Daily Tiger #2 (English) by International Film Festival Rotterdam

Tea & cinema: visitors to the Tea House/Gallery Inside Iran (located at Schouwburgplein 54, on the corner of De Doelen) soak up the inspiring atmosphere at the opening yesterday. Keep an eye on the Daily Tiger for regular updates on the Tea House programme, which features film, music and art from and about Iran. photo: Bram Belloni

Inside stories IFFR’s focus on Iranian cinema expresses the country’s political realities in both oblique and direct ways. By Geoffrey Macnab

Six months ago, the Western media was buzzing with reports that Israel was planning to bomb Iran. At the same time, film festivals around the world were protesting against the Iranian government’s treatment of filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who was put under house arrest in 2010 and banned from filmmaking. Meanwhile, Western festivals noticed they weren’t receiving the usual amount of films from Iran. This was the backdrop as Rotterdam programmers Bianca Taal and Gertjan Zuilhof began to pull together the Signals: Inside Iran programme for this year’s festival. Perspective

Zuilhof had met many Iranian directors in exile and had been struck by the way they talked about their country’s film culture. “It was very different from my perspective of this big, grim Islamic Republic”, Zuilhof notes. He discovered that filmmaking was still thriving in Iran – but in the domestic, private sphere. “It turned out that there is still quite a bit of liberal culture possible, as long as it is indoors, in private. I was not too aware of this.” Intrigued, Zuilhof made a first trip to Iran. Through his contacts abroad, he was able to meet filmmakers still working in the country and to scout movies to bring to Rotterdam. “Also, I think quite quickly the word goes round, so we received a lot (of films) as well”, Taal notes. It helped,

too, that the programmers were able to draw on the network of filmmakers supported in the past by the Hubert Bals Fund. The political and religious situation in Iran isn’t encouraging for filmmakers. The country’s most prominent directors, notably Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, have been making their recent films abroad. However, there are many other directors who – as Zuilhof puts it – “don’t have this big name and don’t have this close relationship with an MK2 producer in France or something like that.” Symbolic

The Rotterdam programmer acknowledges his surprise at the films that were being made in Iran. He points to Mohammad Shirvani’s Hivos Tiger Awards contender Fat Shaker, which has a strain of stylization and absurdist humour that you don’t always find in films by Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf. Such work is not directly related to “real life” and therefore less likely to fall foul of the censors. “It’s maybe very symbolic and metaphorical, but it is not directly related to any political situation.” Shirvani has also provided an installation, Elephant in Darkness, for Rotterdam. “Unfortunately, because of political matters, the voices of Iranians cannot be heard very well in different countries”, the Iranian director says. “Next to Persian carpets, pistachios and all the nuclear weapons stories, cinema is a door to show how the Iranian people really are.” Elephant in Darkness is a box with a number of different holes. “I want to show that you can’t know the truth and

everything about something only by using one of these holes – by only by having one source.” New generation

There is a new generation of filmmakers who are breaking away from their older peers. Swedish-based director Nahid Persson Sarvestani’s new feature doc My Stolen Revolution (a world premiere at IFFR) screens in Inside Iran. She argues forcefully that young activists and artists in Iran faced the same harassment, intimidation and torture after the disputed Presidential election of 2009 that her generation suffered after the Iranian revolution. The human rights abuses have been well chronicled. These abuses are not being ignored. Artistic expression in Iran, however oblique, is still often a form of political protest. Ideal ideal

Certain films being shown in Rotterdam address political questions in a very direct way. For example, Abolfazl Jalili’s Darvag, about a loan shark, reveals the effect economic sanctions and political turbulence have had on day-to-day life. Meanwhile, exiled filmmakers continue to explore Iranian history and identity in their work. Zuilhof cites the examples of Maryam Najafi’s Kayan, which is ostensibly about the inner workings of a Lebanese restaurant in Vancouver, and of Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The Gardeners, about Iranian exiles of the Bahá’í faith in (of all places) Israel. “They (exiles) develop a kind of ideal ideal about their past and their country”, Zuilhof suggests. “Kayan is like the fairy tale idea

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of the Middle East – how people eat, how they drink, how they dance, how they talk… they strongly have this nostalgia for Iran and their experiences there.” Different experiences

Alongside the Iranian films screening in Rotterdam, there will be discussions and debates. The Festival has created a Tea House and gallery where work can be shown and debates pursued in informal fashion. Taal and Zuilhof had very different experiences on their trips to Iran. Taal was a guest at the Isfahan festival. “I’ve never been to a festival where there was no catalogue or film programme for us to see”, she says. “I was very glad I was there but it was very frustrating because I came there to work. It was not possibile to meet any filmmakers, except for a couple of hours in Tehran.” Zuilhof had much more freedom. He arrived in the middle of Ramadan. For three days, he was left to his own devices. The authorities even apologized that they were too busy to keep an eye on him. “I have been travelling in Islamic countries before and Ramadan is a good period for meeting people. They have more time and they organize a lot of social events after hours.” Filmmakers, starved of international contacts, were delighted to have Zuilhof in their midst; keen to show him their work and to help him with translations. As for the Iranian authorities, they are aware of the Rotterdam programme and haven’t made any complaints. “Just a few days ago, I got invited to some party at the Iranian Embassy in the Hague – so I guess I am still on the good list!” Zuilhof notes.

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Peer pressure A new competition strand sees ten IFFR titles compete for guaranteed distribution. By Nick Cunningham

Ai Weiwei

photo: Gertjan Zuilhof

Remote control This year’s Hivos Tiger Awards Competition jury meetings will have a twist: one of the most high-profile jurors is many miles away, in a compound in Beijing. By Geoffrey Macnab

Celebrated Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei can’t travel to Rotterdam in person for the very good reason that the Chinese Government is still holding his passport. He will therefore be watching the films at home and is then expected to join in jury deliberations by Skype or conference call, or by submitting his opinions in written form. “I am very honoured. I look at it in a very simple way. He is an extremely prominent artist and also a very

prominent activist. It makes total sense to ask him to (sit on) the jury”, IFFR Director Rutger Wolfson notes of the very high-profile absentee juror. “We like to have people who are perhaps not filmmakers themselves or professionals in the film industry, but people with a very open mind.” The Festival boss insists that IFFR continues to have “good relations” with both Chinese filmmakers and authorities. “It is not intended as a provocation. We are interested in him for who he is”, he says of the festival’s relationship with Ai Weiwei. IFFR programmer Gertjan Zuilhof visited Ai Weiwei in China while preparing last year’s IFFR Hidden Histories strand, which showcased several films by the Chinese artist previously unseen by Western audiences.

