SEE NL #22

Beyond Sleep opening IFFR New IFFR director Bero Beyer Strike a Pose in Berlin Panorama Fiona Tan’s History’s Future in Tiger competition Dutch line-up in Sundance, Rotterdam and Berlin Profiles Hanneke Niens and Richard van Oosterhout

Issue #22 January 2016 IFFR/Sundance/Berlin issue Download the free app for iPad and Android

Index 3 View from the Edge Renate Rose Managing Director, European Film Promotion

26-27 Caught on film Maurice Dekkers’ Ants on a Shrimp world prems in Berlin’s Culinary Cinema section

4-5 Silence and Nothingess Boudewijn Koole’s Beyond Silence opens IFFR 2016

28-29 Digging to Berlin Rosie Stapel’s feature doc, about a kitchen garden, will whet appetites in Berlin Culinary Cinema

6-7 Taking Charge IFFR director Bero Beyer talks to See NL about his first festival at the helm

30-31 Food for thought In Need for Meat, selected for Berlin Culinary Cinema, Marijn Frank examines her carnivore within

8-9 Beyond Memory Visual artist Fiona Tan makes her feature debut with History’s Future, about a man in search of his past

32-33 Viking in Sweden Minority co-pro Siv Sleeps Astray will open Berlin Generation. Dutch producer Marleen Slot talks to See NL

10-11 Chasing the Tiger Dutch minority co-productions in IFFR Tiger competition

34-35 The Vanishing Minority co-pro Humidity is selected for Berlin Forum

12-13 In a Strange Town Kaweh Modiri’s feature debut Bodkin Ras, set to world premiere in IFFR Bright Future.

36-37 To Berlin via Amsterdam The Turkish All of a Sudden, co-produced by Topkapi, is selected for Berlin Panorama

14-15 Holland in Rotterdam Profiles of three new Dutch projects that will be pitched at CineMart 2016

38-39 Art of Deception A Real Vermeer about Dutch master forger Han Van Meegeren is in production. Producer Reinier Selen talks fake with See NL

16-17 Way out West Dutch films at Sundance 2016 18-19 Berlin Commune Topkapi Film is Dutch co-producer on Thomas Vinterberg’s Berlin comp selection The Commune 20-21 Express yourself Reijer Zwaan and Ester Gould Strike a Pose with the dancers from Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour 22-23 China Crisis Sophia Luvarà’s Inside the Chinese Closet is selected for Berlinale Panorama and competes in TEDDY competition 24-25 Fight Club Dutch-Turkish producer Mete Gümürhan’s directorial debut Young Wrestlers will world premiere in Berlin Generation

40-41 Character Building Producer profile: Hanneke Niens 42-43 Lensing by Candlelight Talent profile: Richard van Oosterhout 44-45 In Short Dutch shorts in selection at Clermont Ferrand 46-47 More in Short Dutch shorts in selection at Berlin and IFFR 48-49 New Dutch disorder The latest EYE exhibition focuses on the new generation of Dutch film and video artists 50-51 Short Cuts News from the Dutch film industry 52 Star profile Reinout Scholten van Asschat, Shooting Star 2016

Cover still: Beyond Sleep. Boudewijn Koole Script: Boudewijn Koole Production: KeyFilm (NL) Co-production: Nordisk Film (NO) See page 6

Still: Siv Sleeps Astray See page 32

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Renate Rose: Managing Director EFP

View from the edge

Colophon

presented to the international film industry and media during the 66th Berlinale this year. Past editions of the talent showcase saw the spotlight turned on such actors as Sylvia Hoeks, while the multicultural dimension of Dutch society reflected in the selection of such actors as Marwan Kenzari.

It is almost two decades since the pan-European promotional organisation European Film Promotion (EFP) was launched to promote European cinema around the globe and, despite its relatively small size for a film industry, the Netherlands has always played a key role in the development of joint activities under the EFP umbrella.

To start with, Holland Film, the predecessor of EYE Int’l, was one of EFP’s ten founding members back in 1997, with Holland Film’s MD Claudia Landsberger serving as the organisation’s President for 12 years until 2009, then continuing as Vice-President until May 2013.

Today, EFP has a membership of 37 organisations representing 36 countries in Europe and serves as a forum for the exchange of ideas and best practice between the members.

The Dutch industry has featured in particular in two of EFP’s flagship initiatives: Shooting Stars in Berlin and Producers on the Move (Cannes).

Now in its 19th year, Shooting Stars 2016 includes Reinout Scholten van Aschat as one of ten promising European acting talents who will be

Dynamic and entrepreneurial women producers are a force to be reckoned with in the Dutch film industry, as shown by the EFP’s Producers on the Move platform in Cannes. Over half of the 14 Dutch producers selected have been women, beginning in 2000 with Els Vandervoorst and followed in subsequent years by such colleagues as Petra Goedings and Leontine Petit, all now key figures in the European co-production landscape.

