Daily Tiger #5 (English)

DAILY TIGER 44th International Film Festival Rotterdam #5 Monday 26 January 2015

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Tired Moonlight Signals: Jang Jin Matthäus Passion Stories Tiger Releases

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Another Trip to the Moon Above and Below

photo: Nichon Glerum

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Where is Rocky II South Africa to IFFR Transition is the Mission Cross Channel Film Lab

ENGLISH EDITION

CineMart in full swing: Sacha Polak (fourth from left at table), whose project Vita & Virginia is in CineMart, at the CineMart Meeting Panels on Sunday.

CinemArt Three established artists present their feature film projects at IFFR’s Art:Film meeting today. Melanie Goodfellow reports

Since the early days of cinema, artists have worked with fi lm, from Salvador Dalí’s collaboration with Luis Buñuel on Un Chien Andalou to Andy Warhol’s experimental 1960s works such as Empire and Chelsea Girls, or more recently Ben Russell and Ben River’s A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness.

As media, art and entertainment converge in the digital age, there has been an increase in the number of artists producing works for the big screen – but the crossover is not always easy, as they grapple with different funding and distribution models.

Art:Film, an initiative set up in collaboration with IFFR’s CineMart and Danish documentary festival CPH:DOX, is aimed at helping some of these projects find financing and get made.

Work-in-progress

“We’re a sort of work-in-progress ourselves,” says Tobias Pausinger, who founded and manages the initiative with former CineMart acting chief Jacobine van de Vloed.

“ART:Film was born out of our observation four years

IFFR LATE NIGHT

Tonight’s guests are the director and composer of Das Zimmermädchen Lynn (The Chambermaid Lynn), Ingo Haeb & Jakob Ilja, and director of Tiger competitor Bridgend, Jeppe Rønde. The Movie Dogs Quiz will focus in on ’80s Dogs!

ago that more and more artists were trying to cross over – it started with a series of panels and workshops on art and fi lm and has grown from there.”

“While at CineMart, Jacobine and me saw that more and more visual artists were applying with their fi lms.

My background is in sales and acquisitions, and while working at The Match Factory I was also seeing more visual artists crossing over from installation work into features, like Pipilotti Rist or Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who won the Palme D’Or.” “There’s a lot arthouse fi lm professionals can learn from the art world about private funding and alternative distribution, while artists need to understand the industry psychologies of the fi lm world, which sometimes collide with for example the development and funding practices of the art world,” continues Pausinger. “On the surface, the two worlds look very similar, but the deeper you dig you find they’re quite different.”

Hand-picked

Under the initiative, three CineMart projects by fi lmmakers from the art world are presented at a day-long meeting to a group of hand-picked arts funders and fi lm professionals with an interest in artistic cinema. This year’s selection comprises Egyptian artist Hala Elkoussy’s Cactus Flower, Polish Agnieszka’s Hurray, We’re Still Alive! and British Phil Collins Mr. Sing Sing. After Monday’s meeting, the projects will also be presented at CineMart.

Elkoussy’s Cactus Flower revolves around a struggling actress, a reclusive, bourgeois beauty and a rebellious, street-savvy young woman who are thrown together after their homes and belongings are destroyed by a flash-flood; Polska’s Hurry, We’re Still Alive! follows the last hours in the life of German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Phil Collins’ Mr. Sing Sing is a hybrid fi lm about a maximum security prison in New York State, involving the inmates and a European dance company.

“These three projects are CineMart projects, but we’re interested in finding finance for all aspects of the larger project. The most important criteria is that the fi lmmakers have an established track record in the art world,” says Pausinger.

Case study

New this year is a case study. Emily Morgan at London-based Soda Film + Art (SoFA) – the sister company of UK distributer Soda Pictures – will present Mark Lewis’s Invention, a feature-length, work-in-progress linked to his show of the same name imagining a contemporary world without cinema or other moving images. The project was presented last year at Art:Film while in development.

The feature is described as a “straightforward, messed-up love story set in a contemporary world” on the cusp of inventing cinema.

Artists to have previously presented works at the meeting which is in its third year include Fiona Tan, Rosa Barba, Sven Augustijnen, Mark Lewis, Willie Doherty, Pierre Bismuth (who is currently running a crowdfunding campaign for his fi lm Where is Rocky II), Sergio Caballero and Michelangelo Frammartino. All projects are close to physical production, in post-production or already shot. “We’re building up quite a catalogue,” says Pausinger. “We hope that all these projects got valuable input and some profit from their participation.”

Professionals

Art world professionals attending Monday’s meeting include Charlene Dinhut, the fi lm curator of the Centre Pompidou in France, Margaret Parsons, curator and founder of the fi lm programme at the National Gallery of Art Washington, and Andrea Lissoni, fi lm and international art curator at the Tate Modern in London.

Representatives of the fi lm industry include Natasha Dack of Tigerlily Films, which recently produced Jerusalem-born artist Omer Fast’s debut feature

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

Remainder; industry veterans Keith Griffiths and Simon Field of Illumination Films, and Nadia Turincev of Paris-based Rouge International, which produced A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness.