“He has a house as big as the Pathé cinema with huge studio and offices”, Zuilhof notes. “It reminds me a bit of an architect’s office. There are ten people working in an open space.” Ironically, when the invitation was first issued to Ai Weiwei more than a year ago, the Chinese artist was confident of getting his passport back. “He was at that moment quite optimistic”, Zuilhof remembers. “He said, ‘They can’t hold my passport forever. At some point I will get it back’.” Sadly, there is no sign as yet of the passport being returned by the Chinese authorities. Ai Weiwei is therefore doing his Rotterdam jury duty remotely, from his compound several thousand miles away from the city.

They might be giants IFFR’s shorts programme showcases filmmakers who think big. By Nick Cunninghman

“The idea a lot of people have about making a short is that it is a stepping stone to making a feature – we try to prove otherwise”, comments IFFR programmer Peter van Hoof on the eve of the 2013 IFFR. “These are stories that the filmmakers need to tell.” The short film, he argues, remains a vital and viable format that allows for high-quality experimental and narrative filmmaking across all genres. This year’s Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films, which features a number of established feature directors, presents a selection of 23 films ranging from Tony Cederteg’s 5-minute Figs to Guido van der Werve’s expansive and complex Number fourteen, home, which world-premiered last night. The selection also includes Rotterdam feature regulars such as David Verbeek (Im-

mortelle, and also in the inaugural Big Screen Award Competition with How to Describe a Cloud), Nicolas Provost (Tokyo Giants) and Sergei Loznitsa (Letter), who serves on the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition jury this year. Nominees compete for three Canon Tiger Awards for Short Films, which come with €3,000 and a video camera. In addition, the jury will select the IFFR nomination for the short film category at the European Film Awards (EFA). “If you look at all these films in competition, you can see that they are very different titles, but the main characteristic is that we select more experimental works”, says Van Hoof. “These are author’s films, which fit perfectly into the programme and the profile of the festival.” Van Hoof points out that, although IFFR selection leans heavily towards the experimental, the overall final programme is not exclusively so. “We also screen narrative works, some of which are in the com-

petition. Every year, we make five or six programmes called Short Stories, all narrative works, and we screen a lot of films – about 20 to 25 – before feature films, which are also all narrative works.” He also emphasises IFFR’s concentration on art film this year, citing 2013 Short Film competitor Willie Doherty (Secretion) who is presenting his project Amnesia in the CineMart Art:Film section. “In the past, the boundaries between working within the art world and showing your work in cinema were considerable, because the art world demanded exclusivity. So an installation piece could only be screened in a specific gallery and a filmmaker wasn’t allowed to show the film in a cinema at the same time, otherwise the value of the work would decrease”, he stresses. “I have the idea that these things are now changing, which means we can show these very beautiful works to a much larger audience.”

This year, two new distribution prizes are up for grabs at IFFR. The inaugural Big Screen Award guarantees theatrical release across the Netherlands for one of ten Dutch and international films. The KNF Award, given by the Circle of Dutch Film Critics since 1983, will now guarantee the same, with an additional subtitled DCP sponsored by digital film lab NCP Holland. These new initiatives were arranged in collaboration with Dutch distribution house Amstelfilm. The Big Screen Award will be presided over by a jury of audience members, who answered a call from the festival to pitch their cineaste credentials in a hundred words or less. “I think, in the current climate, you notice how audiences believe less and less in professionals”, points out IFFR programmer Gerwin Tamsma, who compiled the competition shortlist with colleague Gertjan Zuilhof. “But they do believe their peers… it’s nice to have an audience jury that specifically is asked to deliberate on something, keeping in mind that it is a film they want to recommend to other audiences.” Tamsma further points out that, in the past, the KNF Award would generally guarantee a film’s local distribution, but this has not been the case in recent years. The new terms therefore bolster its real-term effectiveness. Amstelfilm MD Marieke Lonker comments: “We have a large programme called We Want Cinema which is a platform on which the consumer can decide what is shown in the cinema, and up came the question from the festival of whether we were interested in releasing the winner of this new award. We really like this idea because we are a company that is audience-driven. We give the audience a voice. The Big Screen Award is basically the same thing. We will try to make it a nice release in the Netherlands.” It is important to note, however, that if another Dutch company makes a successful bid for distribution rights to the winning film (before its end of fest announcement), Amstelfilm will stand aside. “If somebody bids and wants to make a commercial release, then the festival is happy for them to do so”, Lonker adds. “That goes for us as well of course. If we want to make a big commercial release and own all the rights then we could buy them too.” This year’s Fipresci Award (the award granted by the International Federation of Film Critics) will shift its focus to the world premieres selected for Bright Future. The Big Screen Award jury

photo: Nichon Glerum

Revolution in da House Today in IFFR’s Tea House/Gallery Inside Iran, Dutch Iranian filmmaker Parisa Yousef Doust will lift the veil on a work in progress and introduce DJ Jarra and DJ Bombok, who will play “pre- and post-revolutionary pop, rock, folk, jazz, experimental and classical music from Iran and beyond”. Tea House/ Gallery Inside Iran, Schouwburgplein 54, 16.00 - 18.00

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Funny mummy Shannon Plumb finds screwball humour in the chaos of family life in her debut feature Towheads. By NIck Cunningham

Day of the dead A fascination with illness underpins Sebastián Hofmann’s striking Tiger entrant Halley. By Edward Lawrenson

