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DAILY TIGER

NEDERLANDSE EDITIE Z.O.Z

38TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM #8 THURSDAY 29 JANUARY 2009

photo: Ruud Jonkers

Claire Denis at the IFFR screening of her film 35 Rhums at the Pathé cinema on Tuesday evening; after the screening, Denis was the focus of IFFR’s ‘Meet the Maestro’ event. The Daily Tiger talks to the director tomorrow.

Less is more After the doors finally closed yesterday on CineMart 2009, market chief Marit van den Elshout reflected positively on this years’ scaled-down event. By Nick Cunningham

“Reducing the number of projects really worked this year,” says Van den Elshout. “It helped create an atmosphere that was still intense, but not so dense. Less really was more. It meant that the focus was placed firmly on the selection, which is what we were aiming for.”

The event again attracted 800 leading Dutch and international producers, distributors and financiers, who assessed 36 pitches from producers representing 31 countries. While many deals are bubbling under, the first confirmed nod was from Dutch production entity IDTV towards The Snakehead, pitched by Les Petites Lumières (France).

“There are lots of deals not yet confirmed but which may be locked down in Berlin or Cannes,” Van den Elshout claims. “But it was nice to see that even the smaller, more difficult art house projects received a lot of attention. They had an angle that people could grasp and seemed a lot more accessible to the bigger players.”

Core business This year, the Rotterdam Lab shifted focus to-

ed to present these different elements to people who are at the start of their careers (although there were quite a few established producers in attendance as well), and to offer them new sparks of innovation for when they are looking to develop their projects.” Following the interest in Weiler’s Him project, Van den Elshout confirmed that she is looking to “put out a call” to other such innovative, multi-layered yet accessible projects for CineMart 2010.

Marit van den Elshout photo: Ruud Jonkers

wards innovations in multi-layered storytelling and DIY distribution strategies, while retaining its core function of integrating novice producers into the international film set-up.

“We had very positive reactions to these workshops,” she points out. “Lance Weiler and Brian Chirls really opened everybody’s eyes to alternative approaches to their business. We want-

Part of the process “In general, we have a lot of meetings at IFFR to see how we can support filmmakers as they distribute their films,” she continues. “And that of course feeds directly into what we do at CineMart – how we deal with the programme of the Rotterdam Lab, but also how we select the projects, what we do with the projects and how we follow their progress. All of these things feed into each other. CineMart does not work in isolation. We don’t just support films in development but seek to find more and more ways to encourage them during production and especially after they are made. Festivals have been used historically as a big backdrop against which sales agents would promote and sell their films. We’re ensuring that we’re not just a façade, but an integral part of the whole filmmaking process.”

And the winner is…

Byamba Sakhya’s CineMart project Birdie was last night awarded the €15,000 Prince Claus Fund Film Grant. The €10,000 ARTE France Cinéma Award went to Lance Weiler for Him. Both prizes are awarded to help the winning filmmakers develop their projects further.

“We give the Prince Claus Grant to filmmakers from Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean – countries where it is difficult economically, politically and socially to realise cultural projects,” says the Fund’s Charlotte van Herwaarden. “We do not directly support film and documentaries – that is covered by the Hubert Bals Fund and IDFA’s Jan Vrijman Fund – but we support the very first phase, the initial idea that the filmmaker can start to develop before he finds other financiers to help make his film.”

“CineMart is the mother of all co-production events around the world,” ARTE France general manager Michel Reilhac pointed out. “We are very proud to be a sponsor by giving an award that will contribute towards the development of Him, which was one of the amazing array of projects here, and to help it reach the world market.”

The winner of the 2009 Lions Film Award awarded by the Lions Club Rotterdam is Francaise by Souad El-Bouhati. The prize has a cash value of €2,000.

NC

GUEST COLUMN

Shaking the money tree

Film in A Cold Climate

Panelists and producers speaks to Nick Cunningham ahead of the Rotterdam Lab’s closing session, a Q&A on the subjects raised in the DIY distribution and multi-platform story-telling workshops held earlier this week

Helen de Witt, producer of The Times BFI London Film Festival, wraps up well for IFFR’s outdoor screenings

Le Cinema de la Plage in Cannes, sure – the outdoor screen on Grandchester Meadows at the Cambridge Film Festival, OK. But Rotterdam in January? It’s gruelling enough, wrapped in hats and scarves, shuffling between venues in temperatures close to zero, battling with rain, sleet and snow. Though to be fair the weather in Rotterdam this year has been reasonably mild.

