HEARTOF THETIGER photo: Ruud Jonkers
43rd International Film Festival Rotterdam #6 Tuesday 28 January 2014
At yesterday’s Expert Debate: Artistic Directors in an Age of Changing Perceptions, Pressures and Pursuits, former IFFR director Marco Müller (right) reminisced about the birth of CineMart, quoting IFFR’s founder, Huub Bals: “‘The festival that exists has to be doubled by a festival in the future’ – and so CineMart was born.”
Creating a buzz
Cast a long shadow
Tropical-sounding Mosquito Films Distribution might be the company to strengthen the connection between Thai filmmaking and the rest of the world.
IFFR welcomes first-time filmmakers, its Bright Future section being one showcase for fresh talent. Alain-Pascal Housiaux and Patrick Dechesne premiere their maiden film today; the culmination of a momentous journey.
Irina Trocan reports The new outfit’s plan is to keep things simple and distribute Thai films abroad, working as a group, bucking the recent trend of too much emphasis on self-promotion. Film editor, (assistant) director and Mosquito Films general manager Sompot Chidgasornpongse explains: “What sets us apart is that we’re a filmmakers-for-filmmakers initiative”. Founded by six leading Thai filmmakers – Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pimpaka Towira, Aditya Assarat, Soros Sukhum, Anocha Suwichakornpong and Lee Chatametikool – Mosquito’s primary goal is to find strategies to expand the audience for these films. Lee Chatametikool is optimistic: “I think it’s easier now, with social media, to find audiences around the world. We’d be willing to release them in smaller venues, but we want to make these films available to people who want to see them. Ideally, we want to expand our network by contacting arthouse theatre owners, distributors, and by developing strong relationships with festivals; video-on-demand platforms are definitely an option too.” They mention a young filmmaker in the group who’s been a very able self-marketeer so far, because he really connects with his online followers: Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, whose latest film Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy (screening in Bright Future) has been described as “a Twitter comedy”. He pre-sold tickets for his film premiere to get money to book the venue and launched a real fad with the uniform the two teenage girls wear in the film. “He marketed the t-shirts and they were sold out!”, say Lee and Sompot. “The crowdfunding idea is an interesting one”, Lee claims, “because it guarantees you an audience that wants access to the films.” Pre-selling DVDs to cover
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the production costs, then just shipping the donors their DVD, is also common practice. The idea of artists with different styles and a common outlet may raise the problem of blurring individual identities, but these enterprising filmmakers aren’t intimidated by this potential pitfall. On the contrary: “I think even the films we’re presenting this year at IFFR offer a good sample of Thai filmmaking”, Lee says. “There’s the omnibus Letters from the South that we’re distributing – it includes a short film by Tsai Ming-liang. Uruphong Raksasad’s The Songs of Rice is perhaps the most nature-anchored of these films, being about rice farming. Apichatpong Weerasethakul is also nature-related, in his own particular style. My film, Concrete Clouds [competing in this year’s Tiger Awards Competition], is by contrast very urban and stylized. And Nawapol’s film is teen-oriented and comical. I think, if someone sees these films, they will maybe ask themselves questions about what is going on in Thailand: and that’s just what we want.” And Thailand is only the starting point – if things go well, Mosquito plans to bring in films from other parts of Asia. It’s definitely a welcome ambition to widely release Asian films, as these are not eligible for official support in Europe (from something equivalent to the MEDIA programme’s funding for European art film distribution). Just one more reason to applaud the launch of Mosquito Films Distribution.