At the beginning of Halley, Sebastián Hofmann’s atmospheric debut feature, a security guard working at a Mexico City gym announces to his boss his wish to leave the job because he’s sick. This turns out to be understatement. Later on we catch up with Berto, the ailing security guard, in his immaculate flat. His body is covered in scars and discoloured lumps. He limps and moves stiffly. And – brilliantly played by Alberto Trujillo – he wears a deadpan expression that hints at a life of constant pain. In fact, over the course of Hofmann’s absorbing, sometimes gruelling, sometimes poignant chiller we discover that Berto is in fact in a kind of undead state and struggling to ward off the grisly consequences of bodily deterioration. “I’m fascinated by how the sick relate to their sickness and the feeling of anguish when the body gets out of control”, says Hofmann of the inspiration behind Hal-

ley. “A few years ago I made a short film called Jaime Tapones that dealt with the same themes as Halley. Although they are different stories, they both focus around a character who suffers from a fictional disease.” Trujillo, a friend of Hofmann, was also the star of that short, and he also appears in Hofmann’s web series Los micro burgueses, which is playing in IFFR’s Changing Channels strand. As well as relying on Trufillo’s performance to evoke Berto’s progressive disintegration, Hofmann also made use of superb, stomach-churning make-up: this is a film which pays loving attention to pustulating sores and dismembered appendages. Hofmann pays credit to his make-up artist Adam Zoller, who worked on the design. “When we first did make-up tests, the approach was that of a classical zombie monster and I was not convinced at all”, Hofmann explains. “The prosthetics had to be more original and realistic for the shock value to be more effective, so Adam and I began a horrific visual research of real skin conditions and diseases.”

Focussed on Berto’s halting friendship with his boss at the gym, the exuberant Luly, the film is also a tender portrait of one man’s loneliness. There are moments of sideways critique of the broader social indifference to individual suffering too in Hofmann’s depiction of Berto’s plight. Working with a small crew on Mexico City’s busy streets, Hofmann at one point films Berto slowly collapsing in a pedestrian subway as real people walk past. “That turned out to be an interesting social experiment”, Hofmann says of the scene. “Nobody stopped to help or check on Alberto. I just let the camera roll.” Having secured Visit Film as his sales agent, Hofmann is coy about the budget, but he does point out: “What we lacked on money, we made up with love.”

Hivos Tiger Awards Competition Halley – Sebastián Hofmann Fri 25 Jan 18:30 PA7 Sat 26 Jan 13:15 PA4 Sun 27 Jan 22:15 PA3 Mon 28 Jan 13:15 DJZ (press & industry) Sat 02 Feb 14:15 CI1

Up close and personal It Felt Like Love by debut director Eliza Hittman is a striking exploration of the emotional difficulties of early adolescence. By Edward Lawrenson

The impulse for It Felt Like Love, Eliza Hittman’s assured and resonant debut feature screening in the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition, came when the American director was at Sundance in 2011 doing a round of industry meetings with her short Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight. “I was being asked whether I’d be interested in doing things like romantic comedies or thrillers”, she explains. “I was discouraged by these expectations of what people wanted to see.” The experience prompted her to explore more personal terrain. The result is a haunting coming-of-age

tale revolving around Lila, a young adolescent struggling with her attraction to an older teen. Over a hot Brooklyn summer she grows increasingly obsessed with handsome Sanny, while drifting apart from her seemingly more worldly childhood girlfriend. The film isn’t autobiographical but, Hittman explains, is drawn “from feelings, not events”. She continues: “It was all sort of loosely, loosely inspired by a summer when a best friend of mine got a promise ring from a guy. I was thinking about what radically different phases we were at emotionally and sexually, when we were probably only nine months apart in age – how vast those nine months can be.” The result is a film that tackles some of the more difficult emotions of adolescent life. In an especially powerful scene towards the end of the movie, inse-

cure Lila humiliates herself to win the approval and attention of Sanny and his more boorish friends. It’s a sequence of unblinking power that we won’t reveal here; suffice to say that the underage Gina Piersanti (the actress who plays Lila) wasn’t present for its more challenging requirements (in fact Hittman played her body double). Hittman found Piersanti after posting casting notices online. “I had a very short time to do the film and I wasn’t able to find anyone for the role. Everyone I wanted ran very scared after reading the script,” she recalls, “Gina came in, she auditioned, and I could tell she had something really interesting and was by far my favourite. Then I brought her mum and her into the room and told her exactly what happens in the film.” Shooting in August, Hittman’s style is impressionistic and dreamy: anchored to Lisa’s perspective, the photography is as likely to focus on body parts and fragments of the environment as on close-ups of her cast. “I love close-ups,” she explains, “but I also really like segmented shots where you don’t see faces. So I’m always bouncing between these ideas. I wanted the film to be entirely from Lisa’s point of view; for me these are details you’d notice when you are at a party or in your room.” This said, she signals out Dutch photographer Rineke Dijkstra as one of the visual artists she referred to when developing the look of the film. Represented by Visit Films – who came on board when the film was selected by Sundance – Hittman is cautious about revealing the budget, but does admit it “was micro”.

