HEARTOF THETIGER photo: Bram Belloni
43rd International Film Festival Rotterdam #2 Friday 24 January 2014
The master builder A teacher. An actor. A writer. A producer. Over the course of his long career, Heinz Emigholz has donned numerous hats and pulled off all of the associated roles adroitly. By Laya Maheshwari And yet, at the 43rd International Film Festival Rotterdam, Emigholz is present for a retrospective (entitled Regained Special: Heinz Emigholz – The Cathedral He Builds, in the Signals: Regained strand) that investigates another part of his extraordinary oeuvre altogether: his films. A selection of the German master’s directorial ventures is screening at the festival. Taking in the calm before the festival storm breaks loose in De Doelen, Emigholz discusses the festival, how novices can explore his filmography and the difficult process of categorising his films.
To do today Tonight, accredited Industry Professionals can join colleages for Friday Night Drinks at the Film Office. 17:30 to 19:00 hrs, Industry Club, De Doelen 4th floor. Scopitone Screening: free admission to a different music documentary and musical experience every day. An eclectic mix, with a conversation and followed by music. Tonight, the documentary The Last Song Before the War, a feature-length documentary that captures the inspiring rise and uncertain future of Mali’s annual Festival in the Desert by Kiley Kraskouskas. 20:30 hrs in the Kleine Zaal of the Rotterdamse Schouwburg, free admission.
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Ideal venue
Asked what makes Rotterdam an ideal venue for staging a retrospective of his work, Emigholz says: “These films have not been shown in Rotterdam before. Moreover, I have heard that it’s a very attentive audience.” When asked about his thoughts on the identity of the festival, he answers: “The philosophy of any festival changes over time. However, Rotterdam has always been open to different kinds of work and not just the mainstream. It welcomes everything.” Hardcore
Emigholz is globally renowned for his documentaries exploring architecture, and his work defies conventional stereotypes. He describes his approach to filmmaking by stating: “The main thing is you have a certain topic. A certain idea of what you want to show or approach or discuss. Then you have to go into this topic and the theme of it. That defines how the film will work; the length, the form and everything comes from there. The genre, whether ‘experimental’ or ‘avant garde’ or ‘feature’ or ‘documentary’, doesn’t mean much. I personally refer to my films as ‘hardcore documentaries.’” Blueprint
Among many of Emigholz’s accomplishments is teaching at the Berlin University of the Arts, and he reveals that his tenure as a professor influenced his filmmaking immensely. “At one point, I wanted to change my style of filmmaking because I thought I
had done everything, at the age of 45. It was a stupid idea! But it was a good time for me to stop and start teaching. This kind of work was very good and helpful for my new approach to filmmaking. I became much more organized. I got better at communication. In fact, I was basically a mess before teaching and I taught myself to get out of that mess. When I started teaching, I didn’t put out any new films for eight years, but today, I do three films a year, continuously.” Elaborating on this “new” approach to filmmaking, Emigholz outlined his initial blueprint for making architectural documentaries. He said, “In the beginning, I had a list for architectural work. I wanted to do one film only! But now, I have done 60 long-form and short-form films. I couldn’t say everything with one film. I wanted to do one more and one more. But it all originated from just one core.” Real contact
A lot of people attending the film festival may be newcomers to Emigholz’s work, and the sheer thought of navigating one’s way through such a massive filmography may seem daunting. How exactly, then, does one explore an oeuvre like this? When questioned on tips for novices, Emigholz clarifies: “You don’t have to be a film scholar or somebody who knows film. I actually like real contact with the audience. Keep your mind open and look at stuff, because my philosophy of filmmaking is to show something and not hide it. And you can start wherever you want!” In addition to the regular screenings of his films and the compiled programmes, an installation screening Emigholz’s films D’Annunzio’s Cave and Ornament and Crime continuously can be seen (under the title Furies) daily (not Mondays), 10:00-18:00 (from 11:00 Sundays) in Het Nieuwe Instituut (Museumpark 25). Also, Heinz Emigholz is the guest in today’s Critics’ Talk, 15:20 in the Foyer of LantarenVenster. Admission to both events is free.