It goes without staying that we have always admired Dutch cinema (and its funding institutions) for the commitment to the development of a vibrant and diverse children’s film sector, but Holland has also been the source of innovation for the international film industry. IFFR’s CineMart prides itself on being the ‘mother of all co-production markets’, while the Hubert Bals Fund provided the inspiration for the creation of numerous other festival funds around the globe to foster the production of independent artistic cinema.

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See NL is published four times per year by EYE International and The Netherlands Film Fund and is distributed to international film professionals.

Editors in chief: Marten Rabarts (EYE), Jonathan Mees (Netherlands Film Fund) Executive editor: Nick Cunningham Contributors: ­Geoffrey Macnab, Melanie Goodfellow and Renate Rose Concept & Design: Lava.nl, Amsterdam Layout: def., Amsterdam Printing: mediaLiaison Printed on FSC paper Circulation: 2600 copies © All rights reserved: The Netherlands Film Fund and EYE International 2016 Contact Sandra den Hamer CEO EYE E sandradenhamer@eyefilm.nl Marten Rabarts Head of EYE International E martenrabarts@eyefilm.nl EYE International PO BOX 74782 1070 BT Amsterdam The Netherlands T +31 20 758 2375 W www.eyefilm.nl Doreen Boonekamp CEO Netherlands Film Fund E d.boonekamp@filmfonds.nl Ellis Driessen International Affairs Netherlands Film Fund E e.driessen@filmfonds.nl Jonathan Mees Head of Communications Netherlands Film Fund E j.mees@filmfonds.nl Netherlands Film Fund Pijnackerstraat 5 1072 JS Amsterdam The Netherlands T +31 20 570 7676 W www.filmfonds.nl

Silence and nothingness guide him, to help him make the right choices.”

Boudewijn Koole

Dutch director Boudewijn Koole talks to Melanie Goodfellow about Beyond Sleep which opens IFFR in the presence of Queen Maxima of the Netherlands.

Director Boudewijn Koole, like many people in the Netherlands, first read Dutch writer Willem Frederik Hermans’ classic novel Beyond Sleep while at school. The survivalistexistentialist tale, about a man grappling both with the elements and his inner demons during a scientific research trip to prove the existence of meteorite craters in Norway, was a staple on the Dutch school curriculum for many years.

It was not until re-reading the novel during a trip to Scandinavia some 20 years later that Koole was struck by its cinematic potential. “I fell in love with the silence and the nothingness that the author creates in the quest of the main character which I thought would be interesting to explore cinematographically,” explains Koole. “There is this person who finds himself in complete whiteness on top of a mountain with nothing to hold onto, no God, no science – there’s nothing to

Alongside producers Hanneke Niens and Hans de Wolf at Amsterdambased KeyFilm, Koole secured rights to Hermans’ classic partly because the late writer’s son loved Koole’s award-winning last feature Kauwboy, about a young boy who develops a relationship with a jackdaw.

Koole has focused on the middle section of Hermans’s novel, when troubled Dutch protagonist Alfred embarks on the geological expedition alongside three Norwegian researchers, Arne, Qvigstad and Mikkelsen. “You can’t adapt a book without making big choices. This isn’t so much an adaptation as [a film] inspired by the book. Once I decided what to focus on I started to write it like it was my own screenplay,” explains Koole.

The production was located August and September 2015 in the municipality of Malselv in northern Norway, using a former military compound as a base. “We were in a film bubble for six weeks. Working hard by day and then having fun at night, smoking and drinking whiskey, grabbing a few hours sleep and then heading back to the set.

It was a very special atmosphere,” recounts Koole.

KeyFilm’s Niens brought Norwegian producer Aage Aaberge of Nordisk Films on board the production after

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meeting him when he visited the Netherlands to give a talk about producing the Golden Globe and Academy Award nominated film Kon-Tiki. Aaberge’s film starred Pål Sverre Hagen who was also cast in the lead supporting role of Arne opposite up and coming Dutch actor Reinout Scholten van Aschat.

Koole originally planned to cast a British or German-speaking actor for the lead but changed his mind after meeting Van Aschat on an audition for another film. “I auditioned another 30 to 40 actors – many of them very good – but there was something about Reinout which stuck with me,” says the director.

Van Aschat was subsequently selected as Dutch Shooting Star 2016.

Koole praises cinematographer and long-time collaborator Melle van Essen for artfully capturing the majestic landscape. “He did such a good job. He understands how to film landscapes and faces… sometimes he films the face like a landscape,” says the director.