UPC Audience Award RANKINGS As of Monday 14:57 hours 1. Nebraska............................................................4.74 2. Starred Up..........................................................4.63 3. Feel My Love......................................................4.58 4. Zombie: The Resurrection of Tim Zom .......4.58 5. The Selfish Giant...............................................4.50 6. Papusza..............................................................4.49 7. The Creator of the Jungle................................4.45 8. Eastern Boys......................................................4.42 9. The Reunion.......................................................4.42 10. See No Evil.........................................................4.37
By Laya Maheshwari Not many filmmakers would aim for a first film that spans different countries, multiple eras and a large cast of actors – some non-professionals. But Alain-Pascal Housiaux and Patrick Dechesne faced all these challenges and more while shooting their debut feature, L’ éclat furtif de l’ombre/Shattering Shadow. The story of an Ethiopian fisherman who has to leave his village in order to survive, Shattering Shadow depicts the man during old age and his distant youth. Set in Ethiopia and Europe, the project took years for the directors to research, shoot and edit. So what inspired them to come up with the project? Dechesne: “The big question was not to take an extraordinary character, but to grasp memories all of us can have when we get old.” In an effort to elaborate on how the film relates to everyone, he continues, “We were looking for the simplest and most universal possible memories, such as being in a restaurant and not being able to pay. This was a way we could bring the viewer inside the film and let them look into themselves.” Shattering Shadows may be ready now, but it took the makers years to get it to this stage. Dechesne reveals: “It was not easy, but we found a way to do it. We were [in Ethiopia] for five years. Every year, we would go back and do some research and scripting. We started writing four/five years ago. We did a lot of rehearsals and the script was born like this.” Asked about their approach to the different periods the film is set in, the filmmakers state: “The main project was not to show differences between the two eras. We wrote the script in parallel, always set partly in Ethiopia and partly in Europe … We didn’t want people to feel one half is fifty years in the past and the other fifty years in the future.” This intention ensured the editing of the film was anything but a cakewalk. Dechesne recollects: “We shot
international film festival rotterdam
in Ethiopia and then in Belgium. But in the editing, we always worked together. It was a long edit and we tried a lot of different ways. We wanted the film to move like a river, and that feeling was very difficult to find. We mixed the script while editing. We didn’t necessarily follow it while editing.” The aftermath of a war plays a prominent part in Shattering Shadow. However, the directors clarify: “The war is not the point of view of the film. The war is a factor in the film; it pushes the protagonist. This man fled his country and suffers from loneliness. The war is just the beginning of other situations.” Shattering Shadow uses its settings as a character. For the directors, the vibe and tone of the film were influenced immensely by their environment: “We wanted the locations to be like a memory, of one place and another … There were some people who had been with us from the very beginning, and they stayed with us throughout the entire shoot. Everyone multitasked, out of compulsion; for example, the lead actor helped us scout locations.” The film makes its world premiere at IFFR, and the filmmakers revealed the festival was always their first choice. Dechesne states: “Rotterdam is a prestigious, world-class festival; the agents and opportunities available here for filmmakers are unparalleled. We were very glad when our film was selected in Bright Future.”
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Out of the Past
PRESS & INDUSTRY SCREENINGS TUESDAY 28 JANUARY Admission with P&I accreditation only
Past events come back to haunt the present in at least three of the films appearing in the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition at IFFR this year. By Michael Pattison
Lee Chatametikool’s Concrete Clouds – which screens Wednesday and Saturday – sees two brothers brought together following their father’s debtfuelled suicide. Set against the late-90s economic crash in Bangkok, the fi lm tells the story of Mutt, a New York-based finance worker who returns to his native Thailand to attend his dad’s funeral service. While there, Mutt reconnects with younger brother Nic – who never left home – and also hunts down an old flame to rekindle a romance. Nic, meanwhile, pursues his own dalliance with a neighbour. Though sufficient space is given to both characters, one senses that Chatametikool identifies more closely with the elder brother.
11:00 On the Edge [wp]
de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal •FLM•
09:00 Casa Grande [wp]
TG
Jean (17) is growing up in the elite district of Rio, with its private schools, drivers and housekeepers. While he tries to escape from his over-protective parents, they keep their approaching bankruptcy secret. This beautifully played coming-of-age film provides a clear picture of class differences and racism.
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Concrete Clouds
Independent Visions Award at Sarasota Film Festival and Best Actress at Marrakech International Film Festival. Jackson’s follow-up feature – which screens to the public every day this week bar Wednesday – is a character study of Lee, a war photographer mourning the loss of her colleague and lover, recently murdered in war-torn Syria. Like Chatametikool’s fi lm, War Story is about a return of sorts. Played by Catherine Keener, Lee wrestles with inner turmoil as she retreats to a familiar Sicilian hotel to initially elude – and then finally confront – her past.
“In 1997,” Chatametikool says, “I came back to Thailand from the US in the midst of the economic crisis. Something had changed in Bangkok. There was no traffic. The dust from construction had settled. The cranes were still. And skeletons of unfinished buildings dotted the skyline. This image has lingered with me ever since.” As an editor, Chatametikool is no stranger to success in Rotterdam. He edited Weerasethakul’s Blissfully Yours, which won the KNF Award at IFFR 2003, as well as Aditya Assarat’s Wonderful Town and Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Mundane History, which won Tiger Awards in 2008 and 2010 respectively.
Impressively acted social drama. After an incident, a Korean teenage girl is transferred to another school, where she stays with the mother of her new teacher. She makes friends and is asked to join an a cappella choir. But the past will not leave her in peace.
Mark Jackson, director of War Story, is also no stranger to awards. His 2011 debut feature Without won Best Director at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, the
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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.
