Daily Tiger #6 (English)

DAILY TIGER 44th International Film Festival Rotterdam #6 Tuesday 27 January 2015

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Garai to play Vita Parabellum Expert panel report Koen Mortier

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La Obra del Siglo Vanishing Point

ENGLISH EDITION

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Amour Fou projects Wilson Sisters Simon Pummell Rachel Dargavel

Last night EYE International hosted a dinner to say farewell to Claudia Landsberger, outgoing head of EYE International, and to welcome in her successor Marten Rabarts, formerly of the Binger and NFDC (India). Rabarts commented to the Daily Tiger: “This is a farewell to Claudia for all the years of amazing work she has done for Dutch film. The dinner tonight is really very much about recognising everything she has done in building up Holland Film, now EYE International. I am very proud to step into her shoes. EYE International is an up-and-running and very functioning part of the Dutch film infrastructure, so I am off to a running start with everything that has been put into place by Claudia and EYE itself. I am very much looking forward to taking over the baton and running with it.” photo: Ruud Jonkers

Europe to the World The idea for Creative Europe to give serious financial support to five leading European co-pro funds, each dedicated to the support and development of cinema from emerging countries, was neither top-down nor bottom-up. It was a happy meeting of minds, albeit one that has taken the past two years to rubber-stamp. By Nick Cunningham

Pan-continental

This new European support for European minority co-pro involvement within non-European projects amounts to €1.5 million per year and is split more or less equally between IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund, the IDFA Bertha Fund, the Sarajevo City of Film Fund, Berlin’s World Cinema Fund Europe and Eurimages.

At today’s Creative Europe Media Conference, funders and producers alike will thrash out the finer details of co-producing beyond Europe’s borders, present case studies of successful past collaborations and offer networking opportunities with the great and the good from the sector. Each of the chosen funds will

IFFR LATE NIGHT

Tonight, three guests will be joining Tom Barman for IFFR Late Night: Adam Curtis, documentary maker and director of Bitter Lake; Nicolas Steiner, director of Tiger Awards competitor Above and Below, and Peter Hoogendoorn, whose Tussen 10 en 12 (Between 10 and 12) screens in the new Limelight section. Music will be by John Gürtler, composer of Above and Below: live magic with a tenor saxophone and an FX and loop station!

be given the opportunity to present their credentials, while Creative Europe’s Dag Asbjørnsen will explain pan-continental collaboration from an EC perspective.

Innovative

“Creative Europe incorporates an earlier programme called Media Mundus, the main point of which was to reach beyond Europe,” points out Asbjørnsen.

“There were a lot of support schemes for training, for markets, for distribution, but when Creative Europe was launched we devised a new support scheme for co-productions, which was innovative as we had never given any support to co-productions before. And why did we do that? Because we think that the best way to reach beyond Europe is to try to help create artistic and professional co-operation.”

It is not so common for the EC to hand out monies to institutions that will in turn pass it on to deserving causes. So why not hand out the €1.5 million directly, themselves? “We could see that we have a lot of good existing funds in Europe and they have been doing this for years. They know the markets and they know the co-producers, so we wanted to use them to administer this support.”

Cash injection

With the new cash injection, the Hubert Bals Fund will support four fi lms a year with a minority co-pro

grant of €55,000, paid to a European producer. In addition, the Fund will support the European and non-European distribution of four fi lms to the tune of €20,000 each. “Europe can bring a lot of things to these co-productions in terms of facilities, funding, resources, and audiences, and for these European producers it is also a great way to get new experiences and work on fi lms that are very different from those being made in Europe. Co-production shows new ways of making fi lms and broadening a network. It’s a great learning experience,” says Hubert Bals Fund Manager Iwana Chronis.

Additional reach

Attendees will hear about two successful case-studies: the multi-award-winning The Lunchbox (Ritesh Batra, India, 2013), represented by producer Cedomir Kolar (A.S.A.P. Films, France) and El Cinco (Adrián Biniez, Argentina, 2014), represented by producers Fernando Epstein (Mutante Cine, Uruguay), Frans van Gestel (Topkapi Films, the Netherlands) as well as the director himself. “The Lunchbox was at CineMart and was co-produced by many countries including France and Germany, so It will be really interesting to hear from Cedomir Kolar as to how and why the collaboration between Europe and India contributed to the fi lm’s success,” says Chronis.

The additional reach of HBF’s European co-pro offer will also have beneficial knock-on effects for CineMart. “It will be interesting to see how the Fund and CineMart can further strengthen each other even more because of these new co-productions,” Chronis continues.

Feedback

As for Asbjørnsen, when he is not presenting on stage he will be in the audience, determined to understand at first hand the effects Creative Europe’s policies are having on the industry he serves. “The real role of the EC in all this is to look at the guidelines and look at

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

the system. Do we need to change it? Can we adjust it a little bit? Do we get the right projects? Are we happy?

Are we not? If we need to change something, then we must prepare more than one year in advance, so it is very important to listen to people and to listen to the experiences of the real projects, to be at fi lm festivals where you get feedback and not just sit in Brussels having a theory about how things work.”

AUDIENCE AWARD TOP 10

Loin des hommes

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The Dark Horse Ik ben Alice Loin des hommes The Farewell Party Mobilisierung der Träume Timbuktu Atlantic.

