IFFR 2010 Daily Tiger UK #4

DAILY TIGER

NEDERLANDSE EDITIE Z.O.Z

39TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM #4 SUNDAY 31 JANUARY 2010

Risky business: “Working with a pregnant actress was a risk,” French director François Ozon told the Daily Tiger yesterday of his new film The Refuge, which stars Isabelle Carré, who was pregnant at the time of the shooting. “We had no insurance. But it was very low budget. We began the film with no money and a crew of eight. It was a risk, but my producer and I knew that. When I make a film, I need to have the feeling it’s a challenge.”

photo: Felix Kalkman

STANDING PRETTY A tumultuous decade has confirmed CineMart’s standing in the marketplace, its chief Marit van den Elshout tells Nick Cunningham

“It is imperative that CineMart continues to be self-reflective – we must never sit back and assume that we have found the right working model,” stresses CineMart chief Marit van den Elshout ahead of the 27th edition of the event.

“We are always actively re-assessing what we do, constantly working on small innovations, tweaking things within the Rotterdam Lab or working in a different way on project selection. Improving and improving and improving. So in that sense we do change every year, and that’s why now we are in such good shape. But at the same time I am happy with the structure. I feel that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”

Colloquially referred to by industry types as the mother of co-production markets, this year’s event again presents a thorough programme of high-quality industry events with the pitching

forum at its core. The Rotterdam Lab will focus its attention on 67 emerging producers, with a series of networking events, industry panels, workshops and speed-dating sessions with some of the international trade’s key players. The Dutch Treats programme offers up the best of recent Dutch output for professional scrutiny, while the digitised access-all-areas Video Library is open every day until late, stocked with the majority of films selected for IFFR 2010, as well as backcatalogue offerings from many of the filmmakers in town to pitch their projects.

Diverse projects

This year, 33 diverse and innovative projects represent filmmakers from 32 countries selected from 460 submissions. These include works from established directors such as Alexey Balabanov, whose drama Leather concerns the rapid development of capitalism within post-soviet Russia, Simon Pummell’s multi-media Brand New-U and CineMart first-timer Susanna Helke’s Malmi Murderaz, a semi-documentary film

about a group of boys living in a down-at-heel Helsinki suburb. Van den Elshout underlines the CineMart principle of sourcing projects which are both artistic and passionate, while meeting the demands of the market. “We know from our producers that CineMart is a very effective place for them to be, to meet with each other, to talk about projects,” she adds. “We are still very open and flexible in our selection, so there is the strongest possibility to find new and very good and diverse projects. We have projects like Island, a South Korean horror, and Bulle de Soleil, a Swiss drama about an obese child who regains his love for life. What’s more most of the projects this year have a high level of investment already in place.”

Positive vibe

2010 marks Van den Elshout’s tenth CineMart outing, her fifth in charge. It has been, she points out, a decade of fundamental change in terms of the industry’s evolving acknowledgment of CineMart’s high standing, if not pre-eminence, with-

in the marketplace. “Where last year there was a lot of concern from people about how the credit crisis would affect CineMart, this year things seem to have definitely picked up again and there is a very positive vibe already,” she points out.

“There has been high demand for meetings with all projects: even the ones that might be considered more difficult. This is an interesting sign because, with the current difficulties in getting projects financed, it is more likely for projects from established producers and directors to get a lot of attention. Luckily, the smaller jewels are still attracting a lot of attention at CineMart too.

We feel great admiration for the producers trying to get these films off the ground nowadays.

They need lots of patience to get their projects financed. Yes, I think that CineMart is very well established. But remember, CineMart is part of the whole synergy of the festival. We are very strong because we are embedded within the festival. CineMart cannot be a stand-alone thing.” continues on page 3

Scorched earth

continued from page 1 Reappraisals

Two years ago, on the occasion of the festival’s 25th anniversary, IFFR staff sat back, took stock, and mused on the effectiveness of what they were doing within a radically changing audiovisual landscape. Subsequent reappraisals of the CineMart programme have seen intensive examinations of alternative distribution models and the promotion of more and more ground-breaking multi-platform projects within CineMart selection. This year, IFFR and CineMart is going a stage further, into the increasingly radical areas of production finance, with an instrumental role for the crowd-funding Cinema Reloaded (CR) experiment.