The pair are set to work together again on an upcoming dance-based fiction feature which is currently in development. Prior to that, a second feature by Koole set in Norway – a family drama entitled Disappearance (Verdwijnen) – will also hit the big screen later this year. “I shot it last winter after finishing editing on Beyond Sleep. It’s been a crazily busy period,” Koole concedes.

Beyond Sleep

IFFR opening film

Boudewijn Koole

‘We were in a film bubble for six weeks, it was a very special atmosphere’

Script: Boudewijn Koole Production: KeyFilm (NL) Co-production: Nordisk Film (NO)

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IFFR report

Photo: Adriaan van der Ploeg

Bero Beyer, Artistic Director

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Taking charge It’s not exactly a case of poacher turned gamekeeper but Bero Beyer (Rotterdam’s new artistic director) is certainly experiencing this year’s IFFR from the other side of the fence, writes Geoffrey Macnab.

Beyer has been coming to Rotterdam for many years. He was at the festival’s co-production market CineMart with Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now (2005), which he co-wrote and produced and which went on to win an Oscar nomination. Last year, another of his films, Atlantic., which also passed through CineMart, was the first title showcased through the festival’s new distribution initiative, IFFR Live. Now, though, he isn’t submitting films for selection – he is choosing and programming them himself.

“For me, it was a logical choice,” Beyer says of the decision to take over at Rotterdam. “If you’re an independent producer like I was, you can only take up so many projects at the same time. Projects take a lot of years to develop, produce and put out there properly, especially if it is the kind of cinema that I stand for and love.”

When the opportunity came to become artistic director, he realised that, rather than working as a producer on a handful of titles every year, he could programme and help nurture hundreds of films.

“The entire programme in which

Rotterdam plays a part, starting with the Hubert Bals Fund and continued at the festival and beyond… gives a scope which was too appealing for me to resist.” Prior to joing IFFR Beyer was Feature Film Consultant at the Netherlands Film Fund.

‘It was too appealing for me to resist’ Beyer points out that the auteurdriven films shown in Rotterdam are “not the easiest of films, not middle of the road stuff. These are quality films that are often challenging, new and take a while to digest.” Nonetheless, since the festival was founded in the early 1970s by the late Hubert Bals, it has mushroomed to become a mass audience event. “That, in itself, is something we should be extremely proud of,” Beyer states. “Apparently, we’re doing something right.”

This year, the Rotterdam Tiger competition has been streamlined to just eight titles. Beyer is promising that more attention will be paid to each one of them.

“It should be an honour to be nominated. It is quite a select group of films.” The idea is to have one Tiger movie in the limelight each day. The Hivos Tiger Award now carries a generous €40,000 cash prize to be split between the director and the lead producer.

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(There are no strings attached to the money either.) All of the Tiger movies bar one are World Premieres. (Pieter-Jan De Pue’s The Land Of The Enlightened is a European premiere.)

Thanks to his experiences as a producer, Beyer has strong connections with sales agents and distributors. He also has a sense of what practical measures he can put in place to help industry delegates.

At the same time, the new artistic director knows that the festival is an audience-facing event. The secret is to balance the demands of the public with those of the industry.

This is a festival, Beyer continues, at which the films and the filmmakers come first. The 2016 edition already has the royal seal of approval – Her Majesty Queen Máxima will be in town for the opening night film Beyond Sleep (a Dutch-Norwegian co-production that, Beyer believes, reflects the new “outward looking” perspective of the Dutch industry.)

The new festival director is promising a festival that will continue to “put the films first…of course the films are still our stars”, but that will be enjoyable too, offering what he calls ‘happy chaos’.

“It’s also a lot of fun! There are parties, there’s music, there’s celebration – it (the festival) should be joyful. You cannot be creative if you’re gloomy!”

Fiona Tan

Photo: Marieke Wijntjes

Beyond memory

Visual artist Fiona Tan makes her feature film debut with History’s Future, selected for IFFR Tiger competition.

In History’s Future, made within “De Verbeelding” scheme overseen by the Netherlands Film Fund and Mondriaan Fund, MP embarks on an existential odyssey after he suffers profound memory loss, the result of a vicious mugging. MP stands for Missing Person, although at one point in the film he is referred to as David by the Parisian Caroline with whom we must assume he had a previous relationship (although he has no memory of such), and then as Philip, a name he uses when picking up a woman in a London theatre.