international film festival rotterdam
Vertical Cinema Over the last century, the cinematic frame has tended to expand outward. For multiple reasons, widescreen formats have all too rarely been matched by upward equivalents. All the better, then, for IFFR 2014 to host ‘Vertical Cinema’ on Friday evening, a programme of ten experimental shorts that challenge traditional notions of filmic composition. Hailing from the Netherlands, Japan and Austria, these 35mm films span a number of formal experiments. Vertical Cinema was initially conceived by multidisciplinary festival Sonic Acts – which turns 20 this year – in association with Kontraste Festival, The Austrian Film Museum, Filmtechniek BV, Paradiso Amsterdam, the European Space Agency, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and International Film Festival Rotterdam. The 90-minute programme makes use of Rotterdam’s Arminius, an extravagant church building that dates back to the 1890s – the same decade, of course, in which the moving image was born. Alejandro Bachmann, curator at the Austrian Film Museum, says, “In Godard’s Le Mépris, Fritz Lang famously says that CinemaScope was for snakes and funerals. We were curious to see which creatures and phenomena could be best portrayed on a vertical cinema screen. Besides, we were excited to see how changing one parameter of our usual experience might alter our perception of the whole thing and draw attention to a lot of what cinema is besides the images on a screen.” 19.45 and 22.15 Arminius. Michael Pattison
TIGERS TURN 20
PRESS & INDUSTRY SCREENINGS FRIDAY 24 JANUARY
Admission with P&I accreditation only
IFFR’s Hivos Tiger Awards Competition turns 20 this year. Conceived to showcase first and second features, the international competition traditionally awards three features each year, Michael Pattison writes
de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal
22:15 Quand je serai dictateur [wp]
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09:30 Riocorrente [ip]
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Paulo Sacramento, Brazil, 2013, DCP, 79 min, Portuguese, e.s.
A film like a pressure cooker. The São Paulo metropolis seems like it’s about to explode in this energetic and urgent fiction debut. Everything is set in irreversible motion when a woman is torn apart by desire for two very different men. 11:15 Concrete Clouds [ep] TG •oranje01•
Lee Chatametikool, Thailand / Hong Kong / China, 2013, DCP, 99 min, Thai / English, e.s.
Past Tiger winners include Hong Sang-soo’s The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1997), Christopher Nolan’s Following (1999), Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy (2006) and Sergio Caballero’s Finisterrae (2011) – the director’s second feature, La distancia, also bows at IFFR on Saturday evening. Six of the 15 features competing for this year’s Tiger Awards have their world premieres in Rotterdam. Croatian-born Tatjana Božic presents her featurelength debut Happily Ever After, an intimate and comical self-portrait based on her own history of relationships. A Croatian/Dutch co-production, Happily Ever After promises to explore universal themes through an uncompromisingly personal prism – notably, the tension between true freedom and conforming to more conventional ideas of love. Božic is joined in competition by fellow debutante Natalia Meschaninova, whose first feature The Hope Factory takes place in the evocatively sparse industrial town of Norilsk in northern Russia. The drama follows a group of youths (played by first-time actors), all of whom are desperate to escape the daily monotony of their barren milieu. Previously, Meschaninova has made several short documentaries and has also worked on Schkola, a series for Russian television. Another feature-length directorial debut is Stella cadente (Falling Star), by Luis Miñarro. The Spaniard is something of a known name already, having worked as a presenter, critic and writer, but the trade by which he is most famous is as a producer – for example of fi lms such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and Sergio Caballero’s Tiger Award winner Finisterrae. Stella cadente, shot by Albert Serra’s regular cinematographer Jimmy Gimferrer, follows Amadeo van Savoy, who briefly found himself king of a crisis-ridden Spain in the early 1870s. Brazilian-born Fellipe Barbosa, meanwhile, counts an MFA in Film Directing from New York’s Columbia University among his accolades. Barbosa’s first fictional feature, Casa Grande, is a coming-of-age fi lm set among Rio de Janeiro’s middle classes. Featuring an ensemble cast composed of television actors and non-professionals, the fi lm is charged with racial undercurrents and social tensions.
