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