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Yann Gonzalez, France, 2013, DCP, 100 min, French
Ali and Mathias and their transvestite maid prepare for an orgy before midnight. Their guests will be The Slut, The Star, The Stud and The Teen. Before long, the orgy turns into a warm-hearted session of psychoanalysis. At daybreak, life can only be bitterly sweet. Please note, all public screenings of this film will be with Dutch subtitling only.
11:30 Where Are You Bucharest? [wp]
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Vlad Petri, Romania, 2014, DCP, 80 min, Romanian, e.s.
Vlad Petri followed the Romanian protesters who occupied the streets of Bucharest two years ago. A poignant documentary about people who are devastated and impulsive, lost and encouraged, all at once. And about a revolution that becomes a tragic absurdity.
13:15 Hoax_canular [ip]
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Dominic Gagnon, Canada, 2013, Video, 90 min, English
How do you survive the end of the world? The young people in this exceptional found-footage film discuss their plans and expectations in a series of online videos. Some of them think they can survive, others embrace the end. Sometimes parody, sometimes scarily real.
09:15 Profezia. L’Africa di Pasolini [ip]
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Essayistic documentary that takes the political ideas and predictions of controversial filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) very seriously. His ideals concerning Africa also relate to Europe today, as - according to Pasolini - the two continents are becoming increasingly entangled.
War Story
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In an imaginary Far West, stereotypical cowboys, activists, hippies and vain youngsters come together to celebrate values of their time - the 21st century. Then comes the Apocalypse. And with the same characters, we start anew, all over again in this artistic sitcom.
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20:00 CircusTime [wp]
12:45 D’où je viens [wp]
22:00 Masked Monkey - The Evolution of Darwin’s Theory [wp]
•geel•
Up-close portrait of exuberant, controversial monkey shows in the slums of Jakarta. And if the apes are treated roughly, their trainers hardly get any better. The struggle for life is hard, but also a feast for the eyes. Social realism with a sense of humour.
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One-of-a-kind autobiography narrated and filmed with great sensibility and beauty. Its exceptional cinematic quality offers a visual treat to a Quebec rarely seen before. This poetic take on childhood memory transcends simple nostalgia for a sincere celebration of life.
LantarenVenster 4 09:30 L’inconnu du lac
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In mid-summer by an idyllic lake, Franck falls in love with Michel, a beautiful man who happens to be dangerous too. Franck knows all about the danger but cannot prevent himself from being drawn deeper and deeper into the fatal attraction. Sensual and full of suspense. Please note, all public screenings of this film will be with Dutch subtitling only.
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Melancholy, romantic gangster film. Illegal butcher Mejima falls for gangster’s moll/prostitute Mon, seemingly sealing his fate. However her boss, the cruel Chinese Lee, arouses unexpected emotions in him. Meijma’s motto - that he has no purpose in life - is called into doubt.
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Alain Guiraudie, France, 2013, DCP, 97 min, French
Izutani Tomonori, Japan, 2013, Video, 79 min, Japanese, e.s.
22:15 Perfect Garden [ip]
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Ismail Fahmi Lubish, Indonesia, 2014, DCP, 110 min, Indonesian, e.s.
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14:30 Mejima [ip]
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Sincere look behind the scenes at the Codarts school of music, dance and circus’s Circus Arts programme. Students from around the globe work hard in an old, isolated building in Rotterdam’s port. Crackling with tension and energy. Who’ll make it and who won’t?
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In the Paraguayan hinterland, there are many myths about gold treasures from a gruesome 19th-century war. When a young man happens to acquire a metal detector, he cannot control himself. With a painterly and anthropological eye, Collar tells a timeless story about greed and obsession.
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René Hazekamp, Netherlands, 2014, DCP, 75 min, English/Russian, e.s.
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11:30 Suzanne
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Katell Quillévéré, France, 2013, DCP, 94 min, French
Suzanne is too young and good to fall for a man who can only destroy. But she can’t help it, she’s madly in love. She takes off with him, abandoning her child, followed by years of wandering and prison. An unpolished, energetic portrait of a woman and a destiny. Please note, all public screenings of this film will be with Dutch subtitling only.
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Mara Mattuschka/Chris Haring, Austria, 2013, Video, 80 min, English
A lyrical, joyful marriage between mind and body, dramaturgy and choreography, the real and the fantastic. Men and women dance and desire uncontrollably at Perfect Garden, which rather than a bar is an Utopian institution where hedonism is more of a reality than an ideology.
Cinerama 7
Gianni Borgna/Enrico Menduni, Italy/ Morocco, 2013, DCP, 77 min, Italian, e.s.
Arwad
17:00 Tonight and the People [ip] Neil Beloufa, France/USA, 2013, DCP, 81 min, English, e.s.