Hivos Tiger Awards Competition It Felt Like Love – Eliza Hittman Fri 25 Jan 13:45 DJZ (press & industry) Sat 26 Jan 12:00 CI5 (press & industry) Sat 26 Jan 16:00 PA4 Sun 27 Jan 21:45 PA5 Mon 28 Jan 19:15 PA3 Sat 02 Feb 18:45 PA4

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Ostensibly a film about the increasing levels of stress encountered during early motherhood, Shannon Plumb’s debut feature Towheads – which receives its world premiere in IFFR’s Bright Future strand – is also a celebration of slapstick’s continuing cinematic viability. Married to filmmaker Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine), Plumb enlists the acting services of him and her two mop-headed children (the ‘towheads’ of the title) to tell a story that starts out screwball before immersing itself in altogether darker waters. Mother of two Penelope is married to Matt, a theatre director whose absence from domestic duties is underscored by Plumb’s decision never to show his face, even when he does appear. Feeling isolated, Penelope embarks on a series of hilarious hair-brained schemes to find personal fulfilment, including a stint as a street Santa and as an actress in a tampon commercial. This full-frontal assault on fulfilment goes sour when, as a stripper, she is unable to unzip her costume, to the immense delight of her audience. In the final third of the film, she retreats into a spare room to film herself in a series of expressive tableaux, communicating by written messages pushed under the door. “For me becoming a mum, you realise you have so much to sacrifice, and the truest part of that is when it is time to go do your own thing – sometimes you can’t find out what that thing is”, comments Plumb. “It was supposed to be universal and not so autobiographical. The part about motherhood is definitely true but all these other elements, all the comedy and Penelope’s ventures outside, that’s just fantastical.” Plumb was concerned about her kids’ reaction to her playing a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In one scene over dinner, relations between Penelope and Matt break down to the extent that he begins to treat her like a child and she responds accordingly, pulling faces and blowing raspberries, to his intense frustration. Her children are obliged to follow the pitiful action as it unfolds. “Even though it was quite fragile for the boys … I could be funny and entertain them. In between those moments I was kind of winking at them, because they were looking at me as if to say ‘are you ok?’, and I would shake my head to say that I was. But I didn’t realise what was going to happen – it got more dramatic each minute”, she comments. “You know, drama and comedy,” she continues, “is an experiment for me because my tendency is always to go comedy, but in this long format, a feature film, I don’t know happened. There are elements of motherhood that just aren’t so pretty, and I’m glad in a way that they came across. It isn’t all lovely. There are so many tough moments within domestic life.”

Bright Future Towheads – Shannon Plumb Fri 25 Jan 09:45 LV3 (press & industry) Fri 25 Jan 22:00 PA3 Sat 26 Jan 17:15 LV5 Mon 28 Jan 19:30 CI3

Oshima Nagisa (1932 – 2013) In a late programme addition, IFFR is to pay tribute to Oshima Nagisa, who died in Tokyo on January 15. Critic and programmer Tony Rayns will give an illustrated talk on the director tomorrow. A central figure in the Japanese New Wave from the 1960s, he is probably best known for In the Realm of the Senses (1976). The controversy over that film’s non-simulated sex scenes cemented Oshima’s iconoclastic reputation. His response to the furore: “Nothing that is expressed is obscene. What is obscene is what is hidden.” Oshima first visited the Netherlands with his regular actor Watanabe Fumio for the Dutch premiere of The Ceremony (1971) at the Cinemanifestatie, a kind of proto-IFFR organized by Hubert Bals in Utrecht. Dear Summer Sister was included in the first edition of the Rotterdam film festival in 1972. In his tribute talk, Tony Rayns will explore Oshima’s art of transgression, using examples from his forty years as a director and featuring a wealth of clips, some of them very rare. Previewing the event, Rayns writes: “In his heyday, Oshima was as central to modern film culture as Godard, one of the rare individuals in conformist Japan who stood against the consensus and insisted on clear and independent-minded thought. Throughout his career he focused on sex and crime, the twin fault-lines running under the smooth surface of Japanese society.” Sat 26, 15:00-16:15, free admission, Kleine Zaal Rotterdamse Schouwburg

Colofon Daily Tiger NL: Anton Damen (hoofdredactie), Kim van der Meulen (eindredactie), Joost Broeren, Paul van de Graaf, Sietse Meijer, Maricke Nieuwdorp, Veerle Snijders (redactie), Loes Evers, Rik Mertens, Pete Wu (web), Sanne de Rooij (marketing en communicatie), Marieke Berkhout (traffic) UK: Edward Lawrenson (editor-in-chief ), Nick Cunningham, Geoffrey MacNab, Mark Baker (editors), Ben Walters (web) Met medewerking van: HariĂŤtte Ubels, Elsbeth Jongsma Programmainformatie: Chris Schouten, Melissa van der Schoor CoĂśrdinatie A-Z: Saskia Gravelijn (tekst), Amanda Harput (beeld) Fotografie: Felix Kalkman, Bram Belloni, Corinne de Korver, Marije van Woerden, Ruud Jonkers, Nichon Glerum, Nadine Maas Vormgeving: Sjoukje van Gool, Laurenz van Galen, Gerald Zevenboom Drukker: Veenman+ Acquisitie: Daily Productions Oplage: 10.000 per dag, Volkskrantdag 12.000

Pioneering avant garde filmmaker Michael Snow talks to the Daily Tiger about IFFR’s showcase of his work. By Edward Lawrenson

Inner space

Michael Snow

Mika Taanila’s IFFR gallery installations and short films, one a Tiger-nominated world premiere, combine utopianism, archive research and experiments in sound. By Ben Walters Two contrasting video installations greet this year’s IFFR audiences at TENT, the contemporary arts centre on Rotterdam’s Witte de Withstraat. On the ground floor, The Most Electrified Town in Finland is an imposing three-screen work about the construction of a gargantuan nuclear reactor on the west coast of Finland: heavy-industrial equipment grinds across three large adjacent screens in a dark blue room filled with droning ambient sound. One floor up, Stimulus Progression could almost be missed: at the far end of a white-walled, brightly sunlit space, a small black-and-white monitor plays documentary images while four worn and unobtrusive speakers, discreetly marked with the Muzak brand, quietly pipe gentle background harmonies into the air. Distinct as they are in tone, both works are characteristic of Finnish film artist and documentary-maker Mika Taanila: for 15 years, he has been exploring the intersections of technological advancement, utopian hubris, innovative sound design and the ‘cubistic’ consideration of subjects from different vantage points. The last point applies both within works – they might involve multiple screens, like The Most Electrified Town in Finland (which premiered at last year’s dOCUMENTA), or carefully balanced timeframes of past, present and future – and in the relation between works. Both these installations reconfigure material gathered for more conventional documentaries: the nuclear reactor’s ongoing and much-delayed construction is the subject of Taanila’s next feature, while Stimulus Progression reworks his documentary debut, 1998’s Thank You for the Music – A Film about Muzak. “I’m a fan of Muzak”, Taanila says, gently rebuffing dec-