Rotterdam is home to the true cinephile and its inclement climate won’t halt the quest for ever more invigorating cinematic experiences. That’s why, this year, the part of the festival I have been anticipating most is the Urban Screens project. Rotterdam has neither beach not grassy meadow, but what it does have is a unique cityscape; at once modernist and human in scale. Perfect for film installations by such original talents as Carlos Reygadas, Guy Maddin and Nanouk Leopold.

Who can resist the allure of Isabella Rossellini’s continual execution and resurrection upon the morbid fetishistic paraphernalia of the electric chair? A heady cross between a female modernist Christ and Metropolis’s Maria. Reygadas’ Mexican women’s football film is intriguingly entitled Serenghetti. On the NL Railway building, its darting figures on the face of a deep canyon evoke ritualised animal movement, but looked at in detail, the film conveys an emotional intensity and mysterious beauty that is highly human.

Close-Up also uses its scale to undermine – or to freak-out. Initially looking like a still photograph, when the image moves, you feel looked upon by an awesome other. Like a giant reversal of a Warhol screen test. All these works are about incongruity – of subject, placement and experience.

London is another winter festival, and despite the ever-present rain, we too have found the value of outdoor screenings. London Loves was two nights of film screenings from the London archives projected against the backdrop of the iconic Trafalgar Square.

To an audience of nearly 6,000, we showed the camp futuristic High Treason – a British Metropolis, if you like – and a selection of London films by directors such as Humphrey Jennings and John Krish. Despite the wet and the chill, both nights were packed.

Maybe true cinema people just like the dark – whether indoors or out.

Helen de Witt

photo: Bram Belloni

Brian Chirls and Della Churchill

Filmmaker and DIY advocate Brian Chirls remarks that, while everybody agreed that the distribution system was in need of a hose-down, he is encountering resistance among Rotterdam attendees to aggressive wholesale change. “Outside the United States, I am seeing widespread fear of upsetting the entrenched bureaucracy or taking on any risks,” he points out. “If film commissions, festivals and other influential parties fail to take a leadership role in guiding filmmakers and distributors towards a new set of assumptions, there is a greater risk that many major components of the film industry will atrophy in the next few years”, going on to tell the session audience to “Extend you creativity beyond what goes into your lens, into the whole business model.” Australian filmmaker Della Churchill, whose project Melt was give the DIY treatment by Chirls, observed that “given the Australian funding models that my films are utilizing, we are unable to DIY as we need international sales and domestic distribution attachments to shake the soft money tree.”

project Forever, was impressed by the suggestions that coming out of the workshop. “Our project has a wedding and stalking theme,” she explained.

“The ideas for DIY distribution thrown up by the participating producers and Brian were amazing.

I will have lots of brilliant ideas to work on after returning to Singapore.”

Engaging audiences “My strategy is more designed towards engaging audiences prior to the film’s release, raising awareness of screenings and getting consumers to drive more traffic to the site via web-play, blogs, music downloads and twitter engagement,” she continued. “As producers, I think we are best placed to help distribution by creating relevant audience engagement strategies and collecting content for marketing in all stages of the physical production.”

Silvia Wong, producer of the Rotterdam Lab

Evolution Lance Weiler, who gave the multi-platform workshops and opened yesterday’s panel debate, was complimentary about the high level of response to his ideas in Rotterdam. “I came with a CineMart project (Him) that is different in that it is a little bit more forward-looking,” he explained. “The response I got from the industry has been very positive. What’s interesting about that is you see an evolution of CineMart. You can see it in identifying new market trends or the new ways people collaborate

photo: Bram Belloni

with Europe. What we’ve seen in the US is a very vibrant DIY culture where there has been a democratization of the tools and a quick commoditisation of distribution. And in-between, there are people trying to find what these new models are and how they work. I think that collaboration and the ability for people to share is key to everything, because the more people share those types of experiences, the more we can move the form forward.”