Look to the future

“Cinema Reloaded was something that came from this urge and need for change,” Van den Elshout remembers. “When we celebrated our 25th birthday, we had this big brainstorm when the new people on the horizon, like Lance Weiler [Him, CineMart 2009] and the people from the Dutch production house Submarine, but also people like Simon Field and Keith Griffiths of UK-based Illuminations Films, really got down to discussing this co-production thing and how we at the Rotterdam Film Festival should look to the future and change it.”

A theory was postulated, that the loyal and smart Rotterdam audience deserved more than an enduser credit, and so the idea for Cinema Reloaded was born – three projects, a voting public and an assurance that at least one of the projects would go into production and be ready for IFFR 2011.

The three CR filmmakers can boast very strong CineMart credentials. Alexis Dos Santos will pitch a feature-length extension of his Another World project during CineMart 2010. He also pitched Unmade Beds in 2007, the same year that Pipilotti Rist pitched her Pepperminta. Ho Yuhang came to CineMart in 2006, where he pitched Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.

“Look, we are not re-inventing the wheel with the Cinema Reloaded model, but I think festivals and markets are really taking on a new role and we must continue to research what that role could be,” Van den Elshout asserts. “These three filmmakers are very distinctive in their signatures and backgrounds, and they all fit well into the Rotterdam model. The enthusiasm is really there for their projects. It still has to get going, but I think we can really use the momentum of the festival to see how they will evolve, and then see what we can learn from the process.”

Ange Leccia

photo: Roman Mangold

Nuit bleue

Acclaimed visual artist Ange Leccia talks about landscape and loneliness as his feature Nuit bleue receives it world premiere in Rotterdam. By Edward Lawrenson

Asked how he felt about the IFFR world premiere of his feature Nuit bleue, Ange Leccia remarks: “I’m too old to be nervous.” In fact, Leccia isn’t old at all, but the playful nonchalance betrays the 30-year-long body of experience this Paris-based

Corsican artist has built up. Better known as a gallery-based visual artist, Leccia makes his feature debut with Nuit bleue, although he has made films for installation projects and in collaboration with IFFR 2003 Artist in Focus, Dominique Gonzales Foerster.

But this haunting drama, about the return trip a young woman called Antonia makes to her home island of Corsica, is his first fully-fledged “professional” film. “At this stage in my career, cinema allows me to show what I want to show. The prob-

lem with contemporary art is that it’s mostly for a small group of people who are already knowledgeable about that kind of art, whereas cinema addresses itself to a large public; it touches more people.”

Telling of the confused emotions Antonia feels as she’s torn between Ettore (her older lover) and the younger Alexander, the movie is an absorbing and deftly drawn character study that uses Corsica’s wind-ravaged landscapes, rather than dialogue, to evoke the sense of loneliness and isolation of its three leads. This expressive approach to weather and to Corsica’s rugged terrain is an important feature of Nuit bleue: “We shot in November, so I knew we’d get this stormy weather. The budget was small but I still made sure the cast and crew were available over this period because we could wait till the weather was right. The terrain is austere and dramatic, a bit like the people; there’s no one there, so it makes it easy to film there, although during the summer it’s a very touristic island: there are sailing boats and such like everywhere.”

So what does he think the local Corsicans will think of the film? “At first they’d be happy to see themselves and locations they recognise on screen. But the style of my film is quite confrontational, so they may be disappointed!”