The presentations will be moderated by Ben Cook, founding director of the international arts agency LUX, and fi lm and arts journalist Erika Balsom.

AUDIENCE AWARD TOP 10

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The Dark Horse Ik ben Alice Loin des hommes Timbuktu Phoenix Turist Charlie’s Country War Book The Golden Era Gluckauf

TIGER ALERT

4.73 4.58 4.52 4.40 4.33 4.32 4.17 4.15 4.14 4.13

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Sign up at www.iffr.com/professionals.

PRESS & INDUSTRY 25/01 10:45 Cinerama 4 29/01 14:00 de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal PUBLIC 27/01 21:30 Pathé 2 28/01 19:15 Pathé 7 29/01 11:30 Cinerama 5 31/01 22:00 Lantarenvenster 5

A FILM BY Isabelle Tollenaere

CONTACT Michigan Films, Olivier Burlet, olivier@michiganfilms.be WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Isabelle Tollenaere A Michigan Films PRODUCTION IN CO-PRODUCTION WITH Witfilm & Tax Shelter Ethique CINEMATOGRAPHY Frédéric Noirhomme SOUND Kwinten Van Laethem EDITING Nico Leunen SOUND DESIGN & MIX Michel Schöpping PRODUCTION MANAGER Marie Géhin PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Fedra Dekeyser POST- PRODUCTION MANAGER Nazima Mintjes DELEGATE CO - PRODUCERS Iris Lammertsma & Boudewijn Koole DELEGATE PRODUCERS Olivier Burlet, Sébastien Andres & Inneke Van Waeyenberghe

FLANDERSIMAGE.COM A Michigan Films production IN CO-PRODUCTION WITH Witfilm and Tax Shelter Ethique WITH THE SUPPORT OF Flanders Audiovisual Fund, The Netherlands Film Fund and The Belgian Federal Government Tax Shelter IN ASSOCIATION WITH Cobra Films and Atopic.

Rockfest

By Nick Cunningham

In Pierre Bismuth’s directorial debut Where is Rocky II (pitched at CineMart Art:Film in 2013, currently “90% complete” and hopeful of an early 2016 festival debut), a rock in the desert becomes something of a needle in a haystack. The premise of the film, part doc/part fiction, is entertaining, if slightly bonkers. Bismuth was fascinated by a late 1970s BBC documentary he saw on America artist Ed Ruscha, who created a fake rock that he placed somewhere in the Californian desert. Ruscha is seen removing the papier-mâché rock (named Rocky) from the desert as it was partly eaten by vermin. So he created

an altogether more robust rock (Rocky II), this time made of resin, which was transported back to the desert.

Bismuth was intrigued, but for years he was the only person who seemed to be aware of this story, and was evermore determined to get to the strange truth, as well as discover the whereabouts of the fake rock. What’s more, Ruscha himself showed no interest in enlightening the filmmaker. So Bismuth set out to solve the mystery of the hidden rock, and to create a groundbreaking film in the process – one that blurs the line between fiction and reality.

Now Bismuth and producer Gregoire Gensollen are looking to raise a final €134,000 ($150,000) of the film’s overall €900k budget through the Indiegogo crowdfunding site. This will pay for the fictional component within the ostensibly documentary film. “If we are to raise this extra $150,000, then we will shoot the fiction part in March/April,” Bismuth points out. “The structure is established but there is a lot of material so we will now edit intensely what we have. This will be finished in September 2015, as the Sundance Institute – which has been extremely supportive – would like to see a pre-cut then; if everything goes as planned the film will be presented at Sundance in 2016.”

In the film, the character of Ruscha himself is as essential a component as the mythical rock. “I realised the rock was the maguffin, the entry point into a work that is much more than an investigation into the rock’s whereabouts,”

Bismuth says of his aim to also provide a cinematic profile of the artist. “I also realised the only way that I could start my film was by confronting Ruscha publicly about this mysterious piece, so I did so when he had a big exhibition at the Hayward in London.” There is a resolution to the mystery, but of course that is under wraps.

Of his 2013 CineMart, experience Bismuth is effusive. “It was great. It was a very convivial environment, but also for me it was a first taste of the film [business] world,” says Bismuth, who won a screenplay Academy Award for his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. “I had never pitched a film before, and at the same time its very challenging, as the people who were dealing with the Art Section had a good understanding of what an artist is doing and understood we don’t have the full package of technical terms and the right language. It was a perfect introduction, and I really enjoyed every minute of it.”

Tiger Shorts Awards Announced At last night’s IFFR Late Night, the winners were announced of the Canon Tiger Awards For Short Films (prize €3,000 and a video camera).

The winners are: Things by Ben Rivers (UK), “ For its exquisite crafting and ambitious approach to the personal and the diaryistic”; La Fievre by Safia Benhaim (France), “For its poetic and human use of images and sounds to engage with complex political histories”; and Greetings to the Ancestors

by Ben Russell (USA/South Africa/UK), “For its complex approach to ethnographic filmmaking, its sensuous psychedelia, its self-reflexive and intricate weaving of voice and landscape.”