“For most of our Rotterdam Lab participants, this is a brand new experience,” CineMart’s Jacobine van der Vloed explains of the decision to tackle these topics this year. “Of course, they have heard about these issues, but now they have key-note speakers like Brian and Lance from the US coming here and explaining what they did and how they did it. It’s very important for our upcoming producers and directors to work out how to do these things themselves.”

AVANT-GARDE Melody maker Music plays a major role in the films of Swiss experimental documentarian Peter Liechti. Subject of a major IFFR retrospective, the filmmaker talks to Paula Ruiz

Peter Liechti is a filmmaker of sound. You might also call him a visual musician as well. The Swiss director makes films specifically about music, but a musical sensibility infuses all his work: a complete sensual experience, his films offer viewers an intense sensation that goes cross beyond the boundaries of documentary, fiction, and external and inner landscapes.

International reach IFFR pays tribute to him this year with an extensive retrospective of his films. Liechti, who competed for a VPRO Tiger Award in 1997 with his celebrated fiction film Martha’s Garden is also presenting his latest work, The Sound of Insects – Record of a Mummy. World premiering in Rotterdam, the film adapts Shimada Masahiko’s well known novel Miira Ni Narumade, about a man who commits suicide by starving himself to death. The film, an emotional trip towards death, flows between three elements: the words of the protagonist – who never explains the reason for his suicide – the beautiful images that evoke his last days and, last but no least, the sound – the noises of the wilderness, a river, rainwater falling, insects chirping – and the music, by musician Norbert Möslang.

“My first encounter with the novel was listening to the dramatic musical adaptation Otomo Yoshihide did years ago. When I decided to film it, I was quite insecure, because it was the first time I worked with someone else’s material,” Liechti explains about how he approached the novel. In order to reach more international audiences, he had modified some passages of the original text, especially those dealing with Yukio Mishima and Harakiri Japanese suicide ritual, and this is also narrated in English.

Although The Sound of Insects is an unconventional

Peter Liechti

proposal, Liechti has always thought of it as a feature: “I know the film requires a big effort from the audience. They might find it difficult and challenging, because of this very emotional story of a man who goes beyond the limits and declines life itself.

However, I always thought of it as something to be screened in a movie theatre. I don’t think it’s a work for video galleries.”

Rock ‘n’ roll avant-garde From the start, Liechti has transformed Swiss documentary filmmaking. The retrospective programmed at IFFR is an opportunity to discover his formally adventurous and experimental attitude, specially on the more music-focused films.

One of Liechti’s very first works, Kick That Habit (1989) was a study of experimental musicians Andy Guhl and Norbert Mölang (more a powerful stream of images and sounds than a conventional documentary portrait). He filmed more musicians in

38TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com

photo: Ruud Jonkers

the following years: Namibia Crossings (2004) goes through twelve artists from Zimbabwe, Switzerland, Namibia and Russia, depicting their dreams and the reality of their countries, while Hardcore Chambermusic (2006) follows the Swiss KochSchütz-Studer ensemble during a straight month of shows. This thrilling musical marathon aims to convey the intensity of these shows, and it’s remarkable how the musical experience is filmed: music is not only seen as a physical condition, sweaty and rough, but also as an intellectual discipline that requires control and confidence in oneself and the rest of the band. “I was fascinated by the group aspect,” says Liechti. “Working with Koch-SchützStuder was great. Sometimes it was rough, but at the end it was a richer experience. It was funny, because all three thought of themselves as a hardrock band, instead of an avant-garde trio. However, for me there is no difference at all, because I consider avant-garde musicians the good ones.”

3

Office to co-produce Play

Winter in Berlin

Looking for new MEDIA offshoots

By Nicole Santé

Philippe Bober’s Coproduction Office has brought onboard an unusual new partner for Ruben Ostlund’s CineMart project, Play – namely itself. Coproduction Office was already confirmed as the sales agent. Here in Rotterdam, Bober has now confirmed that he will act as co-producer for France, Germany and Denmark.