This connection between the place and national temperament is also encouraged by the film’s focus on Corsican independence, a struggle its male characters are involved with to varying degrees. But the issue is less political than allegorical: “It wasn’t the question of nationalism per se, but the symbol of the artist who has to be in a conflictual situation to be able to create; there is a parallel between the Corsican will for independence, and rebellion and creation.” Discussing the explosions that Alexander (played by Leccia’s son Alexandre Leccia) stages at night by the rocky coast – filmed by Leccia almost as if they were instances of site-specific art – the director talks about these fiery protests as creative acts: “You don’t quite know why he blows things up, but he’s more interested in explosions than nationalism. He loves fire. As an artist, you don’t know why you’re so rebellious, or why you sometimes need to create in such a violent way.”

Nuit bleue – Ange Leccia Sat 06 17:00 CI5

Pattern recognition Tiger director Anocha Suwichakornpong tells Edward Lawrenson about how her debut film Mundane History went from conventional narrative to experimental lyricism

Mundane History, the title of Anocha Suwichakornpong’s debut feature, provides a flavour of its distinctive qualities. “I liked the strong contrast between the two words,” the Thai filmmaker tells

Anocha Suwichakornpong

the Daily Tiger. “Mundane suggests everyday life, whereas history is something far grander.”

There’s plenty of quotidian detail in the film’s main focus: on the relationship between a middle-class young man Ake, paralysed after an unspecified accident, and Pun, the carer who looks after him. Embittered by his disability, Ake is withdrawn and rarely leaves his room; a state of physical and emotional stasis that Suwichakornpong evokes through an editing approach that

photo: Ruud Jonkers

is based more on cyclical rhythms than a linear narrative. “Ake stays in bed most of the time,” she explains, “things revolve around him, life is very repetitive. When I started the screenplay it was a lot more conventional; I spelled things out. But when I was editing, I started to notice repeated patterns, even in the shots themselves, so my editor and I decided to explore that aspect (which was already inherent in the story).”

This editing process took six months, and marked another close collaboration between Suwichakornpong and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s regular editor, Lee Chatametikool, after working on her short. “It’s a good working relationship,” says Suwichakornpong. “It’s very strange. During editing, we spend a lot of time not editing; we spend a lot of time talking. Every time I turn up at his office, we spend half and hour talking politics and things.” They also listen to music to “calm

Mundane History

filmfestivalrotterdam.com

our nerves and also to find some structure for the film.”

It was during the edit that Suwichakornpong first heard the track by the Malaysian band Furniture that plays over one of the film’s most memorable screens: a gorgeous, slightly trippy CGI sequence of the creation of a supernova, which Ake and Pun view during their visit to a planetarium.

This is one of a number of lyrical and experimental sequences that evoke the gradual reawakening of Ake’s internal life, and suggestively point to the film’s larger concerns – and the sense of grandness and transcendence hinted at in the second half of the movie’s title.

Talking about the changes that the project underwent, from a more conventional, character-based screenplay to the allusive and enigmatic final film, Suwichakornpong is keen to acknowledge the support of the Hubert Bals fund: “Two years ago I got some money for project development for this film: at the time it was called The Sparrow”, she says.

“We shot the film, then we still needed money for post production – we had a CGI sequence; it was quite inexpensive, but we still needed completion funds.”

VPRO Tiger Awards Competition Mundane History – Anocha Suwichakornpong Sun 31 19:00 PA4, Mon 01 13:30 PA 3, Wed 03 13:30 PA3, Sat 06 21:30 PA4

3

Pumped up Scottish director Scott Graham talks to Edward Lawrenson about coming to CineMart with his Highlands-set drama Shell

Attending CineMart for the first time, Scottish director Scott Graham is hoping to generate interest for his debut feature, Shell. Revolving around the relationship between the eponymous 16-year-old heroine and her widowed father in a remote petrol station in the Highlands of Scotland, the film is based on a short that Graham completed in 2008. The feature retains the short’s “sense of isolation”, Graham explains by phone from his office in Glasgow, but it’s otherwise much changed.