Phoenix Turist Gluckauf

TIGER ALERT

4.76 4.58 4.52 4.50 4.43 4.40 4.36 4.33 4.32 4.30

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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.

Garai to play Vita Evangelo Kioussis, UK producer of Sacha Polak’s English-language CineMart project Vita & Virginia, confirmed yesterday that Brit actress Romola Garai (Atonement) has been signed up to play

Vita Sackville-West, author and lover of novelist Virginia Woolf. The film is co-produced with Dutch production outfit Viking Film. Polak’s Zurich world-premieres next month in Berlinale Forum. NC

Work should be seen Expert panel: Short film and artists’ moving images in the media

By Tina Poglajen

Saturday’s discussion of short narrative and experimental films tackled the lack of attention given to these by mainstream media. In an expert panel moderated by Sacha Bronwasser, critics Erika Balsom and Jan Pieter Ekker, curator Emilie Bujes and filmmaker Basim Magby discussed ways to attract serious criticism as well as public attention.

Ekker, a freelance film critic and FIPRESCI jury member at this year’s IFFR, argued that writing about films of his own choice under the pressure of reaching a wide readership is possible as long as you “know how to pick your battles”; he combines lesser-known artists with bigger names and finds interesting angles to tell his stories. He stressed the fact that, although some might see his subjects as ‘difficult’, he writes for the general public. Balsom, a film critic from an academic background, agreed. “It’s the critic’s responsibility to contextualise the work, not the reader’s,” she asserted.

Both she and Bujes noted the marginalised position of short films in art discourse, as well as in specialised

film magazines. “It’s a slow, ongoing process,” explained Bujes when asked how to draw attention to film in an art context. It’s important to be inventive, attracting the right people and – just spreading the word.”

In general, the panellists as well as the audience agreed that an important thing to take into account is the ever-changing media landscape. Magby sees art as a way of articulating ideas that should not be limited to a narrow circle of people. His films are accessible online; this way, his work reaches a different, younger audience, that is less likely to be found in art galleries.

“There’ll always be internet,” he said. Despite taking away some of their work by making screenings at film festivals and exhibitions less exclusive, and even despite the sometimes less-than-ideal viewing conditions, all panellists agreed that they still see new technologies as positive. The festivals and the function of curator are important because they highlight, as well as premiering films; but wider access “advances the idea,” concluded Bujes. “Work should be seen.”

The Netherlands Film Fund, the Netherlands Film Commission and EYE International stand, located on the 3rd floor of de Doelen. Film Commissioner Bas van der Ree (standing, centre with Film Fund director Doreen Boonekamp) told the Daily Tiger: “There are a range of benefits to working with Dutch film professionals or shooting and post-producing here. Foreign producers can, for instance, benefit from the 30% cash rebate at the Netherlands Film Fund. It’s a very simple and effective way of financing projects. Together with EYE International, we want to explain all the possibilities to foreign producers. We are keen on making things happen, so photo: Felix Kalkman please come and visit us.”

KoenMortier & EurydiceGysel

Survival instinct Austrian, Buenos Aires-based Lukas Valenta Rinner’s debut feature Parabellum revolves around a group of middle-class city-dwellers who sign up for a survivalist training camp in Argentina’s Tigre Delta amid fears that the end of the world is nigh. By Melanie Goodfellow

Inspiration for the film came from media coverage in 2012 of people attending survival camps amid fears the end of the world was approaching due to the end of the Mayan Calendar. “To me, this hysteria almost seemed like a wish to escape our daily lives and routines. On top of this, the preparation camps for the ‘end of the world’ appeared to be an almost ‘touristic’ experience for some people, which seemed utterly bizarre to me,” says Rinner.

“What inspired me further was the unique landscape of the Tigre Delta, which lies 40 minutes outside of Buenos Aires. When I first saw the abandoned islands and canals, I immediately envisioned a group of tourists roaming around there in order to survive,” he explains.

The picture features respected Argentine actors Pablo Seijo and Eva Bianco – both of whom were happy to appear in the budget picture. On signing Bianco, he says: “We were straightforward with her regarding the limited budget of the film. She told us: ‘I make films I’m interested in, not because someone pays me’.”

Even though the plot has undertones of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, Rinner says his film is very different. “While both films have an ‘end of the world’

theme, they are almost contrary to one another. Lars von Trier highlights very well his characters and puts lots of focus on the individual. Parabellum, on the other hand, focuses on raw primal instincts of a group and how that group behaves in an unfamiliar environment,” explains Rinner.

The Austrian-born director studied film at Buenos Aires’s prestigious Universidad del Cine, which numbers Pablo Trapero, Damian Szifron and Lisandro Alonso among its alumni, and ended up making the Argentine capital his home. In 2012, he founded the Nabis Filmgroup alongside a number of his contemporaries at the school with the aim of producing auteur films from across Latin America.

His previous works include A Letter to Fukuyama, about the abduction of a young woman from a wealthy neighbourhood by a stranger, and he is now working on a film set in a remote nudist swingers’ club in the province of Buenos Aires.

Parabellum Hivos Tiger Awards Competition Tue 27 Jan 18:45 PA4; Wed 28 Jan 12:15 PA2; Thu 29 Jan 09:30 LV2; Thu 29 Jan 17:30 DWBZ (P&I); Fri 30 Jan 12:30 PA4; CI3 Sat 31 Jan 16:45

photo: Nadine Maas

Aïssa for Mortier’s Angel

By Melanie Goodfellow

Flemish director Koen Mortier is hoping to work with Senegalese-French actress Aïssa Maïga on his next film Angel, revolving around a prostitute caught up in the mysterious death of a famous cyclist.