The €1,550,000-feature marks Ostlund’s follow-up to festival hit Involuntary. The film is being produced by Swedish outfit, Platform Produktion, founded in 2002 by Ostlund and Erik Hemmendorff. Billed as “a tragic and humorous behavioural study,” Play is about a gang of young robbers who make their victims race for their belongings.

This isn’t the first time Coproduction Office and Platform have collaborated. They are also coproduction partners on Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s Dau (which passed through CineMart in 2006). Here at CineMart, Coproduction Office has also been representing Bertrand Mandico’s The Man Who Hides the Forest – the first French title it has represented. Mandico is renowned for his macabre and often outrageous animation. This is his first stab at a feature-length film.

Bober was striking an upbeat note about this year’s CineMart. “It is always the same.

It depends what you have,” Bober reflected on the health of the art house sector as reflected in Rotterdam. “If you have one film and it is good, there is no financial crisis. If you have twenty films that are bad, there is a financial crisis.”

Coproduction Office has three films likely to be ready for Cannes: Lourdes by Jessica Hausner, A Town Called Panic by Stephane Aubier and Vincent Patar and Summer 1953

by Shirin Neshat. The company has also been doing brisk trade in recent months on Ostlund’s 2008 feature Involuntary (screening in IFFR’s Bright Future). Deals have been confirmed with (among others) the UK (Atlantic), the US (Sundance Channel), France (KMBO) and Belgium (Lumière). GM

Joe Odagiri’s surrealist Japanese road movie Looking for Cherry Blossoms should be brought out in Japan before the summer flowers bloom; at least, that is production company and distributor Stylejam’s intention. The company has already released several films featuring Odagiri, a popular actor in Japan. According to Stylejam’s vice-president Yuko Shiomaki, the film offers an excellent opportunity to expand their product into new media. “Oragiri is extremely popular in Japan, but mainly on television and in more conventional films. It would be a shame to release this film, which is original and edgy, in the regular cinemas. Looking for Cherry Blossoms is highly suitable for other media, such as the computer, mobile telephone, or as a vodcast on the iPod. This is what young people in Japan are interested in now.”

Winter in Wartime

Berlin’s European Film Market is the next stop for many IFFR titles. By Geoffrey Macnab

Dutch box-office hit Winter in Wartime (Oorlogswinter), a late addition to IFFR’s Dutch Treats, is spearheading a mini Dutch invasion of Berlin’s European Film Market next week. London-based High Point Films, which has just taken on international sales, is planning two market screenings of the film. High Point is looking to capitalize on the buzz the film has generated in the domestic market, where it racked up close to 700,000 admissions since its release in November.

The film, about a teenager who helps a British pilot hide during the last winter of the Second World War, is written and directed by Martin Koolhoven and produced by Isabella Films (Els Vandervorst) and Fu Works (San Fu Maltha), in association with the Netherlands Film Fund, Inspire Pictures, CoBo Fund, VTM, VAF and Eurimages in co-production with Prime Time (Antonino Lombardo) and Broadcast Company MAX. The

screenplay was written by Mieke de Jong, Paul Jan Nelissen and Martin Koolhoven.

In Berlin’s EFM, another notable Dutch box-office success, Bride Flight, will also be making its market debut. Beta Cinema is handling world sales on the project, about the journey of Dutch immigrants to New Zealand in 1953 – including young women travelling to marry – as part of a KLM-organised air race.

A handful of other Dutch titles will also screen in Berlin, among them Esther Rots’ Forum entry Can Go Through Skin (Kan door huid heen), sold by Films Boutique; Mijke De Jong’s Katia’s Sister (Het zusje van Katia), sold by Media Luna; Eugenie Jansen’s Calimucho; Sonya Wyss’s Winter Silence and Radu Jude’s The Happiest Girl in the World.

Several IFFR titles are also travelling on to Berlin’s EFM for market premieres: among them Nick Moran’s Telstar (handled by Fortissimo); Simon Ellis’ Dogging: A Love Story and Alexis Dos Santos’ Unmade Beds (both handled by Protagonist) and Alexei Balabanaov’s Morphia (handled by Intercinema).