In fact, many of these changes took place during Graham’s participation in Binger Film Lab’s script development course in 2008. Bringing a first draft of the project to Binger, Graham wrote two more versions, and the draft he is taking

Me, the producer The Daily Tiger’s Edward Lawrenson looks forward to his new career as a film producer

Last night I threw caution to the wind and invested half my fee as editor of the Englishlanguage Daily Tiger in a five Euro coin that enables me to become a Cinema Reloaded coproducer. Naturally inclined to champion the underdog, my hard-earned money went to the project with the least amount of funds so far: Ho Yuhang’s still untitled short. They say film journalists are, at heart, frustrated filmmakers. But, dear readers, let me assure you that in my new role as a producer I shall continue to uphold the traditions of editorial independence and integrity that this newspaper has always aspired to. And I hope you will enjoy tomorrow’s front page, declaring the Ho Yuhang’s as-yet unmade and untitled short to be a work of unsurpassable genius. The best film. In the World. Ever.

For all my commitment to high journalistic ideals, however, I still worry I’ve changed since donning the mantle of producer. The image of the producer as a power-deranged, control-obsessive, ego-inflated monster is a pernicious stereotype. Some are really nice people. I hear. But the priorities I have as producer are different from those of a jobbing journalist.

I’ve asked my IFFR bosses, for instance, to move me out of the one-room shack that us Tiger writers share with the crew of an Estonian container ship and into the best penthouse apartment in town. I have started dressing better (thanks Tom Ford, my newest, bestest friend!) I now have a PA, the lovely Cindy. She trained as a masseuse, and what those nimble fingers can’t do with a warm Blackberry isn’t worth paying good money for on Sunset Strip. And most of my time is now spent in negotiations over my credits. My lawyers are currently arguing over the point size of my by-line with the other writers’ legal teams.

Oh yes, did I tell you my colleagues have become producers too? So if tomorrow’s edition of the Tiger is late, don’t blame us, blame protracted contractual disputes between our lawyers. And, of course, the otherwise superb idea that is Cinema Reloaded.

You too can become a producer at cinemareloaded.com!

to CineMart is essentially what emerged from those sessions in Amsterdam.

“It had a huge impact on the script,” says Graham of the process, “and on me as a writer.” Although his fellow writers had markedly different projects from his, “there is,” he explains, “a commonality about the obstacles we faced; you learn a lot from discussing your script problems with other people.”

Accompanying Graham to CineMart is his producer David Smith, whose company Brocken Spectre produced Graham’s short Native Son for the UK Film Council’s Cinema Extreme strand. Having secured £25,000 development money from Scottish Screen, Smith hopes to lock in Scottish Screen and UK Film Council as producing partners for his €1.1 million budget while in Rotterdam. Describing CineMart as an opportunity to “kickstart the financing” before heading to Berlin, Smith is especially keen about bringing on board international partners. “I don’t want to generalise,” he says, “but there’s a European sensibility to Scott” and he hopes he can interest international producers and find an international sales agent at Rotterdam.

Having already shot the exteriors for the short near Loch Broom in the West of Scotland, Graham would consider returning to the original location for the feature; but also wants to recce for other

Scott Graham

garages throughout the Highlands. And his actors?

“We’re casting the net quite wide for the girl,” he explains, “and I’d be interested in discovering an unknown.” But for the role of the father, he’s think-

Dutch delight

photo: Nadine Maas

ing of some high-profile names, mentioning one to the Daily Tiger before Smith, ever the producer, shouts from the other side of the room and orders him to keep schtum.