The French-language, Senegal-set project, which Mortier is presenting at CineMart alongside producer Eurydice Gysel of Brussels-based Czar Film, is the filmmaker’s most ambitious production to date.

Maïga, who is best known internationally for her role in Abderrahmane Sissako’s 2006 film Bamako and was seen most recently in the comedy Anything for Alice, has agreed in principle to star in the film.

The production marks something of a departure in terms of tone, protagonist and genre for Mortier, after his gritty Belgian dramas Ex Drummer and 22nd of May. The screenplay is based on the novel Monologue of Somebody Who Talked to Himself, which in turn is inspired by the mysterious death of cyclist Frank Vandenbroucke in Senegal in 2009. “It’s a very small book about the final six hours of this famous cyclist seen through the eyes of a prostitute. I thought it was an incredible point of view,” says Mortier. “You get a lot of political, social and economic baggage with her voice.”

Mortier admits it was difficult for him to initially get

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

his head round the voice of the female protagonist in the film. “It’s the first time I’ve done a film with a female central character. I was struggling with it a bit, but when I was on my fourth version of the script I went to Senegal to take pictures and during that time I met some prostitutes. One of them was a 24-year-old girl with a strange story – a Muslim with a druggie boyfriend who worked on the streets for him. She had a strong voice and I kind of used her voice for the female character,” he says.

Maïga has been helping Mortier and Gysel out with contacts for shooting in her native country. “We haven’t shot in Senegal before. Most the crew will be from Belgium, including Benoït Debie,” says Gysel, referring to the respected Belgian cinematographer whose credits include Irreversible and Spring Breakers.

“There will be 35 days in Senegal and five days in Belgium or France,” she adds. “The aim is to shoot at the end of 2015 or early 2016.”

Mortier and Gysel are at CineMart looking for French distributors and a sales agent. They have already signed two co-production partners – French Tobina Films and French-speaking Belgian Anonymes Films – and secured backing from Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) and the regional fund of the Loire in France.

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Inherent Vices

By Oris Aigbokhaevbolo

Half-life

By Ruben Demasure

On the site of a never-completed power plant in Cuba, a son’s return electrifies the relationship with his workless father and his bitter grandfather. With great chemistry going on between them, these three

“that place was never really born and never died” generations of Cubans form a bruised bunch, all forced to live together – an existence marked by the absence of women. The real protagonist of La Obra del Siglo (The Project of the Century) however is possibly the place where the story is rooted. Electro-Nuclear City (ENC) is a little-known construction site where the Soviets once planned to build the first nuclear power station on Cuban soil. However, this ‘project of the century’ (hence the English title), was never completed due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Cuban filmmaker Carlos M. Quintela, in competition with his second feature, interlaces the situation of the former construction workers, who have stayed behind in the temporary housing units, with archival footage of the project.

With its dome standing out, the plant is almost more reminiscent of the Taj Mahal than a structure that could actually belong in the Cuban environment. Quintela describes the place as a ghost town.

“Because of the abandonment of the project, that place was never really born and never died; it’s a little bit dead and a little bit alive at the same time.”

The film draws parallels between the alien place created by this strange endeavor and space travel. The Communist utopia connects to the cosmic utopia. For Quintela, going into space is the ultimate utopia. “Just as is the case with the three alpha-males living together, it’s a matter of machismo, a matter of size. All of the time Cuba is trying to show to the world that it has size, a little island that pretends to do something bigger.”

Not without a sense of humor, metaphysical elements provide the story with a sprinkling of stardust. For Quintela, the illogical or unreal events that happen in the film correspond to the strangeness of the place. He describes them as “errors in the system”. A straightforward rendering of the place and its streets would make its failure too obvious. “I’m interested in the human matter”, Quintela notes.

A key role is reserved for the grandfather’s goldfish, Benjamin. It is remarked in the film that these animals only have a memory of fifteen seconds. This would be a great asset for the humans living there.

This ghost town, which the involved nations want to forget, remains haunted by the past, as shown in the interwoven color archival footage. Gorgeously shot in black and white, Quintela considers this contemporary place simply impossible to imagine in color, everything is gray. Surviving in their rectangular container, the inhabitants are like fish out of water.

At some point in Jakrawal Nilthamrong’s Vanishing Point, one of two men whose lives are partially depicted narrates a story relayed to him by a friend.

Sometime after border guards and ‘terrorists’ agree to a truce, the friend – himself a border guard – finds himself picking eggplants from the same tree as a ‘terrorist’. They stare at one another then leave. A few days later, they return and exchange ‘porn books’.

On one level, this story typifies the possibility of masculine camaraderie stimulated by the bodies of women. It also signifies the similarities between people who on the surface are different. Nilthamrong’s second feature is concerned mostly with the latter notion.

But before this theme is pursued, an autobiographical moment opens the film, as photos of an accident involving the director’s parents appear onscreen as though part of a character’s collection of photos.

Nilthamrong’s mother survived the crash. His father wasn’t so lucky. Disabled and unable to progress in the military, Nilthamrong says, “his future stopped there.”

A sad event, yet some morbid comedy ensues.