photo: Bram Belloni

Michael Snow, the Canadian filmmaker, artist and musician in Rotterdam for a programme of his work across the Signals strand, has attended IFFR before. He was here, he says from the elegant surroundings of his hotel, in 2002 to show his video work Corpus Callosum. But his association with city stretches back even further. “To go really way back, I saw Rotterdam when it was almost totally destroyed, in 1952”, he recalls of his experience of the city in ruins after World War II. “I spent about a year hitchhiking around Europe after I got out of art college. I’ll never forgot arriving in Rotterdam: it was completely flattened.” Snow gestures towards the towering new buildings outside of the hotel lobby and adds: “It’s wonderful... You almost wouldn’t know it happened.” The memory of the vast changes the cityscape has undergone over the years proves an oblique introduction to one of the central concerns of Snow’s hugely influential body of work: space and time, and the complex, dynamic, infinitely varied relationship between the two. Take La Région Centrale (1971), one of his most wellknown pieces – and a key work of experimental cinema in the 1970s. Showing in IFFR this year, the film uses a constantly moving camera to explore a rocky mountainous patch of Quebec. Foregrounding the durational aspect of cinema by subjecting the landscape to intense, progressively abstract scrutiny over a three-hour running time, the film is a meditative, exhilaratingly fluid piece of pure cinema. Working with technician Pierre Abbeloos – originally from the Netherlands – Snow designed a special robotic jig that could complete 360-degree movements without being photographed by the camera (seeming to float in space). The contraption still exists. “It’s really contradictory”, says Snow. “The machine was made so it wouldn’t be seen, but I just thought it was really beautiful watching it turn, so I decided to make an installation piece with it – historically it’s one of the first video installations.” Indeed Snow has long worked across media. Trained as a painter, he is also an accomplished musician and is bringing Reverberlin and Snow in Vienna to IFFR, two films that showcase his piano compositions and improvisations (both screening in Reverberations). Directed by Laurie Kwasnik as part of a larger project on Snow and his music, Snow in Vienna is a record of a solo show at

the Wiener Konzerthaus, one of the city’s oldest concert halls. “I was terrified because Beethoven might have played there”, says Snow. “At any rate it’s not as good as Beethoven, but it’s ok!” Snow will also be showing a number of pieces that use projected photographic slides. If La Région Centrale reveals Snow at his most visually restless, the slide works are fascinating, sometimes playful investigations into the static properties of slide transparencies. In A Casing Shelved (1970), Snow films the image of a slide projection while a voiceover – Snow’s own – invites us to contemplate what we’re seeing. “For 45 minutes it’s completely still”, says Snow. “But the voice does provoke motion in the sense that it describes what you’re looking at, so you can move your eyes around the image.” A related piece is Sidelength (1971), a series of 80 slides shown on a carousel (which evoke in some ways Wavelength, his seminal 1967 film involving a slow-reveal zoom). Snow is happy to show this in a theatrical context at IFFR, but he points out it was conceived as a gallery installation. “It has mainly been shown as a gallery work: you can see however many slides you like and move away if you want!” The comment reveals a sly irony that underpins many of Snow’s pieces, despite their forbidding reputation for formal rigour. It turns out Snow, many of whose major works exist only on 16mm, is quite relaxed about digital platforms like youtube. “I think youtube is fantastic when you consider the range of things you can watch. I mostly do my moving-image work for a gallery context – I’m going to Paris after here for a show of such work for an ambulatory spectator. Looking at things on the internet is similar in the sense that the spectator can choose; and you can also see it again if you want.” He plans to re-watch some of his titles at IFFR, but without sentimentality: “I’m looking forward to seeing some of the works I haven’t seen for a time. They continue to exist. But this is now!” (Intro to) La Région Centrale

Fri Jan 25 10:30 De Unie Reverberations

Fri Jan 25 17.15 CI7 Single Frame Snow

Sat Jan 26 14:00 LA4

Beyond human

Mika Taanila

photo: Ruud Jonkers

ades of demonisation. “I think it’s delicate and beautiful. And you almost never hear it now: background music has been replaced by foreground music. I wanted to record it before it was lost, almost like a kind of folk music dying out.” Back at his studio, he has 28 more speakers; he found the set, once installed in a Helsinki supermarket, at a flea market. Curious details and ambitious technology underscore Taanila’s work: using archive material, new footage and expressive effects, he explores our attempts to go beyond the human while appreciating the poignancy, laced with absurdity, that accompanies our failures. (He studied cultural anthropology before attending film school.) A shorts package screening at IFFR contains

films like Futuro – A New Stance for Tomorrow (1998), about a plastic egg-shaped Space-Age domicile that didn’t quite revolutionise living space; The Future Is Not What It Used to Be (2002), about electronic music pioneer Erkki Kurenniemi, the development of microprocessors and the possibility of machine consciousness; and Optical Sound (2005), a video accompaniment to media artist [The User]’s musical composition using only noises made by dot-matrix printers. “My films deal with technology, but I’m not a techno-freak”, Taanila insists. “I’m not really interested in nostalgia or retro things as such. But I’m interested in how the world of the future might look, so I’m interested in what people have dreamed about and what hap-

INTERNATIONAL film festival rotterdam

pens when these utopias fail.” His latest documentary, Six Day Run, which premieres at IFFR as a Tiger contender, focuses on Ashprihanal Pekka Aalto, a champion Finnish endurance runner participating in an extreme race lasting six days, with minimal sleep breaks. With echoes of the Biblical stories of creation and the Passion, it eschews the technological focus of Taalina’s other work but retains other connections. “Ashprihanal often says he feels like a machine when he’s running – and it feels good”, the filmmaker says. “So again it’s about people wanting to get past daily life and consumer culture, aiming for transcendence. Whether they make it or not – that’s another story...”