13:30 Club Sándwich
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Caroline Strubbe, Belgium/Netherlands/Hungary, 2013, DCP, 103 min, English/Dutch/Hungarian, e.s.
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Fernando Eimbcke, Mexico, 2013, DCP, 82 min, Spanish, e.s.
During a lazy vacation by a swimming pool, the first cracks appear in a tight mother-son relationship when adolescent Hector falls in love. The mother - an endlessly inspiring theme for director Eimbcke - reacts amusedly and obstreperously to the inevitable friction caused by the budding romance.
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09:00 I’m the Same, I’m an Other [ip]
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Group of Spanish friends on the tropical island holiday of a lifetime. Discovering a secret cave adds adventure. They enthusiastically go underground with their camera, but soon become hopelessly lost. Nail-biting tension in the tradition of recent Spanish horror films.
Claude Demers, Canada, 2014, DCP, 82 min, French, e.s.
09:30 Les rencontres d’après minuit
Pathé 5
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Enrique Collar, Paraguay/Netherlands, 2013, DCP, 75 min, Guarani, e.s.
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Alfredo Montero, Spain, 2014, DCP, 80 min, Spanish, e.s.
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11:00 Costa Dulce [ep]
Paulo Sacramento, Brazil, 2013, DCP, 79 min, Portuguese, e.s.
Pathé 3
14:45 La cueva [wp]
Tim Zom, alias Zombie. Skateboarding rebel without a cause from the south of Rotterdam. Raised in violence and crime, the reckless, longhaired skater tries to earn his way with tricks, flips and the accompanying music. Will his grim past get in the way?
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.
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Strong, original film essay on the changing East End of London. A model for Europe and the rest of the world. Author and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo has been attracting attention since How Is Your Fish Today? (Tiger Awards Competition 2007).
Billy Pols, Netherlands, 2014, DCP, 70 min, Dutch, e.s.
Lee Chatametikool, Thailand/Hong Kong/ China, 2013, DCP, 99 min, Thai/English, e.s.
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Xiaolu Guo, United Kingdom/Switzerland, 2013, DCP, 70 min, English, e.s.
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09:15 Zombie: The Resurrection of Tim Zom [wp]
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22:30 Riocorrente [ip]
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Grzegorz Muskala, Germany, 2013, DCP, 89 min, German, e.s.
Cinerama 3
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.
17:30 Concrete Clouds [ep]
13:00 Late at Night - Voices of Ordinary Madness [ip]
The unsettling, eerie atmosphere is perhaps the most powerful character in the film. Martin is a student and needs shelter urgently. He finds an apartment adjacent to a mysterious femme fatale. Before long, his life is dangerously in the hands of his neighbour.
Ikeda Akira, Japan, 2013, Video, 99 min, Japanese, e.s.
Complementing both Chatametikool and Jackson’s fi lms, meanwhile, is Arwad, the debut feature by Samer Najari and Dominique Chila, which screens every day this week. Like the Thai fi lm, Arwad’s story begins with the death of a parent. Ali, a Syrian living in Canada, returns to his native island, Arwad, where he feels as much a stranger as he did abroad. Like War Story, Najari and Chila’s fi lm also probes loss through two female characters. In this instance, the two are Ali’s wife and his mistress, each of whom respond to a traumatic incident in different ways. Themes of exile, migration and homecoming seem like natural choices for both Najari and Chila. Najari was born in Russia to a Syrian father and a Lebanese mother, and studied thereafter in both Canada and France. Chila, meanwhile, was born in Montreal. Like her co-director, she participated in a two-year residency at Le Fresnoy in France.
This is in some ways indicative of IFFR’s ongoing commitment to new fi lmmaking talent – whereby new names are in some way already familiar. “Being in Rotterdam is great,” Chatametikool notes. “This fi lm would not have happened without the early support from the Hubert Bals Fund for script development. That really got the ball rolling for us and allowed us to secure the rest of the financing for the fi lm … It’s also been invaluable to experience the European reaction to the fi lm and to find out that many of the themes and ideas in the fi lm can translate to a European audience.”
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15:30 Anatomy of a Paper Clip [ep]
13:00 Dzma/Brother [wp]
21:00 Die Frau hinter der Wand [ip]
Lee Su-Jin, South Korea, 2013, DCP, 112 min, Korean, e.s.
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Tender portrait of homeless senior citizen Jorge in a disintegrating Cuba. He lives with his misty memories, dog and a dozen other vulnerable souls in a run-down former hotel. Twilight brings the end closer: of Hotel Nueva Isla, of Jorge and of a once glorious past.