Laughing, the director recalls that, when he was five, someone put clippings of the crash as reported in the papers in his room. For years, he woke up to the image. A drawing of one of the clipping is used on Vanishing Point’s poster. His mother saw it recently and remarked, “that looks familiar...”.

Although rich, that history is tangential to the film.

Vanishing Point relates parallel stories about two men from different generations, both unnamed and apparently dissimilar, but flawed in the same way. The younger man, introduced at a crime scene, is clearly an idealist, his belief in probity so strong that his insistence on due process leads the police to

“People in my generation – what do they want to be?” demand he step away. Later, he is seen patronising a prostitute – so this epitome of rightness is himself far from righteous. The older man is a factory owner. A dour man disconnected from his family, he springs into talkative sentience in the presence of his mistress. By the end of the film, we realise that both lives may or may not be connected by the film’s opening scene.

So how did Nilthamrong come to inhabit the mind of a much older character? “It is projection,” he says.

The character was borne of age-related pondering: “People in my generation – what do they want to be?” And so Vanishing Point exists as documentation, examination and self-projection, thinly disguised as deflection.

La Obra del Siglo / The Project of the Century

Vanishing Point

Hivos Tiger Awards Competition

Hivos Tiger Awards Competition

Mon 26 Jan 15:45 DJZ (P&I); Tue 27 Jan 21:45 PA7;

Mon 26 Jan 18:15 DJZ (P&I); Tue 27 Jan 22:00 PA4;

Wed 28 Jan 15:30 PA4; Thu 29 Jan 12:30 DWBZ (P&I);

Wed 28 Jan 13:30 DWBZ (P&I); Wed 28 Jan 15:15 PA6;

Thu 29 Jan 19:15 PA3; Fri 30 Jan 15:30 PA3; Sat 31 Jan 14:15 CI5

Thu 29 Jan 12:15 PA2; Fri 30 Jan 22:00 LV3; Sat 31 Jan 22:00 CI3

CONGRATULATES

SEJLA KAMERIC & ANOCHA SUWICHAKORNPONG ON SELECTION OF THEIR CPH:LAB FILM

THURSDAY

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INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

OFFICIAL SELECTION

ROTTERDAM IFF 2015

articles supplied by

Jelinek Double for Amour Fou

By Geoffrey Macnab

projects are likely to shoot in 2016. In the meantime, the company (one of the producers of Jessica Hausner’s Cannes hit Amour Fou as well as of Karlovy Vary winner The Notebook and of The Casanova Variations starring John Malkovich) is pushing ahead with some of its most ambitious projects yet.

Virgil Widrich’s €6.6 million The Night of a Thousand Hours is fully financed and shortly to shoot. Casting will be announced during the Berlinale. The film has been scripted by Widrich together with legendary screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière (best known for his work with Luis Buñuel). The cinematographer is Christian Berger (who shot Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon). It is about a young man who takes over the family business. The moment he does so, his

Wilson sisters at IFFR

Fou, is herself to direct an ambitious new film, 1313 – Dante’s Emperor. She will produce alongside Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu. The film imagines a meeting between Luxembourg monarch Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor, and the poet Dante Alighieri.

After living under the earth for 700 years, Henry VII returns to the present day to find out what happened to his kingdom – and re-encounters his old friend Dante.

Crybaby Pictures plans project with The Bureau, Steel Mill Pictures

By Wendy Mitchell

Undead Sun

a documentary made by Soviet filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko on the Chernobyl disaster. Shevchenko was filming in Chernobyl immediately after the nuclear accident of 1986 and the camera he used became so toxic and radioactive it had to be buried.

The sisters are now hard at work on their current project, History is Now: Seven Artists Take on Britain. This is a new show at London’s Hayward Gallery (opening February 10) that they are co-curating. The idea behind the exhibition is to look at the cultural history of the UK over the last 50 years in advance of this year’s General Election in Britain. John Akomfrah, Simon Fujiwara, Roger Hiorns, Hannah Starkey, Richard Wentworth are the other artists curating.

Jane and Louise have been working together since childhood. Many critics have pointed to their near telepathic rapport with one another “We were always painting, drawing or creating together,” says Louise.

“We spent a lot of time at our grandmother’s house.

She didn’t have a TV. I think we were really encouraged to create – to draw, paint and make our own entertainment. When we went to separate art colleges, we found we were working on the same work, almost.”

Rachel Dargavel’s Crybaby Pictures, a newly launched UK production outfit, arrives in Rotterdam with its first feature Norfolk in the Tiger Competition.

Martin Radich’s tense father-son story is part of Creative England’s iFeatures programme, and is produced by Dargavel alongside Finlay Pretsell of SDI Productions.

Dargavel now has an active slate of projects in development for Crybaby, which is based in both London and Nottingham.

Only You, with The Bureau, will mark the anticipated feature debut of writer-director Harry Wootliff. The film is now casting and finalising its finance. The love story is about a couple who have a whirlwind romance, but cracks start to show in the relationship when they try to have a baby and can’t conceive.

Dargavel says references for that film include Blue Valentine or Blue is the Warmest Colour.

Sleeping Dogs, written by Adam

Dewer, a gangster tale set in London’s Isle of Dogs. The story follows a man who is released from prison after 40 years behind bars, seeking revenge on the people who actually committed the crime he was accused of. Steel Mill Pictures is also on board.