That aside, the journey that MP undertakes is as a man re-born, albeit involuntarily. The film opens with credits that read ‘The End’, and we are soon to discover that MP’s past really is something that is no more, and totally beyond memory. “[MP’s] extreme retrograde amnesia is a way of starting again,” stresses director Fiona Tan. “It allows me to look at the world I live in afresh,

with new eyes, and take the viewer along with me. The idea to make this film was something that slowly took seed and grew inside me I guess over a number of years, ever since 2008. Triggered by the [economic] crisis (and the many crises which came after that) and thinking about its aftermath, I found myself asking the question: Are we living at the end of an era, and if we are at the end of an era, what should we keep? Is this also the end of a cinematic era? What are these times we are living in?”

MP’s loss of his past determines that his grip on the present is weak to non-existent, and he is compelled to wander aimlessly across myriad bleak European landscapes which, despite the precise symmetry of Tan’s framing and the crystal clarity of her lens, reek of hopelessness. In a scene mirroring the brutal assault he suffers at the beginning of the film, MP declaims that “hope is violent” to a lovesick drinking buddy in Greece before, just as violently, demanding that the man stop living in the past, a thing that MP is most pointedly unable to do himself.

The role of MP is played by the Irish Mark O’Halloran with an alluring intensity, whether in delivering a rapid fire monologue on fear or hopelessly handing out missing person leaflets that bear the image of his own gaunt face. “Working with Mark was great. He is a fine human being with a great sense of

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humour, and a very dedicated and sensitive actor. It felt very fitting that he, as it turned out, is also a scriptwriter. He approached and treated my script with due respect and attention to detail,” Tan acknowledges. “A friend of his suffered brain damage some years back and he visited and talked with him in preparation for the role.

Before the shoot we rehearsed in my studio every day intensively, delving into how MP makes himself up as he goes along; the different personae he tries out for size. We discussed the different stages of MP’s condition and how to show that on the screen.”

The locations were numerous and the production schedule was exhausting, Tan concedes, not that this was a bad thing. “Reality and fiction blurred – just as in the film – and documentary and fictional scenes are intercut. We would wake up not remembering which city we were in. We suffered sleepless nights in the heat of southern Europe and anxiety in the noisy, threatening atmosphere of Barcelona’s red light district. We had to put up with horrible hotels and lost luggage at Charles du Gaulle airport.” “[But] it was great for the film, because it meant that we, my cast, crew and I, were physically and emotionally going through what MP goes through in many ways,” Tan concludes. Nick Cunningham

IFFR Tiger competition

History’s Future

Fiona Tan

Script: Fiona Tan, Jonathan Romney Production: Family Affair Films (NL) Co-production: Rohfilm (DE), Vico Film (IE), Antithesis Films (NL) Sales: Mongrel International 9

Chasing the Tiger In addition to Fiona Tan’s History’s Future, three other films with significant Dutch interest will compete in IFFR 2016 Tiger competition. Nick Cunningham reports.

Pablo Lamar’s La última tierra (The Last Land, Paraguay) is produced by Argentina-based Dutch producer Ilse Hughan who, for many years, has been producing award-winning films from South America, including Jauja (2014) and Fantasma (2006), both by Lisandro Alonso. La última tierra, selected for Tiger competition, concerns the aged Amancio who, over the course of a single night, cares for his wife during her passing, all the time coming to terms with his impending sense of loss and solitude.

problem. Teaming up with the Chilean Cinestacíon for (sound) post-production was a very good decision as well as the collaboration with Haghefilm/Nedcipro in Amsterdam. All together, good teamwork, and a happy marriage.”

Felipe Guerrero’s Oscuro Animal is a film ostensibly without dialogue, but this did not deter Dutch producer Marleen Slot from coming on board as co-producer. “When I read the script I immediately loved it. It contains no dialogue but it was [nevertheless] a beautifully written screenplay that tells a very important story. In the film three women flee their homes in war-torn Colombia bound for Bogota.

“When I met Pablo a few years ago I was intrigued by his proposal since it is exactly what I am looking for, what I am interested in – a filmmaker with a voice of his own, looking for a way to tell a story with images and not with words,” stresses Hughan.

Oscuro Animal was made with the support of Hubert Bals Fund Plus.

“We did the mix in the Netherlands with Jan Schermer (who also mixed Siv Sleeps Astray, see page 16). In a film where you almost have no dialogue the sound mix is of course highly important, maybe more so than in other films, so it was a really nice co-operation.”

Working together with Paraguayan production house Sapukai Cine, Hughan decided early that there should be a solid Dutch dimension to the project. “With my partner, Wiebke Toppel, Fortuna Films was very eager and happy to get the project off the ground, which took us quite some time, but we had faith in it from the very beginning, so no

“It is Felipe’s feature film debut,” Slot continues. “He has made many experimental documentaries before and when I saw them I knew I would really like to work with him. I worked with the producer Gema Juarez Allen on Antipodas (Victor Kossakovsky) when I was still at Lemming Film and I knew that it would be great to work together

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with her again. Oscuro Animal is a film with a very small budget but it is amazing what we managed to achieve. It is beautiful. I am very happy with it.”

