film festivals in Los Angeles, Rome, London, Paris, Florence and Türkiye. “By longboat to Samkar” has received other awards at a further 17 international film festivals. Arnold was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for his film by the University of East Azerbaijan.
In 2023, Arnold’s film “Three sketches from Vietnam” received the award for Best Short Documentary at the festival in Florence; it also received recognition at 4 other international film festivals.
During 2024 and 2025, Arnold’s film “With the Himba at Epupa” was awarded Best Short Documentary at film festivals in New York, Florence, Paris, London and Milan. The film also received recognition at another 13 international festivals.
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