A Place To Bury Strangers, also with The Bureau and written by Al Mackay. The psychological thriller is set in the south of France, about a young English couple going to work on an organic farm, where they have romantic upheavals and murderous histories are uncovered.

Dargavel has previously worked on several films with Ken Marshall and Paul Andrew Williams’ Steel Mill Pictures, including co-producing Song For Marion and line producing Cherry Tree Lane. With Tristan Goligher at The Bureau, she has also line produced Berlinale Competition title 45 Years, directed by Andrew Haigh.

Neuromancer BAFTA-winning British director Simon Pummell is preparing a new film based on Dogfight, a short story by cult sci-fi writer William Gibson (co-written with Michael Swanwick), to be made with his regular producing partner Janine Marmot of Londonbased Hot Property Films. Geoffrey Macnab reports

“It is a film about gambling,” Pummell explains.

“When I talked to William Gibson about it, he said it was a riff on The Hustler. The backbone of the film is the idea that every idea of improvement, quality and happiness in our life can be accounted for in money.”

Pummell, who is scripting Dog fight, is currently putting the finishing touches to his new feature Brand New-U. The futuristic psychological thriller, sold internationally by The Match Factory, is in advanced post-production and will be ready by March.

The film follows 33-year-old Slater, who obsessively chases Nadia, the love of his life. When she suddenly disappears, Slater wants to report her missing, but realizes he knows nothing about her. The only clue he has is Brand New-U, a shadowy organization that deals in new personalities. The film has music by Roger Goula and stars Nick Blood and Nora-Jane Noone.

Dreams Rewired

Norfolk producer readies full slate of new projects

Turner Prize-nominated artists The Wilson Sisters, Louise Wilson and Jane Wilson, were in Rotterdam this weekend for the international premiere of their new piece Undead Sun. Geoffrey Macnab reports

Undead Sun sees the Newcastle-born sisters investigating the uses of disguise and camouflage in war. They regard the film as a natural successor to their 2011 work, Face Scripting: What Did the Building See. This was about the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh by Mossad agents in a Dubai hotel. “It was looking at CCTV and looking at covert imagery,” Jane Wilson says of a film which explores how contemporary warfare has moved from old-fashioned battlefields into the luxurious confines of a modern, upmarket hotel. “What we were thinking about was how technology has developed through facial recognition and through use of CCTV.” When World War I started, the sisters note, there were still soldiers on horseback. By 1918, there were tanks, aerial warfare and surveillance – and early precursors of today’s “drone” technology. In Undead Sun, the sisters explore the use of “dazzle” camouflage, used in World War I to confuse enemy ships – but modern variations are used to get round CCTV surveillance. Jane Wilson points out that uses of decoys and simulation – common techniques in warfare – are part of an artist’s “dialogue” too.

The Wilsons’ work often deals with dark, disturbing subject matter drawn from recent historical events.

For their 2011 piece The Toxic Camera (which screened at Rotterdam in 2013), they explored the story behind

deceased relatives from years ago suddenly appear, wearing the clothes they had on the day the died, and start interfering in his life. It is billed as a “madcap tragicomedy about acknowledging the past and atoning for it.”

Amour Fou Vienna and Amour Fou Luxembourg are collaborating on the project with Key Film from the Netherlands. The project has support from Filmfund Luxembourg, Austrian Film Institute and broadcaster ORF, as well as from the Netherlands Film Fund and Eurimages.

Another Amour Fou project shortly to shoot is Egon Schiele, writer-director Dieter Berner’s biopic following tormented artist Egon Schiele as a young man.

Bady Minck, producer and co-founder of Amour

Brand New-U features complex special effects. These are being done by Dutch company Raamw3rk. The project has been put together as a UK-Dutch-Irish co-production. Other partners are Rinkel in the Netherlands, SP Films in Ireland and the film has been made in association with Illuminations Films. Brand New-U is backed by the BFI Film Fund, the Irish Film Board, the Netherlands Film Fund and Finite Films.

Following on from Pummell’s experimental Bodysong (a BAFTA winner in 2004) and the director’s essayistic 2011 feature Shock Head Soul (which played at the Venice Festival), Brand New-U is the “first pure drama film” he has made. “This film takes certain tropes from science-fiction films and from thrillers,” Pummell says. Speaking at IFFR, the Dutch-based director described it as having “Hitchcockian” themes. “What Brand New-U is trying to look at is

how you can use science fiction tropes and language to talk about a genuine form of social realism,” the writer-director states. Pummell points out that in today’s digital age, the boundaries between sci-fi and social realism are beginning to collapse. The film, he adds, is “trying to capture the flavour of what it is to live in this very networked world where our identities are all very provisional and we all feel we can improve ourselves, rematch and re-invent ourselves.”

Dog fight will be similarly themed. The director also has another new project in development. The working title is Immortality Death Trip. It is being scripted by New York-based writer David Rice. “It’s a horror movie. I guess you could say it is an exploration of the consequences of immortality,” Pummell says. “It is immortality – maybe not as living forever, but dying over and over.”

The film, also being made through Hot Property, is about a young couple who going on “a killing binge, essentially of each other … in a way, it is a sexual relationship through murder. They move through a number of cities, almost a road trip.”