Also at the Late Night, the Rotterdam nomination for the EFA was announced. This is Our Body by Dane Komljen (Serbia/Germany), “For its interweaving of the literary and the philosophical, and compelling juxtaposition of the gentle and the abrupt.”

Pascal Schmitz, Public Officer ATFT & Mayenzeke Baza arrive at IFFR

photo: Nadine Maas

South Africa to IFFR

By Nick Cunningham

A delegation of sixteen filmmakers representing new Rotterdam Lab partner ATFT (South Africa) arrived at IFFR Saturday ahead of an intense 4-day period of project pitching and close observation of the workings of the international co-production trade. The stated aim of the institution is “to empower, develop and inspire black individuals, as well as black-owned companies, and grow the South African film, television, animation and transmedia industries,” and aspires to a 200% growth in South African content on local and international platforms, of which 80% is made and sold by black filmmakers and black-owned companies by the end of 2018. Five ATFT filmmakers have been chosen for the Lab, while the rest of the delegation are enjoying CineMart observer status.

“We specifically chose the Rotterdam Lab because of the programmes which focus on emerging producers and filmmakers, and I want to see how we can align our mandate as an association with CineMart,” explained Mayenzeke Baza, Director of Intl. Relations

for ATFT. “It is a very competitive platform, so our producers are here to observe how it works.”

“South Africa is a very good landscape for co-production,” Baza continues, citing the country’s treaties with Germany, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Canada and France. “And we are awaiting signature on a treaty with Brazil. So co-production is important for us. It’s our first time here in Rotterdam.

In the past, we have always gone to markets as an association, like Mipcom, MipTv and the Cannes Marché, but this is a festival with an industry programme, so I think based on the projects on display and the people that are here, my expectation is that our producers will learn a lot. When they go back they will reassess their projects, maybe write new scripts, having hopefully begun to create an international network of other producers and directors that they can work with in the future, and reassess what local and international audiences really want. That is the strategy here.”

Cross Channel Film Lab enhances storytelling

It’s a Wunderful life

By Nick Cunningham

This evening at de Doelen, the five members of Rotterdam-based maverick theatre collective Wunderbaum will present footage from Transition is the Mission, their “unconventional collaboration” with Dutch director Mijke de Jong, who directed the highly controversial Brozer in 2014. The film, which grew out of the stage play The New Forest, has been invited to premiere at IFFR 2016.

In the highly polemical work, the Wunderbaum actors, all of whom enjoy equal status within the group, step away from their thespianism to engage in political and socially-engaged projects. Actor Matijs Jansen explains how in one of the strands the actors set up “a place for negativity,” to show how, in a society that promotes endlessly positivity, life can be “really fucked-up”. Another section rails against the use

of child labour in the manufacture of mobile phone batteries. A third strand involves the development of an app to “professionalise” and connect proponents of city farming. The app will be available in the AppStore to coincide with the film’s release. “We are doing the projects throughout the year, so the border between fiction and reality is almost completely gone.

This is for us a very interesting line to walk.”

Two thirds of the film finances are covered and Wunderbaum personnel are “looking for daredevils who recognise themselves in our story and would like to co-finance bottom-up.” Contributions start at €50 for 1/20th of a scene, and a guarantee of your name in the credits.

Full scene “adoption” gets you a full production day visit to the set.

Today, the Cross Channel Film Lab – an AngloFrench training initiative supported by Creative Europe – launches a new programme focussing on the development of low-to-medium budget feature films utilising VFX and Stereo 3D technologies to enhance storytelling and reach new audiences. Running for six months, from June to November 2015, a core programme will offer 24 Europe-based filmmakers, each with early-stage feature film projects, the chance to engage in a mix of residential workshops and online seminars, masterclasses and specialist consultancy, and to learn more about the intersection of visual technology and screenwriting. A further 24 filmmakers will be offered the chance to participate in CCFL Training’s online-only programme. The

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

programmes are being run in collaboration with Le Groupe Ouest (Brittany, France), Creative England and Falmouth University (Cornwall, UK).

Pproject co-director Mary Davies, who can be found in the Industry Club on the 4th Floor of de Doelen, commented: “This will allow us to extend the range of the Cross Channel Film Lab into Europe beyond the UK and France, where we have been working for the past three years. Now we can reach more filmmakers as we are opening it up to a total of 48 participants. We are very excited that Creative Europe have given us this new opportunity and we are hoping that some of the filmmakers here in Rotterdam will have a look at our website and come along to talk to me if they are interested.” (For info see http://crosschannelfilmlab.com/apply/) NC

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Small town stories

By Mark Baker

“I started the film after receiving a Jerome Foundation grant in 2011,” director Britni West says of the genesis of her debut feature, Tired Moonlight, competing in the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition. “I spent a lot of time in Montana where I grew up, hanging out at my parents’ house, taking long walks and biking. I’ve always found that doing rhythmic activities lulls my mind into a nice empty place where ideas can bounce around – doing this while surrounded by mountains and open space really helped set a very specific tone for the film.”