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Ikeda Akira, Japan, 2013, Video, 99 min, Japanese, e.s.
Kogure is a paperclip bender in a paperclip factory. A man without characteristics. A stoical loser. One day he finds a butterfly in his flat. She becomes his wife, but is even stranger than the bizarre minimal world he lives in. Crazy and funny Japanese neofolk. 15:30 Mein blindes Herz [ep] TG •oranje01•
Peter Brunner, Austria, 2013, DCP, 92 min, German, e.s.
Of these six world premieres competing for this year’s Tiger Awards, two are second features. One of these is Afscheid van de maan (Farewell to the Moon), whose Hawaiian-born director Dick Tuinder grew up in the Dutch town of Deventer. Having made a number of shorts since 1992, Tuinder made his feature-length debut in 2009 with Winterland, a fantasy self-portrait about a fi lm production gone disastrously wrong. The director’s latest fi lm is a tragicomic look at the effects of the ‘permissive society’ on a group of neighbours in a block of flats in the Netherlands, unfolding in the transitional year 1972. The second sophomore effort world-premiering in the Tiger Awards Competition is Jan Schomburg’s Vergiss mein Ich (Lose My Self ), which follows the director’s award-winning 2011 debut Above Us Only Sky. Schomburg hails from Germany, and his second fi lm features actress and award-winning director Maria Schrader as a woman suffering from retrograde amnesia. Nine other fi lms – four international premieres and five European premieres – join the above sextet to complete this year’s Tiger Awards Comeptition programme. This year’s competing titles were selected by a committee consisting of IFFR artistic director Rutger Wolfson and four other programmers. One of these, Gerwin Tamsma, states that the decision to reward three fi lms each year makes the Tiger competition unique: “Here, you can still see the festival’s hesitance to embrace the idea of competition in fi lm art.” The winning fi lms are awarded €15,000. As Tamsma notes, the award is designed to help introduce first or second-time fi lmmakers to an international audience, “in a festival not driven by money and market principles.” As the main attraction of the festival, the Tiger Awards Competition is only one part of IFFR’s ongoing efforts to foster the next generation of fi lmmakers. “The Tiger Awards are part – if you will the zenith – of the mechanisms IFFR has to find and nurture talent.” These mechanisms also include the Hubert Bals Fund, CineMart, Rotterdam Lab and programming sections such as Bright Future, as well as a large selection of short fi lms. The 20th Hivos Tiger Awards Competition is presided over by an international jury including past Tiger Awards nominees Nanouk Leopold from the Netherlands and Edwin from Indonesia, BAFICI programmer Violeta Bava from Argentina and the actress Kiki Sugino from Japan. The jury is chaired by Palestinian fi lmmaker Elia Suleiman.
The Hope Factory
Kurz suffers from Marfan Syndrome just like Christos, who has it in real life. But the film goes way beyond documenting Christos’ incurable condition. Kurt undertakes a journey in which the boundaries between perpetrator and victim are blurred. How much guilt can one endure? 17:30 The Hope Factory [wp] TG •oranje01•
Natalia Meschaninova, Russia, 2014, DCP, 90 min, Russian, e.s.
Industrial city of Norilsk: factories, cold, chemical air. The only desire of young people living here is to leave, against all odds. A docu-style, emotionally-driven drama about a young girl desperately fighting for an escape which is so blurry, and for love which is so insecure.
Pathé 2
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13:30 Gare du Nord
EU
Claire Simon, France, 2013, DCP, 119 min, French, e.s.