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

“I’m still in cahoots with the guys at Steel Mill but I wanted somewhere to call my own,” Dargavel tells Screen at Rotterdam. “It made sense to me to produce my own slate of projects … it’s standing on my own two feet but also capitalizing on the relationships I have built over the years.”

Dargavel describes Crybaby as something of a collective, also including writers Al Mackay, Ed Hime and Adam Dewer, producer Anna Griffin, and script reader Kate O’Hara. “We all try to read everything and feed into each other’s projects,” she adds.

She wants Crybaby to work on films that are audience-friendly while also having an artistic bent.

She points to films like Martha Marcy May Marlene and Animal Kingdom as being in the same vein of “commercial films that tread an arthouse line … in the UK, it’s nice to have more films that have commercial interests but retain that Britishness.”

photo: Bram Belloni

The Vienna and Luxembourg-based production outfit Amour Fou co-founded by Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu and Bady Minck, in Rotterdam for the world premiere of its new film Dreams Rewired narrated by Tilda Swinton, is in development on two projects with Nobel prize-winning Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek.

One is La Belle Dormeuse (The Beautiful Woman Sleeping). This will be directed by Ulrike Ottinger. It is described by the producers as “a modern feminist vampire story.” The second is Die Liebhaberinnen (Women as Lovers) will be directed by newcomer Caroline Kox. It is adapted from Jelinek’s 1975 novel of the same name. Amour Fou is already producing Casting a Woman, a short film by Kox. The Jelinek

Simon Pummell

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PRESS & INDUSTRY SCREENINGS 09.00

10.00

11.00

de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal

LL The Sky Above Us Marinus Groothof 09:15 – 10:45

de Doelen Willem Burger Zaal

TG Impressions of

12.00

14.00

15.00

16.00

BF A Matter of

17.00

Interpretation Lee Kwang-Kuk 14:15 – 15:54

a Drowned Man

19.00

TG Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) Juan Daniel F. Molero 17:30 – 19:13

Taiwan New Cinema

Kyros Papavassiliou 09:15 – 10:37

18.00

20.00

21.00

22.00

24.00

Chinlin Hsieh 14:00 – 15:49

TG Gluckauf Remy van Heugten 20:00 – 21:42

SP Key House Mirror Michael Noer 22:30 – 24:00

TG Haruko’s Paranormal Laboratory Lisa Takeba 12:30 – 13:46 BF Erdos Rider Wang Haolin 09:30 – 10:56

Cinerama 2

ML Room

Tone

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While NATO has been bombing military and civilian targets for months in 1999, three inhabitants of Belgrade attempt to lead a more or less normal life in spite of all the death around them. The city itself is not only a backdrop but also a protagonist in this story of fear, love, loyalty and the madness of war.

11:30

Above and Below [ip]

TG

Nicolas Steiner, Switzerland/Germany, 2015, DCP, 120 min, English, e.s.

A couple who live in an underground tunnel in Las Vegas. A lonely guy who survives in the Californian desert. A girl who seriously plans to move to Mars.

All of them are inhabitants of today’s world, both apocalyptic and brand-new.

A mind-blowing and super-cinematic exploration of contemporary existence.

14:15

A Matter of Interpretation [ip]

BF

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In his playful and humorous second film, Lee demonstrates his narrative talent, if only by not getting lost when he allows his characters to interpret each other’s dreams. Once again, we can describe the former assistant to Hong Sang-soo as his sorcerer’s apprentice.

Nominated for The Big Screen Award.

RG

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17:30

Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) [wp]

LL

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James Napier Robertson, New Zealand, 2014, DCP, 124 min, English

Highly praised drama from New Zealand telling the true, impressive story of Genesis Potini, who fought for the future of disadvantaged children until his death in 2011. In spite of his own bipolar disorder, he taught them to play chess and fight for opportunities. Amusing and raw, and above all intensely moving.

de Doelen Willem Burger Zaal

TG

Juan Daniel F. Molero, Peru, 2015, DCP, 103 min, Spanish, e.s.

Internet cafés and slackers, not-soinnocent schoolgirls and amateur porn using Google Glass, Mayans and the end of the world, acid trips and guinea pigs as extras in an exorcism: things in Lima, the Peruvian capital, are pretty similar to contemporary reality, virtual or otherwise, in the rest of the world.

Gluckauf [wp]

TG

Remy van Heugten, Netherlands, 2015, DCP, 102 min, Dutch, e.s.

A powerful father-son drama plays out in the ignored, impoverished Dutch province of South Limburg, which offers no opportunity for escape. Neither for the characters, who carry on an unequal struggle against their social conditions, nor for the audience. Gluckauf’s chokehold is much too firm for that.

22:30

SP

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Michael Noer, Denmark, 2015, DCP, 90 min, Danish, e.s.

An old woman (a wonderful Gita Nørby) in the autumn of her life falls in love with a man who is not her husband.

This time, the director of realistic dramas about the seamy side of Danish society (R., Northwest) doesn’t show any violence or wrongs, but maintains his gripping and honest gaze. Nominated for The Big Screen Award

Pathé 5

TG

Kyros Papavassiliou, Cyprus/Greece/ Slovenia, 2015, DCP, 82 min, Greek, e.s.

A man who doesn’t know who he is meets his former love. She tells him he is a famous poet, Kostas Karyotakis, who killed himself in 1928. Every year he returns on the anniversary of his death.

A day that has taken place many, many times before plays out again. Will Kostas again make the same decisions?