A free-flowing, associative sojourn in West’s hometown, Kalispell, set mostly during the summer

Jang Jin sweeps in South Korean directing star Jang Jin hits IFFR on Monday. Melanie Goodfellow reports

Popular South Korean director Jang Jin, whose 20-year career is the subject of a Signals retrospective this year, is the guest at an IFFR Critics’ Talk today.

The filmmaker is held in huge affection by South Korean audiences for his satirical comedies but less well known internationally.

“When IFFR 2015 is over, you may well find yourself wondering why you didn’t know Jang Jin before.

Pretty much everyone in South Korea does know Jing Jan,” writes East Asian cinema expert Tony Rayns, who programmed the sidebar and will be moderating the talk.

“He’s the country’s most famous modern playwright and theatre director – and he’s often on television, recently as the mastermind behind the sketch show Saturday Night Live Korea, which more than once caused a national uproar,” he explains.

“Jang Jin is best known for one thing: satire. He doesn’t respect institutions, powerful individuals or dogmas of any kind. He believes endearingly that satirical comedy might change society more effectively than throwing Molotov cocktails,” Rayns adds.

Monday’s Critics’ Talk will be accompanied by a screening of Jang’s satirical 2006 short Someone Grateful, in which he subverts the popular discourse over the suffering of student activists in pro-democracy protests.

The tale, revolving around the interrogation of a student, scandalised the left-wing chattering classes for the way in which it focuses on the suffering of the officer conducting the questioning. It was made as part of a series of films commissioned by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea following the end of military rule in 1993.

The Jang Jin retrospective will continue later on in the day with a screening of the 2005 film Murder, Take One, in which a murder trial involving the death of a woman in a hotel room is staged as a TV show.

Other Jang Jin titles screening in the IFFR selection include Anne Lee’s The Recipe, which Jang Jin produced, and Romantic Heaven, three intersecting tales in which romantic ideals are shattered.

That Gieling feeling

By Nick Cunningham

Tired Moonlight

months, Tired Moonlight was cast from locals she found by posting ads in local papers, on bulletin boards and even pinning up signs in local bars. “It’s funny, I still occasionally get calls from people who had my number back then – there was a while I would get consistent phone calls at two in the morning from people who seemed to just need someone to talk to. I didn’t necessarily reject any of them, but none of these ones ever showed up to the auditions.”

Of those who were cast, local poet Paul Dickinson’s poetry – recited over lingering shots of beautiful Montana landscapes or everyday domestic scenes – adds an extra layer of incisive, bittersweet observation to the film’s lingering exploration of the vicissitudes of small-town living. “I always had Paul Dickinson in mind,” West says. “His poetry sort of becomes a commentary that ties the film together. I liked the idea of this man coming into town and writing poetry about the places he was seeing.”

“Until the film is over I don’t know what to expect,” commented Dutch auteur Ramón Gieling before the world premiere of his Erbarme Dich – Matthäus Passion Stories, screening in IFFR Live. “On paper, it’s beautiful that people all over Europe are able to see the film. For me, it is more important that the film is in Rotterdam, as the festival has a real tradition of cinematic, cinematographic productions, so in that sense I am really very happy to be back here after five years [with Tramontana].”

Erbarme Dich is a complex and multi-layered essay/ documentary/performance during which Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion is played to an audience of homeless who themselves pose within painterly tableaus. In addition, a series of artistic luminaries explain the profound effect the music has on them. “The best films I know are the ones you cannot put into a synopsis. The films of Antonioni – how do you describe them? – a man and a woman are about to divorce and go to a party. La Notte for example. So the truth is, it is hard for me to put Erbarme Dich into a synopsis. You experience the immense quality of the music through these witnesses, these testimonies of people that relate their connection with it, and then there is this artificial, non-existent space [Gieling recreated a church in the studio], so I wanted to take it out of reality in that sense.”

“I am quite cynical, but not when I make films – then I try to be serious,” he continued. “Good music or good literature make you a better human being – it makes you understand the cruel contradiction of life. Life is very cruel – and good art and a good film gives you the

Ramón Gieling

armour to understand how contradictory it can be; we keep forgetting St. Matthew’s Passion is a horrible, cruel story of betrayal about a guy who suffers without knowing why. That is what is happening to all of us.”

Gieling revealed that he is developing two further projects. “One is with San Fu Maltha [of Fu Works]. It is a beautiful love story, also about religion, between a brother and a sister who get to know each other when they are already in their 20s,” he explained. “It is an impossible amour fou which has to end in a mutual

photo: Ruud Jonkers

suicide. This love […] can only exist in death.”

The other he describes as a “kammerspiel” in which three ageing Indonesians meet every five years to celebrate the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima as, for them, the event heralded their liberation from the Japanese. “Every five years they go to a hotel in The Hague and, of course, they all have these traumas they never talk about. On one particular evening these traumas come out and reveal some horrible facts about their past in Indonesia.”