Pieter-Jan De Pue’s The Land of the Enlightened (Dutch co-producer Submarine) is about a group of Afghani children who sell explosives to child workers in a lapis lazuli mine. Comments Femke Wolting from co-producer Submarine: “A couple of years ago I met with Bart van Langendonck of Savage Film (Belgium) and Pieter-Jan at IDFA. They showed me a teaser and I immediately fell in love with the project. The trailer already showed an incredible cinematic quality, showing Afghanistan and the effects of decades of war through the eyes of children. I was interested in the way Pieter-Jan wanted to show the subjective world of the children in Afghanistan, to show it through their eyes.”

“And the result is really magical,” Wolting continues. “He managed to show how the children live independently from adults from a very young age, with incredible strength and resilience, close to nature in a visceral way… Pieter-Jan is incredibly courageous, filming in a war-tormented country, and also in the way the film is made. He showed courage and a unique approach to the blend of fictional and documentary.”

IFFR Tiger Competition

Dutch Competitors

Pieter-Jan De Pue’s The Land of the Enlightened produced by Belgian Savage Film and co-produced by Submarine (NL)

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In a strange town trust of the Forres community his past catches up with him and he becomes a hazard to himself and his surroundings.

Kaweh Modiri

Kaweh Modiri’s feature debut is the thriller/doc mash-up Bodkin Ras, set in Forres on the Moray coast of northern Scotland and selected to world premiere in IFFR Bright Future. Producer Raymond van der Kaaij talks to Nick Cunningham.

For many years filmmaker Kaweh Modiri was fascinated by the remote Scottish town of Forres, explains producer Raymond van der Kaaij of Revolver Amsterdam. He was intrigued by it and inspired by its inhabitants.

With Elgin a few miles up the road in one direction, and Culloden, the scene of the Jacobites’ last stand, a few miles in the other, Forres is beautiful and impressive and imbued with an historic splendour.

But the town hides many secrets, Van der Kaaij argues, and if a stranger arrives bearing secrets of his own then he will not escape for long the attentions of those living within Forres’ less privileged underbelly. In Bodkin Ras the eponymous hero experiences just that, but just as he starts to win the

“The provinces create their own reality, with many characters and stories that are both intriguing and very dramatic,” points out producer Van der Kaaij. “There are high levels of alcohol and drug use and many people have their own struggle with life. Maybe it is something to do with the Scots or the town itself but it is how people deal with their lives, and that’s what makes it also beautiful and fascinating.”

Bodkin becomes a hazard to himself and his surroundings With the exception of actor Sohrab Bayat who plays Bodkin, the characters in the film are genuine townsfolk, but it was always Modiri’s intention to interweave a fictional narrative into their lives and see what the outcome would be over a six-week shoot. “He was, like, what if we introduce a fictional character into the town and then build a story around that,” points out Van der Kaaij, “and I was very intrigued by that idea because it is a very unconventional way to work.”

Yet as the fictional outsider slowly becomes an insider the rest of the ‘cast’ continue with their own struggles. “People project their own

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needs and whatever they feel on to Bodkin, and the story is built around that idea.”

Van der Kaaij concedes that much of the production, made with the support of the Netherlands Film Fund, was built on faith and trust.

“There was not really a script but a guideline – a story-line – although we did have some scenes with dialogue that was pre-written. Other scenes just evolved in the moment or were improvised.”

“You need a certain amount of freedom as a director especially when a lot of things are unclear, including the number of shooting days for example,” Van der Kaaij continues. “We were a team of people that went there for x amount of time, which became one and a half months, and we thought in that x amount of time we would shoot something that would be really cool, 50% of which we knew and the rest we had no idea of.”

While Van der Kaaij confirms that ‘other major festivals’ will subsequently screen Bodkin Ras, he is delighted that the film’s inaugural outing will be during IFFR Bright Future. “Rotterdam is one of the most important festivals that nurtures talent and producers who take risks and do unconventional and daring things, so I am honoured that we have the world premiere there.”

Bodkin Ras

IFFR Bright Future

Kaweh Modiri

Script: Kaweh Modiri Production: Revolver (NL) Co-production: Inti Films (BE)

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Holland in Rotterdam Dutch producers feature heavily at CineMart with the selection of 3 projects among this year’s crop of 25 new and innovative international co-pro offerings.