DOKU.ARTS fest in Filmmuseum

Celador picks picts pic

I’ll be watching…

Gavin Smith, editor of Film Comment, looks forward to Jerzy Skolimowski’s British-set horror The Shout (1978). “The Shout is possibly Skolimowski’s best film. I’ve wanted to see this film on the big screen for 30 years now, and it’s being shown in a beautiful pristine print. Set in Devon, the film is more British than a British filmmaker would have made it; it’s full of completely unexpected, throwaway details that give it a lot of texture. It’s also one of few films I can think of that offers a decent depiction of a cricket match.”

The Shout Jerzy Skolimowski Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal Thu 29 Jan 22:30

The Shout

Andreas Lewin

photo: Daniëlle van Ark

Andreas Lewin, director of the Amsterdam-based DOKU.ARTS film festival, is in Rotterdam to bang the drum for the event’s 4th edition in June. Nick Cunningham reports

Slumdog Millionaire

Celador, the production outfit behind runaway international hit Slumdog Millionaire (screening in IFFR’s Spectrum), is swapping present-day Mumbai for ancient Rome. The company is partnering with Pathé on Centurion, the new project from British horror meister Neil Marshall.

Ready to don the togas and sandals are three prominent actors from very different backgrounds. Leading the cast is Michael Fassbender (who earned plaudits for his searing performance as Bobby Sands in Hunger and is shortly to be seen in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds). Also appearing is Dominic West (the lead in HBO’s The Wire). The third name just announced is Olga Kurylenko (last seen in Bond movie The Quantum of Solace).

Centurion, which begins shooting next month in Scotland, was scripted by Marshall. It is set

in AD 117. The Roman Empire stretches from Egypt to Spain, and East as far as the Black Sea. But in northern Britain, the relentless onslaught of conquest has ground to a halt in face of the guerilla tactics of an elusive enemy: the savage and terrifying Picts. Quintus Dias, sole survivor of a Pictish raid on a Roman frontier fort, marches north with General Virilus’ legendary Ninth Legion, under orders to wipe the Picts from the face of the earth and destroy their leader, Gorlacon.

Centurion is being produced by Christian Colson (Slumdog Millionaire). International sales are handled by Pathé. GM Slumdog Millionaire Danny Boyle Cinerama 6 Fri 30 Jan 12:00

38TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com

Originally based in Berlin, the festival reacted favourably in 2008 to Sandra den Hamer’s invitation to re-locate to the Dutch Filmmuseum.

With its focus trained on documentaries about artists and art, this year’s central architecture programme will include Tomas Koolhaas’ Outside Looking In, a film-in-progress about his father, the visionary Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. The film is co-directed with Rene Daalder. Other features at the festival include a focus on Agnès Varda, centred around her 2008 autobiographical doc Les Plages d’ Agnès, and including a number of her films about art.

“DOKU.ARTS is unique in Europe,” claims Lewin.

“It specifically concentrates on films that are either ignored or given limited attention at the major international documentary film festivals, and on cultural productions that are gradually disappearing from public broadcasting and foreign networks.”

The festival receives a financial boost this year, with additional funds sourced from EUNIC, a partnership of national institutions for culture that includes the likes of the British Council and the Goethe Institut.

Other monies are received from the Filmmuseum and the Dutch Cultural Broadcasting Fund.

5

SPEAK SOFTLY…

VPRO Tiger Awards Competition

Art of noise

Wang Liren talks to Phil Dy about Tattoo, his quietly assured feature about life in small-town China Wang Liren speaks in very reserved tones, a quality that carries over in his filmmaking. His second feature, Tattoo (Ci qing), moves with a studied grace that arrives like the slightest whisper, intricate to the point of fragility. But his film speaks louder than his soft tones would suggest, presenting a picture of China that is too potent to ignore.

Like many Chinese films, an atmosphere of politics permeates Tattoo, which world premieres in IFFR’s Bright Future section. The film follows the lives of a group of petty criminals in a small town in China, struggling to find some meaning in an inherently corrupt world. But Wang doesn’t let the social issues steal the spotlight from the emotions of his characters. “What I wanted to express has more to do with the inner struggles of the main characters,” says Wang. “I think this relates to the inner struggles we all go through.”