Two best friends are forced to examine themselves and their consciences after their predilection for racing in cars on the public road costs the life of a young girl. Good young cast convincingly portrays the deadly attraction of adrenaline in this Danish mix of The Fast and the Furious and Crime and Punishment.
Georgia right after the collapse of the USSR: chaos, freedom, war. Two brothers, the younger a talented pianist, the elder a secret criminal. A poetic portrait of people torn between a fading past and an uncertain future. Beautifully filmed in old Tbilisi.
It’s 1972. Women wear pant suits; men experiment with beards. And with other things, like wife-swapping with the neighbours. And the Americans stop manned space flight. In his reconstruction, Tuinder makes a ridiculous era even more ridiculous. A hip comedy.
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Irene Gutiérrez/Javier Labrador, Cuba/ Spain, 2014, DCP, 80 min, Spanish, e.s.
Téona Mghvdeladze/Thierry Grenade, France/ Georgia, 2014, DCP, 94 min, Georgian, e.s.
Dick Tuinder, Netherlands, 2014, DCP, 94 min, Dutch, e.s.
13:15 Han Gong-Ju [ep]
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Christian E. Christiansen, Denmark, 2014, DCP, 86 min, Danish, e.s.
Fellipe Barbosa, Brazil, 2014, DCP, 107 min, Portuguese, e.s.
11:15 Afscheid van de maan [wp]
11:00 Hotel Nueva Isla [wp]
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15:10 What Now? Remind Me
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Joaquim Pinto, Portugal, 2013, DCP, 164 min, Portuguese, e.s.
Atmospheric and sensitive story of a man and a girl fleeing through Europe. The reason for this gradually becomes clear, as they slowly learn to tolerate one another. This beautifully filmed journey ends in a hiding place on the English coast where they are forced to examine their tragic past.
Joaquim Pinto has been filming his struggle against HIV for a year, but this ‘natural history of a disease’ is surpassed by his highly poetic, if not imaginative, view of physical existence. A multilayered self-portrait that gradually turns into a striking snapshot of our times.
PRESS & INDUSTRY SCREENINGS TUESDAY 28 JANUARY Admission with P&I accreditation only 09.00
10.00
Grande de Doelen Casa Fellipe Barbosa 09:00
11.00
Jurriaanse Zaal
09:15
Pathé 5 09:15
13.00
100’
11:00
+ Zombie: The Resurrection... Billy Pols
11:00
09:30
11:30
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EU Profezia. L’Africa di Pasolini G. Borgna, E. Menduni 77’
Where Are You Bucharest? Vlad Petri
L’ inconnu du lac Alain Guiraudie
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SP On the Edge Christian E. Christiansen
Han Gong-Ju Lee Su-Jin
13:15
Hoax_canular Dominic Gagnon
Costa Dulce Enrique Collar
12:45
SP
EU 11:00
Hotel Nueva Isla Irene Gutiérrez, Javier Labrador 11:30
SP 97’
80’
Suzanne Katell Quillévéré
16.00
17.00
Anatomy of a Paper Clip Ikeda Akira
17:30
TG
18.00 Concrete Clouds Lee Chatametikool
99’
19.00
20.00
21.00
22.00 22:30
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23.00 Riocorrente Paulo Sacramento
24.00 TG
99’
79’
HS 90’
Dzma/Brother Téona Mghvdeladze, Thierry Grenade
D’où je viens Claude Demers
21:00
BF 94’
14:30
SP
Mejima Izutani Tomonori
82’
13:00
BF
15:30 112’
75’
103’
15.00 TG
76’
13:00 86’
70’
I’m the Same, Cinerama 7 I’m an Other Caroline Strubbe
14.00
13:15 94’
Les rencontres d’après minuit Yann Gonzalez
09:00
LantarenVenster 4
12.00
Afscheid van de maan TG Dick Tuinder
107’
09:30
Pathé 3
Cinerama 3
11:15
TG
Xiaolu Guo 13:30 94’
14:45
La cueva Alfredo Montero
70’
17:00
HS 80’
Club Sándwich Fernando Eimbcke
15:00 SP 82’
BF 89’
22:15
BF 79’
EU Late at Night Voices of Ordinary...
SP
Die Frau hinter der Wand Grzegorz Muskala
What Now? Remind Me Joaquim Pinto
Tonight and the People
20:00
BF
Neil Beloufa
81’
CircusTime René Hazekamp
22:00
+ 75’
Perfect Garden Mara Mattuschka, Chris Haring
SP 80’
BF Masked Monkey - The Evolution of Darwin’s Theory
Ismail Fahmi Lubish
110’
PE 164’
INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM
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