Family Affair Films is back with Bloody Marie, to be directed by Guido van Driel, whose debut The Resurrection of a Bastard opened IFFR 2013. The company’s 2016 Tiger competition History’s Future, (Fiona Tan, see page 8) was pitched at CineMart in 2013.

Bloody Marie tells of an alcoholic graphic novelist Marie who does not know how to hold herself together until horrific events in the flat next door force her into action. “I met Guido years ago through our mutual friend Lennert Hillege (Guido’s DOP and co-writer),” points out producer Floor Onrust. Besides the fact that Guido is a very likeable person, I enjoyed his previous film and graphic novel work a lot and therefore was more than willing to work with him. I love his sense of humour and his eye for detail. He is an artist, and that reflects is his films. Also the bold and wilful female protagonist is what attracted me further to Bloody Marie.”

Having developed an enviable reputation for producing cutting edge and controversial arthouse films over the years – Onrust, together with Topkapi Films produced Antoniak’s cause célèbre Code Blue in 2011 – will Bloody Marie

continue in this tradition?

“It certainly will,” Onrust responds.

“I have never read a script before with such a daring female main character. Guido will create a portrait of a female alcoholic, intertwining art, poetry and violence set in the Amsterdam Red Light District.”

Ben Sombogaart’s drama Rafaël is based on the true love story between a Dutch woman and her Tunisian husband, set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring. “We are quite advanced on the film. We have just applied to the Flemish Audiovisual Fund for co-production funding.

If they come on board, together with the tax shelter, we’ll have 65% of the financing,” points out producer Reinier Selen of Rinkel Film.

“We are in the middle of casting and finding locations. We are preparing our Eurimages application. The film is going into pre-production in April or May. As we are not 100% financed yet, we are still very open to find a sales agent, for example, that wants to get involved with an investment or a pre-sale to a European broadcaster. Rafaël is the kind of project that fits the CineMart profile and creative producer Jelle Nesna and Ben Sombogaart will be taking meetings.”

Sleep., by Jan-Willem van Ewijk (Atlantic.) is a road movie with tragedy at its root. Traumatised by a gun violence incident, the film’s protagonist Jacob slowly loses his sense of reality as he drives across

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America with his beautiful, witty and troubled teenage daughter Sophie.

Sleep. is produced by Ineke Kanters and Jan van der Zanden. “There is a lot of potential with this film,” stresses Van der Zanden. “The story itself is interesting, about the loss of a loved one and the different ways to cope with that, and there is the cinematic quality of the whole journey through the mountains of the US. So I would like very much to produce it. But at the core of the story is the subject of gun ownership, which is an intriguing topic for me.”

Van der Zanden claims it is an ‘honour’ to work with van Ewijk, whose Atlantic. was selected for both Toronto 2014 and IFFR Live 2015. “This will be his third feature so I think at such a time within the development of a working career you should be able not only to give him the opportunity but also adequate coaching to develop the story to the fullest extent, and also to set up a co-pro strategy that will work. We want to preserve the poetic quality and also the cinematic quality of the film, but at the same time we know what our limits are. We know that we can’t shoot a 10 million dollar film with a budget of 2.5, so it is important that you are on the same level of communication as your director – and so far that has gone very well.”

Nick Cunningham

IFFR CineMart

Projects from the Netherlands

CineMart continues to be a fertile breeding ground for Dutch (co-) production. Alex van Warmerdam’s Schneider vs Bax (CineMart 2013) premiered at Locarno 2015 while The Paradise Suite (Joost van Ginkel, CineMart 2012) not only premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival but was submitted to the Academy Awards in the Best Foreignlanguage Film category. Dutch minority co-productions included Brand New U (Simon Pummell, selected for Edinburgh, CineMart 2010), Neon Bull (Gabriel Mascaro, Orrizonti Venice, CineMart 2011) and The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, Cannes competition, CineMart 2013).

The CineMart team

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Dutch in Park City

Virtual reality music video Surge

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Way out West The Dutch offer at Sundance 2016 includes four world premieres among the seven productions and co-productions in selection. Nick Cunningham rounds ‘em all up.

The World Cinema Dramatic Competition of Sundance 2016 includes world premieres of two Dutch minority co-productions: Belgica by the Flemish Felix van Groeningen and Mammal, directed by the Irish Rebecca Daly. Belgica, which tells the story of two brothers who become more estranged the more their business thrives, was co-produced by leading Dutch production outfit Topkapi Films.

“We chose to produce this film because of Felix van Groeningen, because of our faith in his talent and our loyalty to him,” points out Topkapi MD Frans van Gestel.

“Also because this is the sixth collaboration between [Belgian producer] Menuet and Topkapi.

