41ST INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM #6 TUESDAY 31 JANUARY 2012
CineMart delegates relax with a drink and a laugh at the Industry Party hosted by the IFFR and EYE Film Institute Netherlands at Rotterdam’s Westelijke Handelsterrein on Sunday evening.
photo: Rogier Maaskant
Remembering Raúl Geoffrey Macnab speaks to Rotterdam attendees about their memories of Raúl Ruiz (1941-2011)
Rotterdam programmer Dickie Parlevliet still remembers vividly the circumstances in which the great Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz made a film in Rotterdam – in her house. Ruiz (who died last summer and whose memory is being honoured at the festival this year) was a friend of Rotterdam founder Huub Bals. The director was preparing his surrealistic fantasy film, On Top of the Whale (1982). He wanted to shoot in Holland because he liked the light and was looking for a house on an island. Producer Monica Tegelaar recommended Parlevliet, telling Ruiz that her house was next to a canal. “He came to see the house and he was very excited about it. Then he came back with cinematographer Henri Alekan and the whole crew”, Parlevliet recalls. She continued to live in the house, even as the film crew was working round her. She slept with the doors open – there were so many cables scattered around that she had no choice. The director used everything he could find in the house, from her collection of bird and mice skulls to her books. “It was overwhelming and I lost some things, and he used everything from my stuff,” Parlevliet states. On Top of the Whale was, by Parlevliet’s own account, “a very strange film but quite successful on the festival circuit.” She says she wouldn’t let a film crew into her house today. Even so, the film marked the beginning of a friendship with Ruiz that lasted until his death. She was heavily involved in the major Ruiz retrospective IFFR staged in 2004. Magician
Ruiz was an enigmatic figure. “Hubert Bals called him a magician,” Parlevliet says. “He had very strange ideas,
but that’s what you always see in his films and what is so interesting about him. I liked it... and I don’t care if I sometimes don’t understand him. He is fascinating.” The Chilean wasn’t just a filmmaker: he was an architect, novelist, mathematician, professor and – as Rotterdam attendees discovered several years ago when he put on his apron and cooked for festival guests – an accomplished chef. French actor Melvil Poupaud (in Rotterdam for tonight’s tribute) first worked with Ruiz when he was nine years old, on La Ville Des Pirates (1983) and last worked with him on Mysteries of Lisbon (2011) and Ballet Aquatique (2011), a playful short about phantom fish that screens in IFFR’s Signals: Regained. He saw Ruiz for the final time the day before he died. “In some old books, you have an uncle that appears and disappears, almost like a pirate in a book or film like Treasure Island,” Poupaud recalls. He paints a vivid picture of the playful but very mysterious and dreamlike atmosphere on Ruiz’s sets. The director didn’t like his cast or crew to get bored. At one point on almost every Ruiz shoot, he would devise a long shot and give his collaborators new tasks: the make-up artist would push the dolly, the sound editor might be given a role in front of camera. Collaborators talk about the playful atmosphere he created. Actors were always happy to be “guided by this crazy, brilliant guy.” Playful
When Poupaud saw Ruiz on his deathbed, the director was still the same mercurial and playful presence. “He was making some jokes, talking about the movie (The Lines Of Wellington) we were supposed to do in November and not really understanding what was happening. I guess people would protect him from telling him it was the end... everything around Raúl was ‘Ruizian.’ A dinner with him would be like magic, because he would
order some food you would never know... friends would appear, scientists and philosophers. There was always a surrealistic and funny atmosphere around him.” For Ruiz, Poupaud conjectures, everything (life, death, history, religion) was “a cosmic joke.” The actor speaks with the most fondness of the very small-budget films he made with Ruiz in Portugal in the 1980s. “Having not much money would push him to invent stuff on the set and make some crazy shots.” For Ruiz’s Combat D’Amour En Songe (2000), the cast members weren’t even given a script. They made the film according to a mathematical formula. The actors had such faith in the director that they were ready to shoot the film in a freewheeling, improvisatory way. “From my point of view, he was a master. He would master a big budget movie, he would master a movie with no camera, no money,” Poupaud says. “It was all about poetry. Whether it’s talking about science, love or phantoms, the only thing (that mattered on a Ruiz film) is to create a moment of poetry.” One piece of advice Ruiz imparted to the young French actor was to say sorry three times if ever he gave money to a beggar. “The first time it’s ‘sorry because that’s all I have to give you.’ The second time ‘it’s sorry because I can’t take your place’ and then ‘sorry because I have been lying two times.’” Inspiration
The Chilean director continues to inspire filmmakers. For example, Jose Luis Torres Leiva has made a one minute short, Copia Imperfecta, especially for this year’s Festival in homage to Ruiz. The short, backed by the Hubert Bals Fund, takes an image from a sleep-walking scene in Ruiz’s film La Ville Des Pirates. The image, Leiva says, captures Ruiz’s “humour, his reverie, his provocation and his elegance.” Meanwhile, shooting is currently underway in Portu-
gal on The Lines Of Wellington. Ruiz’s widow and editor Valeria Sarmiento has taken over direction of the film, which is produced by Paulo Branco and stars John Malkovich, Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Huppert. (Poupaud, who also has a role, points out that the call sheets still describe the film as a ‘Raúl Ruiz Production’). Earlier this week in Rotterdam, Finnish auteur Aki Kaursimäki (who first met Ruiz in 1986 and saw him sporadically in subsequent years) talked of his admiration of the Chilean director. Kaurismäki expressed his regret that he had never been able to lure Ruiz to the Midnight Sun Festival in Finland. “We had a very fast understanding of each other. I liked the man very much.” Tonight there will be a ‘Smart Talk’ dedicated to Ruiz. Hosted by Adrian Martin and featuring contributions from Poupaud, producer Francois Margolin and former IFFR director Simon Field, it is billed as an evening of “memories” and “beautiful images”. It takes place at 20.00 in the Kleine Zaal, Rotterdamse Schouwburg. See the programme for details of Raúl Ruiz screenings.
SHORT WINNERS The winners of the Tiger Competition for Short Films were announced yesterday. The three winners are Makino Takashi’s Generator (Japan, 2011); Mati Diop’s Big in Vietnam (France 2012) and Jeroen Eisinga’s Springtime (Netherlands, 2012). Charlotte Lim Lay Kuen’s I’m Lisa (Malaysia, 2010) received a Special Mention from the jury, and Albert Sackl’s Im Freien was chosen to be IFFR’s nominee for the European Film Awards 2012.