But the external struggles that the film itself encountered were hard to ignore. There were budget shortfalls, and the film had to switch locations in mid-production after a town’s local government proved uncooperative. That the film was completed at all could probably be considered a minor

miracle, but Wang goes further than that. The film employs a series of long, intricate takes that make use of every single inch of the film’s varied locations. Wang himself was in two minds while shooting Tattoo. “It is difficult to narrate a story in this way,” he says. But Wang did push through with it, and the effect is tremendous. It’s easy enough to marvel at the sheer logistics involved in the creation of such shots, but the real draw here is how Wang uses the formal device to provoke a sense of alienation in the picture; a sense that all the depravity and amorality in the film is something that cannot be accepted.

The tragedy is that the story is all too real. Through Tattoo, Wang is relating the story of an old classmate of his who ran through the same ordeals in the changing face of China. Wang is ready to tell those stories, softly, perhaps, but with an honesty you simply can’t turn away from.

Tattoo / CI QING Wang Liren Cinerama 7 Fri 30 Jan 17:15

Tattoo

The wind and the rain Ivo M. Ferriera recalls the turbulent events of his native Portugal’s recent past in his debut feature April Showers. By Wendy Mitchell

Alicia Scherson

Chilean director Alicia Scherson made an excursion into the countryside for her second feature Turistas. By Camila Moraes

Latin American film people already refer to IFFR as a big Latin family. Some of them have been participating with their films in different sections of the festival, like the Chilean director Alicia Scherson, who first came to Rotterdam in 2003 with one of her shorts, Crying Under Water, and a project for her first feature Play, which got support from the Hubert Bals Fund. This year, she is back in town with Turistas, competing in the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition.

The film revolves around the time Carla – a thirty-something woman from Santiago – spends at a remote nature reserve after her husband drives off following an argument. Carla’s change of scene echoes Scherson’s: from Santiago herself, she decided to leave her home town to go shoot in the woods. “My previous film is about the city, so this time I wanted to shoot nature. But I felt I had to do it from an urban point of view”, she said. “I dealt with this thing that happens to tourists, who are used to experiencing nature from a distance. In Turistas, the resort isn’t a purely wild and natural environment: there are tracks and signs and so on for the visitors.” Actually, loud waterfalls and birds are present in the most interesting moments of the film, showing noises have as much to do with nature as with cities. “We think that go-

photo: Felix Kalkman

ing on vacation means running from noise. I first thought about El ruido (The Noise) as a title for the film, but then I changed my mind,” she says.

To Scherson, a screenplay is where filmmaking starts. “I really enjoy the writing process, as well as editing; that’s why I pretty much stick to my screenplays when I shoot.” Although shooting is a more complicated process for her (“For me, shooting is a time of practical solutions and, of course, many problems that you have to solve quickly”), she thinks making her second feature was much easier than her experience of first contact with the industry. “I felt much more comfortable. I actually enjoyed it, and I think that shows in the result. I think Turistas is a more precise and tidier movie”.

This enthusiasm seems to indicate Scherson is not going to stop any time soon. “I have many projects right now. My next film, called El futuro (The Future), is an adaptation of a novel by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, called Una Novelita Lumpen. This has been part of the CineMart selection twice, and I’ll finally start shooting it at the end of this year.” So we’ll hopefully be seeing a lot more of Scherson’s work in Rotterdam.

Turistas Alicia Scherson Pathé 5 Thu 29 Jan 19:15 Pathé 5 Fri 30 Jan 10:30 Pathé 1 Sat 31 Jan 18:30

When he was seventeen, Ivo M. Ferreira had what he calls “a stupid teenage idea” to leave his comfortable home in Portugal to go around the world doing manual labour “so I would think about and experience life.” He recalls: “So I came to Rotterdam for a month to work on a glasshouse,” he says. “But I was working so hard I couldn’t think about anything, I was too tired. I was getting up at 4.45 every morning to work, so intellectually it was a poor experience.” He left after a month to continue his trip to China.

This visit to Rotterdam, with the world premiere of April Showers, has proven a bit more stimulating.

His debut film is about a young theatre director, Pedro, who revisits the 1974 Portuguese Carnation Revolution to try to understand his father’s disappearance decades ago.