Tiger Release: time to get disruptive Britni West

“I tried to use the personalities of the actors to inform their performances”, West recalls of the process of directing her cast, most of whom had no previous acting experience. “I got to know them all really well, so it wasn’t difficult to discuss intent. And it was a really small crew, which I think made it fairly low-pressure for the cast – if acting for your first time can ever be low-pressure!”

In spite of the film largely eschewing traditional narrative structure, West did write a detailed script before shooting. “I scripted the entire film to give the actors a sense of the story and the direction we were all headed. The script was more narrative-driven than the final product, but the intention was never to stick to it entirely. I had always planned on picking up little moments along the way, and adding in characters as we find them.”

“I am looking forward to seeing how a foreign audience responds to it,” West says ahead of tonight’s international premiere. “It seems like a very specific small-town-America story, but I know if I saw that story set somewhere in Europe, I would be very excited by it.”

Tired Moonlight Hivos Tiger Awards Competition Mon 26 Jan 11:45 PA5 (P&I); Mon 26 Jan 22:00 PA4; Tue 27 Jan 15:45 PA5; Wed 28 Jan 15:45 PA5; Fri 30 Jan 14:30 LV2; Sat 31 Jan 14:30 CI3

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IFFR and Dutch technology company Infostrada will unveil their joint digital distribution initiative Tiger Release at the festival today. By Melanie Goodfellow

How many times have you heard digital distribution championed in industry panels as the future for independent filmmakers? Getting a film on to platforms like iTunes or Amazon Instant Video, however, often proves as difficult and costly a process as a securing a theatrical release – especially for cash-strapped filmmakers who cannot afford the formatting costs.

This is set to change for filmmakers with a title in the IFFR’s 2015 selection. IFFR and Dutch technology company Infostrada will unveil their new initiative Tiger Releases, aimed at taking the pain and upfront costs out of processing a film for a digital release, at the festival on Monday.

“I’m a strong believer that video on demand needs to be for everybody and not just the big studios and majors,otherwisewe’llendupwithaone-waysystem,”says Infostrada CCO Karel van der Flier.

“Disrupt is a strong word, perhaps, but it’s time to disrupt the current status quo and make it easier for small independent filmmakers to show their films digitally,” he adds. Under the initiative, all filmmakers with works at IFFR this year will be offered the opportunity to use Infostrada’s services to format their titles for digital release. They will not have to pay upfront, but rather the costs will be recouped through audience revenues and eventually written off if there are none.

Infostrada is the go-to company in the Netherlands

Limbo

for video encoding, with certifications with iTunes, Netflix, Google Play, Microsoft Xbox, Hulu and Amazon Instant Video, which already works with Dutch VOD platforms Pathé-Thuis, NPO Live and RTL Videoland.

“The complicated part is that every platform has its own formatting rules, or ways of locking content. iTunes, for example, asks that actors are listed with their first name followed by the last name and if you go to Google, it’s the other way round. If you do it wrong they won’t allow you on the platform. There are some some 1,500 bits of metadata for every movie,” says Van der Flier.

“We’ve built a web-based software system which

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

processes metadata and automatically makes the information plugged by the rights-holder compatible with whichever platform it’s destined for,” he adds.

Infostrada will be holding a two-hour seminar on the new initiative at the festival on Monday, at which filmmakers will be invited to sign up for the scheme. This will include a presentation of how to use the Tiger Release platform based on the example of two early signees, Limbo by Anna Sofie Hartmann (screening in Bright Future) and Edmund Yeo’s River of Exploding Durians (screening in Bright Future Premieres).

“Our experience with VOD platforms is that it takes time to build an audience. Nobody is going to get rich any time soon, but it’s a start,” says Van der Flier.

Woman on the moon

Life on Mars

By Harriet Warman

By Tina Poglajen

There is a distinct quality to Ismail Basbeth’s film Another Trip to the Moon. It walks an almost ethereal line between losing itself in the richness of Indonesia’s mythological narratives – poetically shot streams, vast woods and picturesque herbs, spices and colourful fabrics of Southeast Asia – while at the same time subtly mocking it all, playing with the “seriousness of oral lore transmitted from one generation to another, that still holds a prominent place in Indonesia’s culture.” Apart from this, Basbeth comments on the symbolic power of film

“the culture is very patriarchal” as a medium: “It enables us to legitimise our own re-telling of these narratives, even as a joke.”

In an almost camp combination of Indonesian legends, animals are often played by people in costumes instead of actual animals. Featuring them in the film would be difficult to pull off exactly as planned, and expensive too. Instead, Basbeth turned to the rich theatrical heritage of Yogyakarta. “The city has a history of hosting stage performances and plays and is particularly famous for its art scene. I studied filmmaking here, so maybe it became second nature to use several art forms to help me tell the story. That is why on this film, we collaborated with many artists and musicians. I think it works, but I’m curious as to what the audiences are going to say about this.”

Asa, the daughter of a seer, lives in a forest together with her girlfriend to escape her mother’s clutches.