Press & Industry Screenings Friday 25 January de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal 9:30 Su Re [ip]

21:15 Lore

Su Re comes from a grand cinematographic tradition. Yet the Sardinian director provides new insights into the Passion of Christ with his beautiful, sober version. Shot in a landscape untouched by the modern era, with a ditto amateur cast. The title is Sardinian for ‘The King’. TG

12:00 Big Boy [ip]

The cliche that money doesn’t make you happy is perhaps nowhere more topical than in the nouveau riche Chinese middle classes. It acquires a surprising turn in Yang Lina’s ﬁction debut: Asian ghost story, erotic drama and social documentary in a unique and explosive mix.

Eliza Hittman, USA, 2013, DCP, 80 min, English

Kurnaz is German, and was arrested in Pakistan in 2001. He was handed over to the US authorities then detained at Guantánamo for over ﬁve years. Despite unimaginable torture, Kurnaz never gave up his innocence. Based on a true story. SP

Fanni has had enough of money and leaves the city. Anna has had enough of pigs and leaves the farm. In the new game Fanni rolls the dice, while Anna does not think twice. Differences appeal to them and they move on cheerfully toward a new-found freedom. 17:45 Die Welt [ep]

Revolution! And then what? At ﬁrst, usually insecurity and economic decay. A young Tunisian has doubts about his future after the 2011 revolution. Should he go to Europe? His father says no. But he meets a Dutch female tourist. Feature debut by Dutch-Tunisian ﬁlmmaker.

16:30 F*ck for Forest [ip]

A very cinematic documentary of a group of young post-hippies who live on the fringes and produce home-made porn in order to raise money to save the planet, especially the eco-system. Sounds funny, doesn’t it? But these kids aren’t joking at all!

22:00 The Fifth Gospel of Kaspar Hauser [wp]

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Dorcy is a black Christian, Sabrina is Arab. They are in love and they want to get married. But when the eldest of Sabrina’s 40 brothers learns about it, he is determined to break the engagement. Provocative and free, this Parisian drama goes well beyond the country. 11:15 Errors of the Human Body BF

Eron Sheean, Germany/Australia, 2012, DCP, 101 min, English

Comedy about a man who, after auditioning in the famous Cinecittà studios, convinces himself he has been cast in Big Brother, then thinks he’s being spied on in his private life.

American geneticist Geoff Burton goes to Germany to continue his pioneering research. Slowly but surely he discovers that his medicine has unfortunate side effects and not everyone can be trusted. Exciting thriller with convincing lead role for Michael Eklund.

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Cinerama 3

Jacek Borcuch, Poland/Spain, 2012, 35mm, 93 min, Polish/Spanish, e.s.

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Two Polish students fall in love 9:00 with each other during a holiday Darvag [wp] II in Spain. But a horrible accident ruins their relationship and their Abolfazl Jalili, Iran, 2013, plans. A thrilling existential drama DCP, 100 min, Farsi, e.s. in which fate seems to overcome A kind of bailiff, but the illegal the best-laid plans of men. kind. A loan shark. Not the most pleasant, safe or respected profes19:15 sion, but the Iranian student Yousef has no choice. These are Roland Hassel [ip] BF turbulent times in his country. Måns Månsson, Sweden, 2012, Made by one of Iran’s most realis35mm, 74 min, Swedish, e.s. tic masters. Iran the way it is. The unsolved murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme (1986) is the greatest trauma in modern Swedish history. Roland Hassel, well-known detective and ﬁlm character, re-examined the facts af- 9:45 ter his retirement. Deconstruction Éden [ip] SP of documentary reconstructions, shot in gritty VHS style. Funny Bruno Safadi, Brazil, 2012, and serious. DCP, 75 min, Portuguese, e.s. A very pregnant woman ends up with a dubious evangelist and his Church of Eden after the senseless murder of her husband. Fine, creative camera work, hypnotic sound, original locations in Rio and a beautiful leading role by actress Leandra Leal. •blauw•

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Cinerama 4

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A Minimal Difference [ip]

I Was Here [ip]

Phillippe Léonard, Canada, 2012, DCP, 6 min, no dialogue

Meditation on time, photography and traces. Forsaken [ip]

Heidi Phillips, Canada, 2012, 16mm, 5 min, English

Images selected from found footage explore techniques such as contact printing and hand tinting and toning. Apocalyptic! Francisca Duran, Canada, 2013, DCP, 7 min, English

Investigation into the legacy of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Publicised CIA ﬁles pose questions about memory and history.

Harmonica’s Howl

Where She Stood in the First Place [ip]

Lindsay McIntyre, Canada, 2010, DCP, 10 min, no dialogue

A meditation on place and personal histories set in Baker Lake, Nunavut: the only inland settlement in the Canadian Arctic.

LantarenVenster 3 9:45 Towheads [wp]

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Su Re •FLM•

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Shannon Plumb, USA, 2013, Video, 86 min, no dialogue

Aspiring to be in the perfect world but always turned down, Plumb focuses on the imperfections of her zestfully out-of-step creative force. Her elastic expressiveness pushes beyond the spirit of slapstick icons to mine a stay-at-home mom’s total immersion in the child world.

LantarenVenster 5

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9:00 The story of Kaspar Hauser, who Number 10 Blues/ grew up in dark isolation from huGoodbye Saigon [wp] manity, it is provided by a Gallician

artist with a radical experimental adaptation that aims to be nothing less than a religious message. Black & white 16mm, without the language of reason, eye to eye with the primaeval puzzle.

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Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iran, 2012, DCP, 87 min, English/Farsi, e.s.

The Bahá’í faith is one of artistic gardeners. They were driven out of Iran, their birthplace, and found a new home in Israel. What an irony. An Iranian master ﬁlmmaker and his son roamed around the gardens in Haifa and made their most striking ﬁlm.

LantarenVenster 2

Reality

The ﬁlmmaker’s fascination with a church intensiﬁes when she discovers the church was designed by the father of a former lover.