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EU
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09:30 Feel My Love [wp]
For the first time, the Italian authorities allowed a film crew into the Centres for Identification and Expulsion: selection centres for refugees. Genovese shows European asylum policy as a carousel of hope and frustration, in which refugees are spun around until madness ensues. 14:15 Sexy Money [wp] EU
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Karin Junger, Netherlands, 2014, DCP, 80 min, English, d.s.
A Europe film entirely shot in Africa? Listen to the tragic stories of unwilling sex workers who wanted to or had to leave the coldness of Europe. Warm and colourful as only Africa (in this case Nigeria) can be. A sound, committed documentary. As it should be. 22:30 The Other Side of the Heart Is White [wp] +
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Leonardo Pansier, Netherlands, 2014, DCP, 70 min, Dutch, e.s.
Supporters from all walks of life try to describe what makes so many inhabitants of Rotterdam love the redand-white of Feyenoord so much. But, as one fan puts it: ‘You can’t explain it, you just have to feel it.’ Made by a supporter for supporters.
Cinerama 6
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09:00 The Reunion
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Anna Odell, Sweden, 2013, DCP, 89 min, Swedish, e.s.
Anna Odell was not invited to the reunion party by her former classmates, twenty years after graduation. Nevertheless, she pays them an unexpected, disastrous visit which is only part of her gripping experiment on identity, truth, falsehood, reality and fiction. 11:00 Love Steaks BF Jakob Lass, Germany, 2013, DCP, 89 min, German, e.s.
Cinerama 7
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09:15 The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji
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GT
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Griet Teck, Belgium, 2014, Video, 75 min, Dutch, e.s.
Age brings infirmity. Dementia is on the rise in Europe’s greying population. Observational Flemish documentary touchingly shows how the pre-war generation and their caregivers deal with disappearing memories and how music is often the last means of expression. 12:00 Sitzfleisch [wp] BF
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Lisa Weber, Austria, 2014, DCP, 77 min, German, e.s.
Lisa goes on a summer vacation with her grandparents, travelling from Vienna to the North Cape by car. She films the journey, in this seemingly simple and light-hearted doc, but soon its length becomes a metaphor for the couple’s long-lived but troubled relationship. 22:45 The Pinkie [wp] BF •geel•
Lisa Takeba, Japan, 2014, Video, 65 min, Japanese, e.s.
Japanese filmmakers are brought up on genre films, TV nonsense, manga and street fashion. The result: films full of genre nonsense and manga fashion. Here we see a world in which, for example, a female stalker has her unwilling idol cloned from his severed little finger.
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Miike Takashi, Japan, 2013, DCP, 130 min, Japanese, e.s.
Anyone who falls asleep during this extremely exuberant film can ask for his money back. Reiji is basically a failed cop. The idea is that he will also be a failure as a mole undercover in the Japanese Mafia - but even his demise is a failure. And it is a loud, colourful and violent failure.
LantarenVenster 2
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10:00 DINAMO P&I Screenings 1
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Compilation programme, 58 min
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.
LantarenVenster 4
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14:30 Chaotic Memories: Selected Works 2010-2013 [wp]
SP
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Paul Agusta, Indonesia, 2014, Video, 72 min, Indonesian / English, e.s.
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09:00 Supernatural [wp]
Cinerama 5
11:45 EU 013, l’ultima frontiera [ip]
She’s a sharp, swift chef. He’s a shy, sweet masseur. In the luxury retreat where they work, a one-of-a-kind love story develops between Lara and Clemens. Their world can be felt and smelt. With improvised dialogues, sensually filmed amidst the real staff of a hotel at work.
The enormous railway station in Paris is full of people who will not leave again. They arrive from all over the world, but can’t go anywhere. A researcher with Algerian roots studies the phenomenon and falls for an older French lady. A feature film paired with the documentary Human Geography.
Cinerama 4
Once a common medium to record home movies and holiday souvenirs, the memory of Super-8 film is now disappearing fast. Yaël André has recycled a wealth of random Super-8 footage into a fake biography, with a cheeky off-screen voice in the style of Toto the Hero and Amélie.