“I realised my generation had no role in politics, so that was the first conception of this film,” Ferreira says. “But I’m not only inspired by political ideas, sometimes it’s a wind or a landscape that can inspire me. It’s a way for me to reflect about my own country.”

Looking at the events of 1974 through a presentday lens was very important to him. “I definitely wanted to speak about the past in the present tense; I’m not into historical films,” he says. “I’m always about the present tense in my life and my work.”

The film looks even bigger than its €1.2m budget, thanks in part to shooting on 35mm, careful editing and some stunning shots of Pedro and his family’s road trip through Portugal and Spain as they search for clues to the past. And the titular rain – created artificially for the film when natural forces didn’t fit the shooting schedule – adds drama: “There is some sensuality in the rain,” the director says. “I’m not into the symbolism that rain stands

38TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com

for tears, but sometimes you do need a very good rain to wash things away.”

In perhaps a nod to his own teenage trip around the world, Ferreira’s next film will be a documentary Go With Wind, about a Chinese person emigrating to Europe. And for his next fiction project, he says, “Instead of working on the present and considering the past, I think next I will work the same way and look at the present with an idea of the future.”

April Showers Ivo M. Ferreira Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal Thu 29 Jan 16:15 * Cinerama 1 Fri 30 Jan 12:30 Cinerama 5 Sat 31 Jan 14:30 * Press and Industry screening

April Showers

7

CineMart profile

The Daily Filmmaker‘s Quiz

LOOKING FOR ROBEY AND CLARK

Prove your filmmaking knowlegde and win a trip and free VIP-tickets to eDIT 12. Filmmaker‘s Festival in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, October 4th - 6th 2009.

Producers of Unmade Beds and Better Things (both IFFR titles), Rachel Robey and Alastair Clark tell Wendy Mitchell about their busy CineMart

1

What does VFX stand for?

2

Who is regarded as the godfather of stop motion?

Ray

3

Which Movie won the KPN Publieksprijs at the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam?

Enter the answers at:

Answer of The Day:

www.filmmakersfestival.com

Complete Daily Filmmaker‘s Quiz answer-sentence:

:

tag8.indd 1

05.01.2009 13:56:40 Uhr

Binger Filmlab Presents Script Development Programme September 2009

Rachel Robey and Alastair Clark of UK production company Wellington Films have been coming to Rotterdam since 2004, yet this year is even more notable than usual as they worked on two fi lms screening in the IFFR programme: Duane Hopkins’s Better Things and Alexis Dos Santos’s Unmade Beds. “We’ve had a long history with the festival and with CineMart, but it’s the first time we’ve had a film screening so it’s very special,” Robey says.

Robey is one of the lead producers, with Samm Haillay, of Cannes Critics’ Week selection Better Things.

“I met up with the Better Things guys at a cocktail here in 2004 when I was in the Lab and they were in CineMart,” she says.

Robey and Clark both served as co-producers on Unmade Beds. The film will now go from Rotterdam to open the Berlinale’s Generation section. “It’s just starting its festival run and people are responding really well, hopefully it will find a young audience,” Clark says.

Clark was also in the Lab (in 2006) and they’ve both attended CineMart in the years since. Clark says that IFFR “is very accessible. There aren’t the barriers you can have at other festivals and markets.”

Robey adds: “Some of the best relationships I have in the business I’ve made here.”

This year, they’ve been meeting with select CineMart projects and do see some potential to get involved. “There are some very interesting projects at CineMart that we’ll pursue when we’re back in the UK,” Robey says. Clark adds that being a UKbased company with an interesting, internationally known history of projects helps to open doors.

“It helps that the films we’ve made have a European bent,” he says. (They also produced London to

Alastair Clark and Rachel Robey photo: Ruud Jonkers

Brighton and Robey has worked as production coordinator on fi lms such as Control and Irina Palm.)

Nottingham-based Wellington is currently in the editing phase on its next feature, Justin Molotnikov’s Crying With Laughter, a revenge thriller set in Edinburgh. That fi lm is being made with Claire Mundell of Glasgow-based Synchronicity Films and backing from BBC Scotland and UK regional agencies EM Media and Scottish Screen. “We hope to deliver the fi lm in spring for summer festivals,” Robey says of the €538,000 project. The fi lm was developed by Molotnikov and lead actors Stephen McCole and Malcolm Shields and during a monthlong workshop.