Haruko’s Paranormal Laboratory [wp] Lisa Takeba, Japan, 2015, Video, 76 min, Japanese, e.s.

Wang Haolin, China, 2014, DCP, 86 min, Mongolian/Mandarin, e.s.

Three stories and about love, fate, misunderstanding, desire and birthplace linked together by ingenious details.

From the plains of in Mongolia to a hotel room in Beijing and back. A beautiful fiction debut by the maker of the award-winning The Land.

11:45

Fashion House Marga Weimans [wp]

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Bob Visser/Maria Visser, Netherlands, 2015, Video, 53 min, Dutch, e.s.

Candid, inspirational portrait of Marga Weimans, one of the most interesting contemporary fashion designers in the Netherlands. For a year, this creative multi-talent is followed as she scales the heights of the fashion and art worlds, as well as on a trip to the interior of Surinam in search of her roots. Where do her drive, inspiration and philosophy come from?

13:30

Sam Klemke’s Time Machine [ep]

BF

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Matthew Bate, Australia, 2015, DCP, 94 min, English, e.s.

Since 1977, Sam Klemke has been recording himself on film, the #selfieavantlalettre. In that same year, NASA launched the Voyager with the Golden Record. Whereas NASA primarily sketches a positive picture of humanity, Klemke’s honest self portraits zoom in on the individual. A special film about time, memory and what it means to be human.

16:15

Landscape with Many Moons [ip]

RR

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Jaan Toomik, Estonia, 2014, DCP, 90 min, Estonian, e.s.

A man loses whatever grip he still has on reality as his relationship collapses.

Daily life seems ever more unreal while brief flashes promise a different existence - but what is different anyway? A breezy-freezy comedy of merry despair.

TG

The craziness of our times, depicted through old television shows. Haruko is a girl who prefers to cuddle up to her old-fashioned TV set. In this wondrous story, a television can transform into a man: and this is by no means the end of the strange cheerfulness. A masterpiece of the imagination.

Things of the Aimless Wanderer [ep] Kivu Ruhorahoza, Rwanda/United Kingdom, 2015, DCP, 78 min, English/Kinyarwanda, e.s.

12:45

ML

Kosmos

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ML

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Eyad Aljarod/Aliaa Khachouk, Syria/Canada, 2015, Video, 55 min, Arabic, e.s.

Lovers’ Notebooks takes you on the night-time adventures of the men who write on the walls in the Syrian village of Saraqeb. Their slogans and other texts are used to document the revolution for three years, both its euphoria and failure. The walls are the book.

09:00

ML

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Céline Baril, Canada, 2014, DCP, 45 min, English, f.s.

An exceptional road movie that deals with the loss of the American Dream and the reality of the American Nightmare. Cityscapes are lent a bitter, absurd aftertaste by the soundtrack that excerpts films and protest speeches from the 1960s and 1970s.

10:15

ML

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Steve Reinke, USA/Canada, 2014, DCP, 52 min, English, e.s.

Reinke’s excess of images, language, connections and suggestions creates a cinematic essay on life’s questions.

Philosophy, archiving, disease cells, nocturnal animals and art are just a few of the ingredients of his work, which is replete with humour and self-deprecation, and concludes with watercolour animation.

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An unusual African film with a powerful visual narrative style and an experimental electronic score. The Aimless Wanderer of the title is a white man making an African travelogue. He meets a local girl who soon disappears. Little by little, fear and paranoia overcome him.

14:15

ML

ML

16:00

Cábala caníbal [ip]

ML

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Villamediana uses his family history to unravel hidden memories of kabbala in Spain. With contemporary images, found footage, archival material, film, literature and ancient Hebrew texts, he creates a new cinematic language for unearthing cultural history.

ML

A portrait of two brothers who start out being close and very similar, but end up on either end of the social spectrum.

Calm, loving film subtly makes you ponder life’s choices and the accompanying expectations.

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It’s almost a genre: simple black-andwhite films about poor young women who are forced to take the wrong path.

Such as this sensitively filmed story about young mother and fisherman’s wife Siti. Her husband has been paralysed and that’s why she has two keep the family on her own. The karaoke bar beckons.

LantarenVenster 3 10:00

Frank

LL

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Lenny Abrahamson, Ireland, 2014, DCP, 95 min, English

Pleasantly absurd comedy about a young musician who, much to his delight, gets a job playing keyboard in the eccentric pop band Soronprfbs. There is just one rather striking problem: singer Frank has a giant mask over his head, and has refused for years to remove it.

With Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michael Fassbender. Based on a true story.

12:30

Turist

LL

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Ruben Östlund, Sweden/France/ Norway, 2015, DCP, 118 min, Swedish

17:30

Vita brevis [wp]

BF

Eddie Cahyono, Indonesia, 2014, DCP, 88 min, Indonesian, e.s.

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A young musician tries to find her place in New Orleans, city of musical dreams and failures. Bradley expresses the musician’s inner life with remarkable editing and a moving soundtrack that reinforces the city’s slow pace.

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Thierry Knauff, Belgium, 2015, DCP, 40 min, no dialogue

Faced by an avalanche, does a real man save his smartphone or his children?

Ruthless and humorous study of the role of the man in the modern family. Biggest success yet for Swedish perfectionist Östlund, who previously made Play and Involuntary.