Audience Participation Nick Cunningham looks forward to this afternoon’s Re: Reloaded panel session

C’est déjà l’été

2010 is shaping up to be a good year for the Dutch, Holland Film managing director Claudia Landsberger tells Nick Cunningham

The 2010 Dutch Treats selection, IFFR’s dedicated strand of homegrown works, complements an eclectic range of films that are part of the wider IFFR progamme. The programme opens today with with Martijn Maria Smits’s Tiger competitor C’est déjà l’été, which world premiered last night. Other highlights include Urszula Antoniak’s Locarno multiaward winner Nothing Personal, Alex van Warmerdam’s The Last Days of Emma Blank, The Storm by Ben Sombogaart and Ramon Gieling’s Spanishlanguage Netherlands Film Festival opener Tramontana. A collaboration between IFFR, The Netherlands Film Fund and Holland Film, the Dutch Treats programme will run to February 2.

“I am very proud of the section this year, as well as the other Dutch films at the festival,” commented Holland Film managing director Claudia Landsberger. “In the festival, we have a world premiere in the Tiger competition, we have three in Tiger shorts, six in Bright Future and two in Spectrum. It is a very good year for the Dutch in Rotterdam.”

Landsberger singled out Smits’ C’est déjà l’été and Ineke Smits’ festival-closer The Aviatrix of Kazbek for special mention. “In C’est déjà l’été, the director has obviously been inspired by the very tragic Belgian landscape and society we recognise in the films of the Dardennes brothers,” she stressed. “He is a young man and very resolute in his adherence to social realism. Aviatrix is the exact opposite, nothing is realistic, all is fantasy and it is filmed in a completely different style. While C’est déjà l’été is highly realistic, grim and gritty, Aviatrix is very cinematic and the story is told through poetic images. I think Ineke has succeeded in telling a very original story in a very original style. Both films represent very polarised approaches to filmmaking.”

Landsberger also offers up Sander Burger’s Hunting and Sons and Mark de Cloe’s Shocking Blue, both screening in Bright Future, for commendation.

“Hunting and Sons is also highly realistic and very strong,” she opined. “It grips you by the throat but is nevertheless very subtle. Little by little the secret of the film becomes revealed in this bourgeois village in the Netherlands. Shocking Blue is a very well-made, dark coming-of-age-story in which the Dutch tulip landscape is depicted in a very beautiful way.”

filmfestivalrotterdam.com

This afternoon’s panel session on the Cinema Reloaded experiment promises to stoke up debate about future audience participation within the filmmaking process. It will also assess the changing shape of festivals as they assume a greater role both as an indispensable link in the production chain and, subsequently, as a revenue-generator for filmmakers. As importantly for the trio of Cinema Reloaded hopefuls, the event will provide ample hustings opportunities from an auditorium of potential co-producers. Panelists include Cannes Market chief Jerôme Paillard, sales agent Frédéric Corvex (Umedia, France) and Savina Neirotti of the Torino Film Lab. Former Screen International editor and journalist Mike Gubbins will moderate.

“What Rotterdam is doing is seeing things in terms of opportunities,” Gubbins told the Daily Tiger yesterday. “Digital change is inevitable. Rotterdam has believed, and will always believe, that cinema has huge resonance in terms of the kind of directors it can bring on board and the kind of reactions it can get from its audiences. So what we need to be doing is to work out how we can engage with audiences who feel empowered by digital. Cinema Reloaded is a very active experiment in interactivity. It’s about not seeing the audience as passive recipients, but as people who have the opportunity to contribute to the project, even if the directors themselves will always retain the original vision and the ownership of the idea. The director will always be the soul of the film; what Rotterdam is saying is that there is no reason why the audiences have to be passive at the far end.

It makes sense to be talking to them from a commercial, and, I would argue, a creative perspective.”