We strongly believe in long-term relationships and the reciprocity between us. Our collaboration with Menuet is mutually beneficial.

Mammal, meanwhile, tells the unorthodox love story of a homeless youth and a woman who has lost her son in tragic circumstances.

The film was co-produced by Amsterdam-based Rinkel Film.

“This is our fourth co-production with [Irish company] Fastnet Films,” comments Rinkel chief

Reinier Selen. “We also worked on Rebecca Daly’s first film The Other Side Of Sleep. For us, it was a very natural and logical continuation of that collaboration. I was very fond of the script. We were able to provide some crucial crew members for Rebecca – music, DP, sound and also make-up. We’re actually now evaluating working on her next film which she is already preparing.”

In World Cinema Documentary Competition is Pieter-Jan De Pue’s The Land of the Enlightened (Dutch co-producer Submarine), produced

by Savage Film, Belgium. See page 8 for comment from co-producer Submarine’s Femke Wolting.

Another minority co-production Love and Friendship will world premiere as part of the Premieres program. Adapted from the Jane Austen novel, the film is directed by Whit Stillman (NL co-prod: Revolver) and stars Kate Beckinsale, Chloë Sevigny and Stephen Fry. Love and Friendship follows the beautiful Lady Susan as she attempts to find a husband for herself and her long-suffering daughter Frederica. Stillman’s last film Damsels In Distress closed the Venice Film Festival in 2011. He received an Oscar nomination for his Metropolitan screenplay in 1990.

The Dutch family film Little Gangster

by Arne Toonen (produced by Shooting Star Filmcompany in co-production with Hazazah

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Pictures and written by Lotte Tabbers) will be presented in Sundance Kids. The film had its international premiere at the Seoul Youth International Film Festival and has received several international awards, among them the Starboy Prize of the Oulo International Children’s and Youth Film Festival. Little Gangster tells the story of Rik (11) and his father who are continually bullied. When his dad is promoted and they move to a new town, Rik decides to tell everybody his dad is really a Mafia boss…

Included in New Frontier is the virtual reality music video Surge, directed and produced by Dutch artist Arjan van Meerten. The film is described as “an abstract meditation on the evolutionary process and our relentless march towards complexity”.

Finally, the minority co-production The Lobster by Yorgos Lanthimos (NL co-prod: Lemming) is selected for Spotlight. The sci-fi/comedy/ drama feature world premiered at Cannes where it won the Jury Prize.

It has since been selected for numerous film festivals worldwide.

All the above films were made with the support of the Netherlands Film Fund.

Berlin Commune relationship with Zentropa extends back to Urszula Antoniak’s Code Blue (2011) and he has worked several times with Zentropa co-founder Peter Aalbæk Jensen.

Thomas Vinterberg

Thomas Vinterberg’s feature The Commune, selected for Berlin 2016 competition, attracted the co-pro interest of leading Dutch producer Frans van Gestel, who talks to Geoffrey Macnab.

The Commune, a Danish film scripted by Tobias Lindholm, is a story about the clash between personal desires, solidarity and tolerance in a commune in the 1970s. It is understood to have an autobiographical undertow – director Thomas Vinterberg himself grew up in a commune in the 1970s – and the cast is led by some of Scandinavian cinema’s most familiar faces, among them Ulrich Thomsen, Trine Dyrholm, Fares Fares and Lars Ranthe. Now selected for Berlin competition, The Commune was shot in Sweden and Denmark.

Delve beneath the surface, though, and you will find several Dutch elements in the project. For a start, the film marks yet another collaboration between Danish production powerhouse Zentropa and Frans van Gestel of Topkapi Films. Van Gestel’s working

In order to qualify The Commune for Eurimages support, Zentropa needed an extra European co-production partner alongside their Swedish collaborators, The Danes therefore turned to Topkapi to minority co-produce, who were also able to bring financial support to the film through the Netherlands Film Fund’s co-production fund.

This is the first film on which Van Gestel has worked with Thomas Vinterberg and Topkapi brought key creative input to the project from the Netherlands, including Ellen Lens (costume design), Marly van de Wardt (make-up) and Daniël Bouquet (2nd camera operator).

Additionally, there is also a Dutch composer, the highly regarded Fons Merkies. “We were in contact of course with the producer (Sisse Graum Jørgensen) about what kind of people they needed,” Van Gestel reflects.

The Commune has some of the same hallmarks as Lukas Moodysson’s comedy Together (2000) but Van Gestel suggests it is far darker in tone. “It is getting a bit more nasty!”

The film was pre-bought for the Netherlands by Pim Hermeling’s September Films. Hermeling, like Van Gestel, has a long association

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with the Danes and has acquired many films from Zentropa’s sales agents, TrustNordisk.