9:30 The Gardener [ep]

No hay pan

Jean-Paul Kelly, Canada, 2012, Video, 5 min, no dialogue

Petra Noordkamp, Netherlands, 2012, DCP, 16 min, English

Alberto Gracia, Spain, 2013, DCP, 61 min, Galician (Gallegan)/Spanish, e.s.

Cinerama 6

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A composition of only non-camera images, edited onto an original classical baroque and contemporary electronic soundtrack.

La madre, il figlio e l’architetto

A sun-drenched ﬂuid love story between Antonia, Luana and Pedro. Possessed by passion, they are imprisoned in a puzzling game of attraction and rejection. Sensory experience forms part of the trilogy around the star Leandra Leal.

Nazi zombie horror In which blood and limbs ﬂy cheerfully. Inspired by the diary of the illustrious Dr Victor Frankenstein, a small group of Nazis is working on an army of super soldiers, made up of human remains from their fallen comrades.

Rachid Djaïdani, France, 2012, DCP, 75 min, French/Arabic, e.s.

Matteo Garrone, Italy/France, 2012, DCP, 115 min, Italian/English

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Richard Raaphorst, Netherlands/ Czech Republic/USA, 2013, Video, 86 min, English

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Latest ﬁlm by De Oliveira (104 years old: we mention it, but it’s not really relevant) is about duty, poverty and truth. Based on a play from 1923 that is topical in this era of Eurocrisis. Beautiful roles by old stars such as Lonsdale, Cardinale and Moreau.

Bruno Safadi, Brazil, 2013, DCP, 72 min, Portuguese, e.s.

19:45 Frankenstein’s Army [wp]

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Michal Marczak, Poland, 2012, DCP, 85 min, English/German/ Spanish/Norwegian, e.s.

9:15 Rengaine

Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal/France, 2012, 35mm, 91 min, French, e.s.

17:00 Lasting [ep]

A young woman in Taipei is confronted with the blindness of her mother who is convinced she has a sixth sense. Shot with little facilities, but it is Verbeek’s most mature ﬁlm - about uprooting, spirituality and modernity. Nominated for The Big Screen Award.

Cinerama 2

de Doelen Willem Burger Zaal

14:30 Reality

18:00 Harmonica’s Howl [wp]

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Alex Pitstra, Netherlands, 2012, DCP, 80 min, Arabic/English/Dutch, e.s.

12:00 Gebo and the Shadow

Andrew James Paterson, Canada, 2011, Video, 8 min, no dialogue

Even If My Hands Were Full of Truths [wp]

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A cargo ship is stuck on the Canadian Saint Lawrence River for repairs. Traoré, an Ivory Coast mechanic is unjustly accused of causing the damage. Far away from home and family, Traoré tries to offer friendship to Fanny who takes him in, while he struggles to ﬁght for justice. Nominated for The Big Screen Award.

David Verbeek, Netherlands, 2013, DCP, 80 min, Mandarin, e.s.

Daniel Hoesl, Austria, 2012, DCP, 79 min, German/French, e.s.

Frédérick Pelletier, Canada/ Belgium, 2013, DCP, 91 min, French/English/Russian, e.s.

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Ricardo Pretti, Brazil, 2013, DCP, 75 min, Portuguese/English, e.s.

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Bali is not Indonesia. And not everybody lives there like a tourist. On Bali you can eat pork. Small farmers each keep a couple of pigs, preferably not a large and difﬁcult male. When you do need one, a hard-working mother drops by with one of her boars. 16:00 Diego Star [wp]

Roman Spring Leakage

The material structure of personal archival images is conﬂated with the abstraction of Kelly’s personal experience of seeing.

Putu Kusuma Widjaja, Indonesia, 2013, DCP, 94 min, Indonesian, e.s.

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Stefan Schaller, Germany, 2013, DCP, 95 min, German/English, e.s.

How to Describe a Cloud [wp]

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14:00 On Mother’s Head [wp]

During a boring summer, the inseAfter receiving a strange picture cure Lila focuses her attention on postcard, Marina knows there’s the older Sammy, who isn’t really nothing else to it but to return to interested in her at all. Powerful Rio de Janeiro, the beautiful city debut film about the difficulties of that here seems threatening and growing up, confusing emotions almost enchanting. Part of a coland budding sexuality in a phase lective inventive film operation. of life that is sometimes overly romanticised. 14:30 15:45 Soldate Jeannette [ep]

A reﬂection on fragility, beauty and violence, which questions the limits of our ethical relationship to one another and to the world.

Some ﬁlms want to capture life the way it was. Or how the ﬁlmmaker thought it was. Not all attempts succeed, but this one does. A portrait of the heart of the Philippines, when the director still had not been born. It feels as if she was there, with her father’s Super-8 camera.

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12:45 Rio Belongs to Us [wp]

Julieta Maria, Canada, 2010, Video, 2 min, no dialogue

Shireen Seno, Philippines, 2012, Video, 89 min, Tagalog, e.s.

The anti-Semitic Lore must lead her little brothers and sister to safety after the fall of the Third Reich. During the dangerous journey, she starts a complex relationship with Thomas, a refugee with Jewish papers. An intimate ﬁlm about losing innocence.

Pathé 6

Exercises in Faith: Bird [ep] •FLM•

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10:45 5 Jahre Leben [ip]

Yang Lina, Hong Kong, 2013, DCP, 98 min, Mandarin, e.s.

13:45 It Felt Like Love [ip]

Cate Shortland, Australia/ Germany/United Kingdom, 2012, DCP, 109 min, German/English

Giovanni Columbu, Italy, 2012, DCP, 87 min, Sardinian, e.s.

11:30 Longing for the Rain [wp]

Cinerama 5

ADMISSION WITH P&I ACCREDITATION ONLY

10:00 DINAMO P&I Screenings 1 SH

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Verzamelprogramma, 67 min

DINAMO (Distribution Network of Artists’ Moving image Organizations) distributors show recently acquired work. These titles can also be seen in the festival video library Bestaat uit:

Sight [wp]

Thirza Cuthand, Canada, 2013, Video, 3 min, English

Lasting

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Osada Norio, Japan/Vietnam, 2013, Video, 97 min, Japanese/ English/Vietnamese, e.s.