RE: RELOADED PANEL 15:00 – 17:00 DJZ, 1st floor,

The state of play in the Cinema Reloaded stakes as of Saturday: PROJECT

PROJECT

PROJECT

1

2

3

€ 30.000

€ 30.000

€ 30.000

€ 2,420

€ 1,515

€ 1,335

Alexis Dos Santos

Pipilotti Rist

Ho Yuhang

5

In the name of the son Director Jacob Tierney can’t be in Rotterdam this week, but his father is. Geoffrey Macnab talked to the filmmaker’s dad – and producer

Jacob Tierney isn’t in Rotterdam this week. The young Canadian director (whose latest feature The Trotsky screens in Bright Future) has already started production on a new feature, Notre Dame De Grace. In his absence, his producer has come to the festival instead. This producer also happens to be the director’s father. Kevin Tierney was the executive-producer on Jacob’s first film as director, Twist (2003), a contemporary reworking of Oliver Twist.

“Our professional careers have been very parallel,” Tierney reflects on a working relationship with his son that stretches back to when Jacob was six years old. (Tierney was a publicist on Jacob’s first movie as a child actor.) Over the years, filmmaking has become “the family business.”

Ken Loach vs Warren Beatty

Tierney has a blossoming career of his own as a producer and writer, but has continued to work closely with Jacob. The Trotsky, Jacob’s third film, turned out to be a comedy. But this wasn’t how it was originally envisaged. The film is about a precocious young high school kid who behaves as if he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. “It went from a serious drama about Trotsky in high school – tedious beyond belief – and evolved into a comedy,” Tierney notes of the evolution of his son’s screenplay. In its early drafts, he suggests, the screenplay was like “Ken Loach goes to High School.” Then Jacob decided that a comic version of Warren Beatty’s Reds might be more fun. “He is a big Ken Loach fan, but he is also a big Warren Beatty fan. He realised that the screenplay was so deadly serious it was almost a joke. Just by flipping it, and changing the focus on the story, it was a comedy.”

Che Guevara vs Leon Trotsky

Jacob grew up in a politically-conscious environ-

Kevin Tierney

photo: Corinne de Korver

ment. However, his father insists that his son wasn’t force-fed agit-prop. “He didn’t grow up in some dour Communist cell,” his father says. “He was always very intellectual in his pursuits. When everyone was yelling about Che Guevara, he went looking for somebody else and he came up with Trotsky. Trotsky wasn’t a T-Shirt.” Many young cinema-goers haven’t heard of Leon Trotsky, but that hasn’t stopped The Trotsky being given a very warm reception. Audiences even seem to like the title. “It sounds funny. It (Trotsky) is a funny word,” Tierney

Khalife has just joined Cairo-based broadcasting powerhouse ART as ‘Special Advisor’ to its Arab Media Distribution arm. His appointment comes as the broadcaster seeks to ramp up its film activities. “They want to change their strategy a little bit. They want to invest in many Arab films that can have international commercial potential,” Khalife comments.

ART co-financed Nadine Labaki’s hit, Caramel.

Now, Khalife is working with Labaki on her new project. Labaki is close to finishing the script for Antoine Khalife

photo: Corinne de Korver

Shallow Grave vs Rear Window

Tierney is currently producing Jacob’s new film, which he describes as “Shallow Grave meets Rear Window.” Later this year, he’ll be calling the shots

on his own debut feature, French Immersion, a crosscultural comedy exploring the experiences of English Canadians enduring a crash course in French in Quebec. Jacob is one of the actors. “There is nobody in English Canada who has never in their life had to confront the notion of French immersion,” Tierney says. Shooting on the comedy begins in late May. Tierney doubts that it will surface at IFFR. “It’s not the kind of movie that is going to end up in Rotterdam. I don’t know where these movies end up, but they don’t end up in festivals!”

Independent pick-ups

Art home Antoine Khalife, former Head of Festivals and Films at Unifrance, is putting together a slate of new Arab films, he tells Geoffrey Macnab

says, adding that you don’t need to know anything about Trotsky to enjoy the film. The name, he suggests, could refer to vodka, an ice-hockey player or a something painful you get in Mexico and it wouldn’t make any difference to the way audiences react to the movie.

