<p>Faroese is a traditionally repressed language though it has made great strides since gaining semi-autonomy from Denmark after WWII. For several decades, Katrin Ottarsdóttir — a pioneer in Faroese filmmaking and poet — has been making work across disciplines, committed to breaking this silence in defiance of the secretive culture in the Faroe Islands that demands it.<br />
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Ottarsdóttir’s groundbreaking, award-winning 1999 film, <em>Bye, Bye, Bluebird</em> was the first feature film made in the Faroese language; to date she has made several documentaries, shorts etc., as well as two more award-winning feature films: <em>Atlantic Rhapsody </em>(1989), and <em>Ludo </em>(2014). Ottarsdóttir has since gone on to write two books of poetry. The first, now forthcoming from the Operating System in a rare dual-language translation including the Faroese, is <em>Are there Copper Pipes in Heaven</em>, an autobiographical account of her abusive mother’s drug use and eventual suicide. This book was the first Faroese collection of confessional poetry and was highly controversial in a society that does not make public such personal topics, yet despite this it was awarded the Faroese Litterature Award in 2013. (Her film, <em>Ludo</em>, explores the same material.) In 2015 Ottarsdóttir published the poetry collection <em>Mass For A Film</em>, and in 2016 a collection of short stories, <em>After Before.</em></p>