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Cinerama 3
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Alessio Genovese, Italy, 2013, DCP, 62 min, Italian, e.s.
Father jumps off roof. Economy caves in. Childhood sweetheart remains out of reach. Nice girl next door slides into prostitution. Elder brother knows better. Younger brother has no idea. Only a very special filmmaker could turn that into something light-footed and moving. 13:15 Anatomy of a Paper Clip [ep] TG
Vergiss mein Ich
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Yaël André, Belgium, 2014, DCP, 90 min, French, e.s. •oranje01•
SP
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Thunska Pansittivorakul, Thailand / Germany, 2014, DCP, 106 min, Thai, e.s.
It is the underlying personality of the director, the Indonesian Agusta, that provides the unity for this very diverse collection of experimental, poetic and narrative Short films. Personality with an occasionally unbearable open-heartedness. 16:15 Die Frau des Polizisten SP
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Science fiction about a future Thailand. Futuristic, experimental, homo-erotic and with elements of a political essay. With a richness of themes and impressions that wouldn’t get past the censor in Thailand. The maker doesn’t mince his words and isn’t afraid to look reality in the eye. 11:30 See No Evil [wp] SP
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Jos de Putter, Netherlands / Belgium, 2014, DCP, 75 min, English, d.s.
Poetic, painful documentary about three retired apes: a film star, a scientist and a cripple. They look back at their lives and the intriguing relationship between humans and apes. Who watches whom, and who learns from this?
Philip Gröning, Germany, 2013, DCP, 175 min, German
Christine and Uwe live a quiet life with their little Clara in a small border town - so it seems. Little by little, fragments of their daily life unfold before us, chapter by chapter, never-ending, until we and they are trapped without escape in their tragedy. 20:00 Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy BF •geel•
Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, Thailand, 2013, DCP, 127 min, Thai, e.s.
A cheerful title for a playful, jittery film. The story of schoolgirl Mary jumps around all over the place, because the filmmaker based the story on tweets by a real young teenage girl. Confused, but incredibly witty, fun and very freely acted. A Twitter comedy.
PRESS & INDUSTRY SCREENINGS FRIDAY 24 JANUARY 09.00 09:30
de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal
10.00 Riocorrente Paulo Sacramento
11.00 11:15
TG
12.00 TG
79’
14.00
Feel My Love Griet Teck
12:00
GT
Gare du Nord Claire Simon
Sitzfleisch Lisa Weber
15:30
TG
16.00 Mein blindes Herz Peter Brunner
99’
17.00 17:30
TG
18.00 The Hope Factory Natalia Meschaninova
92’
19.00
20.00
21.00
22.00
23.00
24.00
TG 90’
EU
Supernatural Cinerama 4 Thunska Pansittivorakul
11:30
SP
See No Evil Jos de Putter
75’
Cinerama 5
EU EU 013, l’ultima frontiera
Alessio Genovese
The Reunion Cinerama 6 Anna Odell 09:15
11:00
Love Steaks Jakob Lass
89’
14:15
Sexy Money Karin Junger
62’
22:30 The Other Side
EU
RG 90’
+
of the Heart Is White
Leonardo Pansier
80’
70’
BF 89’
The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji
SP
Miike Takashi 10:00
BF 65’
Quand je serai dictateur Yaël André
22:15
SP
106’
PE
The Pinkie Lisa Takeba
77’
11:45
09:00
22:45
BF
75’
09:00
130’
DINAMO P&I Screenings 1
SH 67’
14:30
LantarenVenster 4
15.00
Anatomy of a Paper Clip Ikeda Akira 119’
09:30
Cinerama 3
LantarenVenster 2
13:15 99’
12:30
Pathé 2
Cinerama 7
13.00
Concrete Clouds Lee Chatametikool
Chaotic Memories... Paul Agusta
16:15
SP
Die Frau des Polizisten Philip Gröning
72’
INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM
20:00
SP 175’
Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit
BF 127’
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