IF Television intends pick up 300 films a year, the company’s President Daniel Castro tells Geoffrey Macnab

the new as yet untitled work, which will again shoot in Lebanon. ART will be partnering with French producer Anne-Dominique Toussaint of Les Films Des Tournelles. ART is set to put up more than half of the budget.

Another project ART is set to board is UpSide Down, a $1 million drama set during the 2006 war in Lebanon from director Ahmed Ghossein.

This is scheduled to shoot in the late summer.

Meanwhile, ART is also in talks to support Smile, You’re in Jeddah, the $1.6 million debut feature

by Saudi Arabian director, producer and actress Ahd Kamel. This is a comedy about a Saudi girl living in New York, trying to marry an American man in the face of family opposition. The aim is for ART to work together with international producers who will oversee the marketing of the films outside the Arab world. Khalife will be using his exemplary contacts in the French industry while also striking alliances with producers elsewhere across Europe.

ART invests in production in return for distribution rights across the Middle East. Khalife is based in Paris. He also has an office in Beirut and works closely with his colleagues in Cairo.

Thanks to his many years with Unifrance, Khalife is a familiar face in Rotterdam. He started working at the French promotional agency in 1991 and spent two decades there. He accompanied many big name French auteurs to the festival, among them Catherine Breillat when she was the subject of a major retrospective, and Benoît Jacquot.

He is happy to be back at the Festival this year, albeit in a new guise. “I have so many friends here and so I feel at home,” he reflects. “I am very proud to be in Rotterdam. This is my first mission – my first big festival in my new job.”

New French buyer Indépandant Film Télévision (launched last November) is in Rotterdam, on the prowl for feature films for its cable TV channel.

The new channel, which showcases world cinema, has the long-term ambition of trying to turn itself into an “IFC for Europe.”

The company, which buys pay-TV and VOD rights for French-speaking Europe, has set itself the challenge of broadcasting a new feature film every night. It aims to acquire 300 new films every year.

Company President Daniel Castro said that the company pays up to €3,500 per film. The outfit also makes package deals.

The new station needs to attract around 120,000 subscribers to break even. “We think that by September, we will reach that number,” Castro comments. He claims that the company’s website, www.iftelevision.com, is currently attracting 6,000 hits a day. In the longer term, Castro and his team aim to set up a VOD platform. Here at the

Mathilde Daudy and Daniel Castro

filmfestivalrotterdam.com

Festival, Castro has been encouraging filmmakers and sales agents to send screeners to the company’s Paris offices.

IF Television has a permanent staff of ten, as well as a team of film students who help pre-select titles for the channel. Head of Acquisitions is Mathilde Daudy.

Titles picked up for the channel already include El Camino by Costa Rican director Yasin Gutierrez, Egyptian director Sherif Arafa’s Helim, Hannu Salonen’s Vasha from Estonia, Spanish-Chilean production Desierto Sur and Swiss film Snow White. The Channel is also screening shorts and to develop various film magazine programmes. “We tried to work with other groups, but in all of these cases, we were forced to broadcast their catalogue films,” Castro says. “We don’t want to do it… the only reason for us to choose a film is if it is a good film.” Castro said that the Channel’s operating budget for this year was €2 million. He is counting on the cinephilia of French audiences to make the channel viable. “We are the first TV station in Europe to do programming of independent films”, Castro said.

photo: Corinne de Korver

7

Blow up Richard James Havis talks to Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu about his latest film: about a living sex doll

With a body of films including After Life and Nobody Knows, Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu has established himself as a modern master of humanistic cinema. His latest film Air Doll is perhaps a natural extension of his work – instead of observing humanity, Kore-eda examines what exactly it is to become human. The idea is effectively communicated in an unlikely scenario in which a vinyl sex doll – played by Bae Doo-na – gradually takes on human characteristics.

“It’s based on a famous manga from ten years ago,” says Kore-eda. “I enjoyed the fact that a doll became human. But what interested me was the way that, when the vinyl doll got cut and deflated, her loved one would blow her up with air. That was very erotic.