A story of love and violence takes place in Saigon in 1975, toward the end of the Vietnam War. A Japanese businessman accidentally kills a Vietnamese. He loses his status and wealthy position in Vietnam. A recently ﬁnished genre ﬁlm in a unique setting. 11:00 Après mai

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Olivier Assayas, France, 2012, DCP, 122 min, French

Paris, early 1970s. Gilles is a student swept up in the political and creative effervescence of the times. Like his friends, he wavers between commitment and personal aspirations, and needs to make crucial choices in order to ﬁnd himself in a tumultuous age. 17:00 A ﬂoresta de Jonathas [ip]

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Big Boy

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Sérgio Andrade, Brazil, 2012, DCP, 99 min, Portuguese/English, e.s.

Jonathas knows no other place than the Amazon, where he lives and works with his family. As a living being with its own will, the jungle has a fascinating attraction for tourists and also forms a seductive threat for Jonathas. Enchanting low-budget debut. Errors of the Human Body

Either on a temporary or permanent basis, anyone can lose an ability, such as sight, at any time. Algonquin [ip]

Travis Shilling, Canada, 2011, Video, 5 min, English

A portrait of reincarnation is poetically and brutally told as a wolf returns to earth as a man.

How to Describe a Cloud

09.00

11:45

105’

89’

11.00

The Master Paul Thomas Anderson

10.00

10:15

Baobab Tree

09:30 Tall as the 82’

Ninomiya Ryutaro

Tiedan

Hao Jie

67’

Simon Killer Antonio Campos SP

137’

13:00

13.00

85’

Call Girl Mikael Marcimain

Odayaka Uchida Nobuteru

85’

97’

98’

14:15

BF 91’

100’

95’

11.00

11:30

11.00

Yang Lina

12.00

13:45

13.00

96’ 13.00

13:15

14.00

96’

90’

140’

15.00 BF

16.00

17.00

Chose His Own Fate

Wakamatsu Koji

17:00

Berberian Sound Studio Peter Strickland BF 90’

II 107’

90’

76’

92’

Rhino Season Bahman Ghobadi

16:00 11.25 The Day Mishima

16:15

My Hometown

15:30 Four Ways to Die in

BF 95’

16:30

17:15

18.00 119’

18:30

90’

19.00

20.00

Shanghai Dibakar Banerjee

Sightseers Ben Wheatley

19:30 Big Talk

19:30

Act

BF 91’

19:15 The Unspeakable

Dan Sallitt de liefde

Ari Deelder

19:15 Toegetakeld door

CC 69’

Kees Brienen

van een klootzak

19:15

19:30

19:45

140’

90’

91’

110’

17.00 79’ 17.00

17:45

85’

18.00

94’

107’

18:30

18.00

Die Welt Alex Pitstra

II 98’

Howl

93’

122’

98’

22:00

98’

80’

64’

92’

106’

110’

92’

74’

95’

101’

86’

96’

23.00 Vulgaria Pang Ho-cheung

22.00 22:15

Wasteland Rowan Athale

94’

96’

Spring Breakers Harmony Korine

Nairobi Half Life David ‘Tosh’ Gitonga 22:15

Towheads Shannon Plumb

75’

22:00

Ninah’s Dowry Victor Viyuoh Body

Eron Sheean

22:00

22:15 Change of Fortune

Kira Muratova

Miss Lovely Ashim Ahluwalia

Longing for the Rain Yang Lina

153’

Hwy

Mike Ott

90’

22:15 Pearblossom

21:45

Ixjana Józef Skolimowski / Michal Skolimowski

22:30

The Radiant BF The Otolith Group

21:45

Centro histórico diverse regisseurs

94’

89’

74’

110’

24.00

22.00

23.00

24.00

109’

21.00

verzamelprogramma

22:30 Neural Pathways

verzamelprogramma

22:00 Quote Unquote

SH 96’

verzamelprogramma

Soul Hotel verzamelprogramma

22:00 Invisible Present Tense

22:00

99’

20.00

130’

110’

19.00

24.00 SP

Shanghai Dibakar Banerjee 109’

23.00 21:15

Lore 22:15 SP Cate Shortland 123’

22.00

83’

140’

21.00

80’

61’

20.00 19:15

Roland Hassel BF Big Talk 19:30 MånsIoMånsson e te Bernardo Bertolucci74’

21:45 Une histoire d’amour

75’

Me Too Alexey Balabanov

Hélène Fillières 22:15

80’

200’

91’

80’ 19.00

19:15

21:30

Call Girl Mikael Marcimain to Us

21:45 Rio Belongs

Ricardo Pretti 22:00 The Fifth

80’

Two in One Kira Muratova

Jean-Claude Brisseau

WELCOME

90’

22:00

Kees Brienen

21:15 DEAD BODY

Die Welt Alex Pitstra

21:45 La fille de nulle part

SP La cinquième saison Gospel of Kaspar Jessica Woodworth Hauser A.Gracia 86’ 94’ / Peter Brosens

100’

72’

Wadjda Haifaa Al Mansour a Cloud

David Verbeek II 100’

19:15 How to Describe

Darvag Abolfazl Jalili Howl

Bruno Safadi

21:00

Army

79’

110’

90’

Richard Raaphorst 86’

and Other Illnesses

Yosep Anggi Noen

20:00 Peculiar Vacation

Les revenants Fabrice Gobert / Frédéric Mermoud

21:00

19:45 Frankenstein’s BF

19:30 The Harmonica’s

Jeannette

138’

19:45

18:45 Toegetakeld door de liefde

Ari Deelder

La noche de enfrente Raúl Ruiz

Daniel Hoesl

18:45 Soldate

18:00 Harmonica’s SP 18:30 Frankenstein’s

Army Bruno Safadi 72’ Richard Raaphorst