A poetic record of an afternoon on the Tisza river. Mayflies emerge and thousands of them whir across the river while a girl watches. Knauff was inspired 17:30 by jazz legend Jimmy Giuffre, who is Dos disparos famous for his development of free interplay between musicians.

Martín Rejtman, Argentina/Chile/

LL

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Germany/Netherlands, 2014, DCP, 104 min, Spanish

ML

Guto Parente, Brazil/France, 2014, DCP, 62 min, French/Portuguese, e.s.

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Siti [ep]

Garrett Bradley, USA, 2015, DCP, 60 min, English

The Mysterious Death of Pérola [ip]

Cindy Jansen, Netherlands/USA/France, 2015, DCP, 48 min, English, e.s.

BF

Impressive documentary with fictional elements that stays close to the characters and their environment. Roma Kevin Mroc and his family’s struggles - threatened by eviction from their squatted home - are freely combined with the story Kosmos by Witold Gombrowicz.

21:00

11:30

Auld Lang Syne [wp]

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Daniel V. Villamediana, Spain/Switzerland, 2015, DCP, 63 min, Spanish, e.s.

Cinerama 4

Rib Gets in the Way

22:30

ML

Ruben Desiere, Belgium, 2014, DCP, 61 min, Roma, e.s.

Cover Me [wp]

22:30

Room Tone [ep]

BF Siti Eddie Cahyono 22:30 – 23:58

LL A Blast Syllas Tzoumerkas 20:00 – 21:23

Like Don Quixote, Zivan Pujic Jimmy fights for his annual punk festival. A film about failure, ambition, friendship and clinging to your dreams. Glavonic received much praise for this exceptional film that doesn’t reveal what’s fact and what’s fiction.

Lovers’ Notebooks [wp]

ML Lovers’ Notebooks Aljarod/ Khachouk 22:30 – 23:25

ML The Mysterious Death of Pérola Guto Parente 21:00 – 22:02

Ognjen Glavonic, Serbia, 2014, DCP, 64 min, Serbian/English, e.s./Serb

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18:15

12:30

09:15

Zivan Makes a Punk Festival

BF

ML Zivan Makes a Punk Festival Ognjen Glavonic 20:30 – 21:34

ML Vita brevis Knauff 17:30 – 18:10

20:30

09:30

Erdos Rider [wp]

In the early 1980s, a small group of Taiwanese filmmakers reinvented Asian cinema: among them Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang. Travelling across Asia, Europe and Latin America, meeting filmmakers, artists and critics, Flowers of Taipei sets out to assess the global influence of the Taiwan New Cinema movement. Regained Special: Made in Taiwan

BF Things of the Aimless Wanderer Kivu Ruhorahoza 18:15 – 19:33

LL Dos disparos Martín Rejtman 17:30 – 19:14

Cinerama 2

Chinlin Hsieh, Taiwan, 2014, DCP, 109 min, Mandarin, e.s.

Key House Mirror [ip]

16:45

Jaan Toomik 16:15 – 17:45

ML Cábala caníbal Daniel V. Villamediana 16:00 – 17:03

LL Turist Ruben Östlund 12:30 – 14:28

20:00

Lee Kwang-Kuk, South Korea, 2014, DCP, 99 min, Korean, e.s.

Impressions of a Drowned Man [wp]

ML Cover Me Garrett Bradley 14:15 – 15:15

DINSDAG 27-01-2015 LL

Many Moons

Matthew Bate 13:30 – 15:04

ML Kosmos Ruben Desiere 12:45 – 13:46

Flowers of Taipei Taiwan New Cinema

Marinus Groothof, Netherlands/ Belgium/Serbia/Greece, 2015, DCP, 90 min, Serbian

The Dark Horse

ML Auld Lang Syne Cindy Jansen 11:30 – 12:18

RR Landscape with

Time Machine

14:00

de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal The Sky Above Us [wp]

BF Sam Klemke’s

Fashion House Marga Weimans Bob Visser/Maria Visser 11:45 – 12:38

LL Frank Lenny Abrahamson 10:00 – 11:35

LantarenVenster 3

09:15

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ML Rib Gets in the Way Steve Reinke 10:15 – 11:07

Céline Baril 09:00 – 09:45

A murder mystery in which a young woman loses herself in loneliness and nostalgia in an old apartment. Her fear slowly turns into a situation in which dream, reality and fantasy merge. Time, space and characters seem to disappear thanks to the paintings and classical music in the house.

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It was worth the wait, this new feature from Rejtman. A dry, sure-footed tragicomedy in which 17-year-old Mariano finds a pistol one hot day and then shoots himself with it, twice. He survives the incident, almost nonchalantly, but what has changed for him, his family and friends?

20:00

A Blast Syllas Tzoumerkas, Greece/ Germany/Netherlands, 2014, DCP, 83 min, Greek/English

LL

Maria, a caring mother and loving wife in crisis-hit Greece, decides to completely change her life. Which perhaps wasn’t as firmly on the rails as she had thought after all. Energetic, explosive Greek cinema.

25 - 29 march 2015 THE CINEMAS WILLEMSTAD

CURACAOIFFR.COM

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23.00

LL The Dark Horse James Napier Robertson 16:45 – 18:49

RG Flowers of Taipei -

Pathé 5

Cinerama 4

13.00

TG Above and Below Nicolas Steiner 11:30 – 13:30

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