I haven’t showed anything erotic in my movies before and I really thought that this would be a good way to do it.” The doll was also a good way to visualise an inanimate object becoming human – the “breath of life” as Kore-eda puts it: “The theme is all about air, about breath – the breath of life. I always want to show people’s relationships in my films. The doll comes to life when someone else breathes air into her. Her relationship gives her life. The plastic doll was a good way of putting that idea into images.”

Being human

“What is it to be human? That is what we all think about,” continues the director. “What is it to be a family, what is it to remember … my films have always been about these questions. This time, the theme is what is it like to become human. It’s a very direct way of addressing my favourite topic. I try to show all the emotions that the doll has to experience to become a human being. She’s sad, she’s happy, she’s jealous ... she doesn’t only experience good emotions. Humans usually try to avoid unhappiness. But the doll, in becoming human, can’t avoid it. She has to experience it.”

Kore-eda initiated some unusual research for his film. He visited Japanese men who have adopted vi-

Kore-eda Hirokazu

nyl sex dolls as their partners: “I went to interview people who live with vinyl blow up dolls, who have that kind of life. I went to a factory which makes the dolls and they introduced me to some of their clients. The original manga only tells the tale of the doll itself. From the manga, you can’t imagine what it would be like to live with a doll. So I needed to meet the people who live like that.”

Learning to crawl

The doll is played by popular Korean actress Bae

photo: Corinne de Korver

Doo-na, most recently seen in The Host. Bae’s naïve appearance makes her a good choice for the role.

“I always wanted to work with Bae Doo-na, as I’m a great fan of her films. But she doesn’t speak Japanese, so I could never find a relevant project. But I realised that she would work as the doll as it doesn’t know Japanese at the start of the film. It learns as the film goes on. When I realised this, I wrote her a letter and went to meet her in Seoul. Happily, she accepted the role.”

It’s a tough part to play, as the actress must portray

normal behaviour as strange and novel. “The only direction I gave her was not to try and play a doll.

I told her to imagine she was a newborn baby learning to crawl. The doll is like a child learning how to speak and find its place in the world. I told her to imagine being a young girl meeting her first love for the first time. Those were the qualities I was looking for in the air doll, and she conveyed them perfectly.”

Air Doll – Kore-eda Hirokazu

Mon 01 16:15 PA3, Tue 02 22:00 Cl1

Binger Filmlab congratulates Binger Filmmakers in CineMart 2010 selection Guido van Driel, The Resurrection of a Bastard (Netherlands) David Dusa, Fleurs du Mal (France) Jan-Willem van Ewijk, Land. (Netherlands) Paz Fábrega, Todos Nosotros (Costa Rica, France) Scott Graham, Shell (United Kingdom) Jazmín López, Leones (Argentina) Zaza Rusadze, A Fold of My Blanket (Georgia) Yan Ting Yeun, My Sister Came By Today (Netherlands)

and introduces all our filmmakers of the Writers Lab 2009 – 2010 present at CineMart: Liz Doran (Australia) Sotiris Dounoukos (Australia) Elad Gavish (Israel) Natalija Gnezdova (Latvian) Wiremu Grace (New Zealand) Martin Gypkens (Germany) Ihab Jadallah (Palestine) Jennifer Kent (Australia) Eva Keuris (Netherlands) Axel Koenzen (Germany) David Lammers (Netherlands) Jazmín López (Argentina) Mimoen Oaissa (Netherlands) Adina Pintilie (Romania) Raf Reyntjens (Belgium) Vuk Rsumovic (Serbia) Tali Shalom Ezer (Israel) Mihaly Schwechtje (Hungary) Auraeus Solito (Philippines) Froukje Tan (Netherlands) Harry Wootliff (UK) Parisa Yousef Doust (Netherlands) During CineMart: please collect our special flyer with more info on their projects.

www.binger.nl