They are also producing a feature documentary on Ghana-born London-based fashion designer Ozwald Boateng. The UK Film Council has given the project development funding so far.

Director Varon Bonicos has been fi lming Boateng for a decade. “It’s not a fashion doc, it’s ten years with a man people can relate to; with his relationship difficulties and his career,” Clark reveals.

They are also keen to find and develop new talent by continuing to produce shorts. The next one will be fi lm noir A Nice Touch, to star Dougray Scott as a 1950s Hollywood actor. Richard Jones will direct the short and also has a feature in development with Wellington.

A fully – tailored script development process for Writers & Writer / Directors.

CineMart profile

A unique 5-month process of intense, full time work, based in Amsterdam,

FOG OF HISTORY

investigating and shaping an original feature screenplay or adaptation.

A diverse array of international advisors & mentors as well as a small community of fellow writers, support the creative journey with lab’s workshops and individual story sessions designed to deeply explore not only the story and narrative, but the intention and meaning of the work to the writer and the intended audience for the film.

Binger is fully funded by the Dutch Ministry of Culture, Education and Science.

All programmes are delivered in English.

International applicants from all countries are welcomed.

Deadline for application: March 15, 2009

For details go to:

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Geoffrey Macnab profiles Czech producers Negativ, attending CineMart with an ambitious animation

Adventurous Czech production outfit Negativ is embarking on its most unusual project yet. Venturing into feature length animation, the Prague-based production company is planning a film version of cult graphic novel Alois Nebel, by Jaroslaw Rudis and Jaromir 99. Alois Nebel will be directed by Tomas Lunak.

The €2.5m project (one of the buzz projects in CineMart this week) combines live action and animation. It’s about a lonely worker at a small railway station on the Czech-Polish border, who hallucinates and sees trains from the past 100 years pass through the station. These trains evoke memories of the Nazi occupation and the Jewish transports. Unable to get rid of his nightmares, the worker ends up in a sanatorium.

The graphic novel, a huge success in the Czech Republic, was drawn in a sharp, black and white style partly inspired by American comics of the 1950s.

The filmmakers describe the project as “a film about wandering about, finding one’s way and repeatedly getting lost in the fog of history, about looking for peace and love no matter how late in one’s life one

A Country Teacher

38 TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM WWW.FILMFESTIVALROTTERDAM.COM

may be.” The name ‘Nebel’ is a German word meaning fog. If spelled backwards, it reads as ‘Leben’ or ‘Life’. “It is a life hidden in a fog of feelings and memories, which is exactly what makes up the trilogy of graphic novels the film is based upon,” the director has stated. The film is set in the Sudetenland, the part of Czechoslovakia annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938. After the war, the entire German population of the region was expelled by government decree – still a source of trauma today.

Alois Nebel, which will be made using rotoscoping techniques, is being put together as a Czech/German/Slovak co-production. Distributors have been clamouring round the project in Rotterdam this week. “I’ve been surprised by the enthusiasm shown for the project,” Negativ’s Pavel Strnad commented.

“It’s going fantastic.”

The producers are currently waiting for a response from Eurimages and from German and Slovak funds. A large proportion of the budget for the film – due to begin shooting in the spring – is already in place. Negativ’s partners on the project are German company Pallas Film and animation and design house Tobogang.

Negativ has two other films in post-production, both due to be released later this year: Marek Najbrt’s Protektor, about a collaborator in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, and Losers, by first-time director Jitka Ruudolfova.

Meanwhile, showing its eclectic tastes, Negativ has some documentaries in the works, among them Peter Kerekes’ Cooking History and Vit Janecek’s Ivetca and the Mountain. Negativ is also preparing a children’s film, Blue Tiger, which will combine live action and animation.

Screening here in IFFR’s Spectrum is Bohdan Sláma’s A Country Teacher. Negativ presented the film in CineMart in 2007. International sales are handled by Wild Bunch.

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