Are stories with such prominent female characters common in Indonesia’s mythological narratives? Not at all, it turns out. “Here in Indonesia, the culture is very patriarchal. There’s not a lot of power given to

women – neither in their personal nor public lives.”

So was switching traditional gender roles a political statement for Basbeth? Yes and no. “I’m definitely a supporter of women’s rights. Let’s respect each other as human beings – the world will be a better place.”

On the other hand, femininity is something specific to his artistic mode of expression, it seems. “I always seem to invest all of my hopes and expectations into female characters. I’m not sure why, but almost every short film I’ve made so far has turned like that. Maybe a part of me is more feminine than I’m aware of.”

“The legends featured in Another Trip to the Moon are well-known to Indonesia’s youth – they will probably notice that I am interpreting them in my own way,” explains Basbeth.

“It would be a great experience for me to watch them watch the film,” he adds. “I am hoping that will happen soon after Rotterdam. I am not sure it will get the chance to have a theatrical release here [in Indonesia], since we have an unfriendly Censor Board, but we will try. Our plan B is to have it screened in film communities and film clubs.”

For his second feature film, director Nicolas Steiner set out to discover people hidden from the world.

Those who have chosen a life away from the cities and communities – and the luxuries therein – that most ordinary folk take for granted. Above and Below documents the lives of Cindy, Rick, and Lalo who live in the flood tunnels below Las Vegas; David, who lives in a reclaimed military bunker in the Californian desert; and April, a geologist living out a red planet expedition simulation for the Mars Society. Though each protagonist seems to be wilfully rejecting a normal life, for Steiner they all represent the will to survive that is natural to all of us, and have created their own kind of ‘normal’ within which to do this: “It’s amazing how fast human beings attach to their surroundings and what the formula of three walls and a ceiling can be.”

What’s striking about Above and Below is how successfully it makes seemingly ignored lives cinematically epic, whilst retaining an intimacy with the protagonists. Shooting wide and employing strategic use of a crane, Steiner and DoP Markus Nestroy convey the scale of the desert, the Mars-like terrain and the Las Vegas skyline in such a way that the individuals who inhabit these mostly forgotten lands, appear heroic in their choice to live apart from the mainstream. For Steiner, this wide scope was essential to the concept of Above and Below, allowing him to visualise the connections between his star-gazing and tunnel-dwelling protagonists.

For the most part however, a looser, more spontaneous approach was needed in order to remain discrete. “We didn’t want to attract too much attention from the ‘outside’ world, because especially in the underground of Las Vegas, we were shooting illegally. We were constantly trespassing.”

Building an intimacy with his subjects was also vital to achieving Steiner’s vision for the film.

Before shooting, he spent months with each protagonist without the film’s crew, which allowed the director to gain their trust and, whilst filming, this effort to respect their lives remained important. “[During the] shooting period, which was over two and a half months, we didn’t shoot that much daily.

Instead, we spent a lot of time with them. Often-

“The true story is sometimes so much harder” times we went down into the tunnels, for example, without any equipment. It was more to hang out and help them: driving around, organizing stuff, collecting bottles, trying to help fix Dave’s RV, etc.

We did what we could to be part of the whole life system within.”

Such respect and empathy for the subject is what makes Above and Below so effective, allowing for moments in which the protagonists reveal the difficulties that have come from their life choices.

For Steiner, this closeness dismantled what he had imagined such hidden lives to involve: “The true story is sometimes so much harder than anything that you could possibly even think of.”

Another Trip to the Moon

Above and Below

Hivos Tiger Awards Competition

Hivos Tiger Awards Competition

Mon 26 Jan 19:15 PA7; Tue 27 Jan 12:15 PA6;

Mon 26 Jan 18:45 PA4; Tue 27 Jan 11:30 DJZ (P&I);

Wed 28 Jan 22:00 PA7; Thu 29 Jan 18:00 LV3;

Tue 27 Jan 12:15 PA2; Wed 28 Jan 21:45 PA2;

Thu 29 Jan 19:30 DWBZ (P&I); Sat 31 Jan 09:15 CI2

Thu 29 Jan 15:00 LV3; Sat 31 Jan 14:15 CI2

CONGRATULATES STRANDED IN CANTON

A CPH:LAB FILM BY MÅNS MÅNSSON

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

OFFICIAL SELECTION

ROTTERDAM IFF 2015

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PRESS & INDUSTRY SCREENINGS 09.00

10.00

11.00

TG Parabellum Lukas Valenta Rinner 09:15 – 10:30

de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal

12.00

EP Made in China Kim Dong-Hoo 11:00 – 12:40

13.00

14.00

15.00

LL Amour fou Jessica Hausner 13:15 – 14:51

16.00

17.00

18.00

TG La obra del siglo Carlos M. Quintela 15:45 – 17:25

19.00

20.00

21.00

22.00

23.00

24.00

TG Vanishing Point Jakrawal Nilthamrong 18:15 – 19:55 TG Norfolk Martin Radich 18:00 – 19:27

de Doelen LantarenVenster 2 Willem Burger Zaal

TG La mujer de

los perros

Laura Citarella/Verónica Llinás 20:00 – 21:35

TG Bridgend Jeppe Rønde 22:00 – 23:39

TG Tired

Pathé 5

Moonlight Britni West 11:45 – 13:03

SP La vie de Jean-Marie Peter van Houten 09:30 – 12:16

Cinerama 2

Cinerama 4

SP The Second

SP The Wolf’s Lair Catarina Mourao 13:00 – 14:45 SP La scuola

Life of Thieves

Cinerama 6

Josh Safdie/Benny Safdie 15:00 – 16:34

Jacopo Quadri 11:30 – 12:57

SH DINAMO P&I Screenings 4 comb. prog.

10:00 – 10:53

MAANDAG 26-01-2015 15:45

de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal Parabellum [wp]

La obra del siglo [wp]

TG

Lukas Valenta Rinner, Argentina/ Austria/Uruguay, 2015, DCP, 75 min, Spanish, e.s.

Drifting effortlessly between raw psychological realism and dreamy surrealism and loaded with unique Cuban archive footage, this film portrays three generations of Cubans. In their apartment in the workers’ quarters at a half-built nuclear power station, they are forced to simply carry on. A fresh voice from, and about, a country in a stalemate.

Vanishing Point [wp]

11:00

Made in China [ep]

TG

Carlos M. Quintela, Argentina/ Cuba/Switzerland/Germany, 2015, DCP, 100 min, Spanish, e.s.

Threatened by the end of the world, a group of Buenos Aires residents receive lessons in survival at a resort in the marshy Tigre delta. The Austrian background of Rinner, who trained in Argentina, shines through in this bitterly comical stylisation of human failings 18:15 when face-to-face with the apocalypse.

EP

•blauw•

A Chinese eel farmer illegally goes to South Korea to fight against its officials, who label his products contaminated and ban them. Written by Kim Ki-Duk, this furious drama and heartbreaking love story examines the dreadful extent to which neighbouring nations go to protect their mindsets, formed by years of propaganda.

Jessica Hausner, Austria/Luxembourg/ Germany, 2014, DCP, 96 min, German

Jakrawal Nilthamrong, Thailand, 2015, DCP, 100 min, Thai, e.s.

de Doelen Willem Burger Zaal

13:15

LL

TG

A serious film about serious, complex issues (including a dramatic car crash), presented in a light, playful way. The film follows two very different men, each of whom changes his life in his own way.

This doesn’t seem to be a direct result of the choices they make. Change can be like that.

Kim Dong-Hoo, South Korea, 2014, DCP, 100 min, Korean, e.s.

Amour fou

SP The Move Marat Sarulu 21:00 – 23:58

WF To the Editor of Amateur Photographer Fowler/Fell 09:30 – 10:38

LantarenVenster 2

09:15

BF Crumbs Miguel Llansó 17:00 – 18:08

What

BF River of Exploding Durians Edmund Yeo 14:00 – 16:08

d’estate

Woo Ming Jin 09:00 – 10:27

SP Heaven Knows

18:00 •blauw•

German poet Heinrich von Kleist proposes committing a double suicide to his lover Henriette Vogel. He truly believes that this act will praise and commemorate their love. Keen on paradoxes, Hausner examines the romantic sensibility and insanity with both rigour and irony, and delivers a visual masterpiece.

Norfolk [wp] Martin Radich, United Kingdom, 2015, DCP, 87 min, English

TG

A father and son live isolated from the outside world. Following a conflict, a painful family story unfolds. Who is in the right and who is wrong remains a mystery, however - also for the audience.

The landscape of Norfolk forms the perfect backdrop to this at times disconcerting but always visually stunning drama.

20:00

La mujer de los perros

TG

Laura Citarella/Verónica Llinás, Argentina, 2015, DCP, 95 min, Spanish, e.s.

La vie de Jean-Marie [wp]

Bridgend [wp]

TG

Jeppe Rønde, Denmark, 2015, DCP, 99 min, English

Over a 5-year period in Bridgend in Wales, 79 people, many of them teenagers, committed suicide without leaving any clue as to why. This is the starting point for Danish Rønde’s feature debut - an atmospheric, at times mysterious social drama. Hannah Murray convinces as the ‘new girl in town’.

Pathé 5

SP

•paars01•

Beautiful, poetic documentary portrait of an aged Dutch pastor who watches over the spiritual life of about 25 villages in the French Pyrenees and does so with an unprecedented vivacity, sincerity and sensitivity for female beauty.

13:00

SP

•paars01•

Catarina Mourão, Portugal, 2015, DCP, 102 min, Portuguese, e.s.

15:00

SP

•paars01•

Josh Safdie/Benny Safdie, USA/France, 2014, DCP, 94 min, English, e.s.

11:45

Tired Moonlight [ip]

TG

Britni West, USA, 2015, Video, 78 min, English

At first sight, small towns are not so different from one another: identical shops and identical pleasures. So Tired Moonlight mainly focuses on the inhabitants. Loosely connected to one another, their dreams and desires are what distinguishes them. Intuitive Americana movie gives an atmospheric impression of a small community.

The junkie subculture of the Upper West Side in New York is still very much alive and that is demonstrated by 19-year-old Arielle Holmes, who surprises as an excellent actress.

17:00

Crumbs [wp]

The Second Life of Thieves [ep]

SP

•paars01•

Woo Ming Jin, Malaysia, 2014, DCP, 87 min, Cantonese/ Mandarin/Malay, e.s.

In a small fishing village in Malaysia, it’s not easy to keep anything hidden. Yet the village chief has kept a great secret throughout his life: he had a relationship with a man who disappeared one day.

The village chief then starts a quest that brings back many events from the past.

BF

•geel•

Miguel Llansó, Spain/Ethiopia/Finland, 2015, DCP, 68 min, Amharic, e.s.

A post-apocalyptic, Surrealist sciencefiction romance from Ethiopia is not something you come across every day.

Sequal to his fascinating short Chigger Ale. Daniel Tadesse again plays the lead.

La scuola d’estate [ip]

SP

•paars01•

Jacopo Quadri, Italy, 2014, DCP, 87 min, Italian, e.s.

Documentary follows the experimental drama course given by the old Italian theatre and opera legend Lucio Ronconi every summer in a remote corner of Umbria, where young, dedicated acting talent rehearse several plays.

Fascinating.

14:00

River of Exploding Durians [ep]

BF

Edmund Yeo, Malaysia, 2014, DCP, 128 min, Mandarin, e.s.

In commercials, Malaysia is heaven on earth. Palm trees, white beaches and clear blue seas. In that same country, an extremely polluting factory has been built on the coast. As a result, the romantic and unpolitical life at a local secondary school changes drastically. A contemporary environmental story.

Cinerama 6 09:30

To the Editor of Amateur Photographer [ip]

LantarenVenster 2

•geel•

10:00

DINAMO P&I Screenings: 4 Combined programme, 47 min

6

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

SH

DINAMO (Distribution Network of Artists’ Moving Image Organizations) distributors show recently acquired work. These titles can also be seen in IFFR’s video library during the festival.

WWW.CBELANGUAGES.NL

Tel: 010-282-7820 / info@cbelanguages.nl

•blauw•

Impressionist journey through the archive of the Leeds Pavilion, which in the 1980s started out as a feminist photo studio. Former members, male and female, give their vision of the studio’s artistic and activist past, the reasons for which are as current as ever.

ENROLL NOW FOR COURSES STARTING APRIL 2015!

CBE Languages Rotterdam

WF

Luke Fowler/Mark Fell, United Kingdom, 2014, DCP, 68 min, English

Develop your language skills in the heart of Rotterdam. . .

20

•paars01•

An old man and his little granddaughter peacefully live in a small village by the river. One day his daughter pushes him to sell the house and move with her to the city. An epic family drama and an outstanding piece of cinema. Minimalist and monumental at once. Nominated for The Big Screen Award.

How was the film?

English & Dutch courses for all levels Cambridge & IELTS exam preparation Fluency courses

SP

Marat Sarulu, Kyrgyzstan, 2014, DCP, 178 min, Kyrgyz, e.s.

11:30

Every family has its secrets, the family of Portuguese filmmaker Mourão included.

As the granddaughter of the well-known writer Tomaz de Figueiredo, she picks apart several of them in an intimate yet universally meaningful way.

Heaven Knows What

The Move

09:00

Peter van Houten, Netherlands, 2015, DCP, 166 min, Dutch/French, e.s.

The Wolf’s Lair [wp]

21:00

Cinerama 4

09:30

Co-director Llinás plays an intriguing, unique character in this existentialist fable about a woman who lives with a pack of dogs on the very edge of the populated world, with minimal contact with other people. The seasons come and go. On life and survival, love and death.

22:00

Cinerama 2

Certified Cambridge ESOL preparation centre

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INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

Anton Damen (hoofdredactie), Radboud de Bree, Sanne de Maijer (eindredactie), Joost Broeren, Tara Lewis, Sietse Meijer, Maricke Nieuwdorp, Nicole Santé, Paul van de Graaf (redactie), Martje van Nes, Jodie de Groot, Anne van de Wetering (marketing en communicatie) English section: Nick Cunningham (editor-in-chief ), Mark Baker (copy and production editor), Melanie Goodfellow (editor),Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, Ruben Demasure, Tina Poglajen, Harriet Warman (trainees), Lot Piscaer (online) Programma informatie: Chris Schouten, Melissa van der Schoor Coördinatie A-Z: Saskia Gravelijn (tekst), Erik Diekstra (beeld) Fotografie: Felix Kalkman (coördinatie), Bram Belloni, Bas Czerwinski, Corinne de Korver, Nichon Glerum, Ruud Jonkers, Nadine Maas, Marije van Woerden Vormgeving: Sjoukje van Gool, Pascal Tieman, Gerald Zevenboom Drukker: Veenman+ Acquisitie: Daily Productions Oplage: 10.000 per dag

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