In future, it is more conceivable that Danish films like The Commune could shoot (in part) in Holland.

After all, the country has much more to offer foreign producers with its new 30% cash rebate and its emerging regional film funds.

However, Van Gestel urges a note of caution about expecting the cash incentive to revolutionise the Dutch film industry. “It takes some time,” he says of the Incentive’s bedding-in period, “before people find out what are the do’s and don’ts for shooting in a certain region. Always, when you use rebates, there should be a connection with the content. If you have a natural way to spend your money, then it is easy.”

The reverse, he adds, is also true.

It can be a struggle for producers to shoot in a territory when access to soft money is their only reason to be there. “If you need a giant studio, we don’t have one but if you have to do something with water or with exceptional technical crew, and it’s a story that could take place here in the Netherlands, then you can benefit... That’s the job of the producer – to find the right stories for the right territories. Then you can benefit in the best possible way from a tax rebate.”

Berlinale competition

The Commune

Photo: Henrik Petit

Thomas Vinterberg

Script: Thomas Vinterberg, Tobias Lindholm Production: Zentropa Entertainment 19 Aps (DK) Co-production: Zentropa International Sweden (Sweden), Topkapi Films (NL) Sales: TrustNordisk

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Express yourself Geoffrey Macnab talks to Ester Gould and Reijer Zwaan, codirectors of Strike A Pose, about the male dancers on Madonna’s infamous Blond Ambition tour.

Reijer Zwaan was around 11 years old when he first saw Madonna: Truth Or Dare (or In Bed With Madonna as it was called in Europe.) The hugely successful 1991 documentary followed Madonna during her 1990 Blond Ambition world tour. Zwaan was fascinated by the film. As the years passed, he couldn’t help but ask himself what might have happened to the young dancers who accompanied her on the tour.

When he started researching the dancers’ stories, at first more out of curiosity than with any idea of making the film, Zwaan realised that this wasn’t just a case of happy ever after. In their early 20s, these fearless dancers, most of them gay, had been on top of the world – but that meant they had a long way to fall.

the meaning of TROOP STYLE, BEAT BOY and VOGUE… Wimps and Wanna-Be’s need not apply.’

The singer chose well. “They are still very intriguing characters, all of them,” Zwaan says of the dancers as they are today. “To this day, they are great, inspiring and bold characters.

These guys, when they were 20, were having the time of their lives. They were travelling the world. They were well known. They were performing in front of 50,000 people.”

During their time with Madonna, the dancers were a close-knit group, akin to a family. Sadly, it didn’t stay like that. The dancers may have been icons of sexual freedom and self-expression but their own private lives were often clouded with compromise and secrecy.

Zwaan, a successful TV current affairs journalist on News Hour, decided to collaborate with filmmaker Ester Gould in making a documentary about the dancers’ lives. That is how Strike A Pose (world premiering in Berlinale Panorama and TEDDY competition and supported by the Netherlands Film Fund) was conceived.

Zwaan’s co-director Gould was working on Strike A Pose at the same time she was making her own, very personal feature A Strange Love Affair With Ego (about her relationship with outspoken and seemingly very successful older sister, Rowan, which won best Dutch documentary at IDFA 2015). Like Zwaan, Gould has very vivid memories of Truth Or Dare.

“I remember there was something liberating about the film. I am not really a big Madonna fan but I think what she was doing then was probably the highlight of her career… she was pushing the envelope.”

Madonna had originally advertised for ‘FIERCE male dancers who know

Thanks to social media. the dancers weren’t hard to track down. The

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trick was to convince them all to appear in the film. Some responded immediately and agreed to appear.

Others were more cautious. “It’s not the same story for each dancer but in general, they were interested in what we were talking about… they were flattered and wary at the same time,” Gould suggests.

It was clear to the dancers that this wasn’t a gossipy, nostalgic film with Madonna at the centre. The real intention was to explore just how these dancers re-invented their lives once their time in the limelight was over. These dancers are acknowledged to have had a considerable influence on gay culture. “They know they had an impact but, at the same time, they’ve had to live on.”

Gould and Zwaan found it very easy to work together. “It was a codirection made in heaven,” Gould says. The two directors made all the key decisions together. Zwaan conducted the interviews while Gould took more responsibility for directing the crew. “Editing was quite split…we edited in periods.

He did four weeks, I did four weeks and sometimes we worked together for a week. I just think we bring different things to the film.”

With his experience in journalism, Zwaan was “very sharp” on storytelling. Gould, meanwhile, had more experience in structuring feature-length documentaries.

“We did it all together,” she states.

Strike A Pose

Berlinale Panorama

Ester Gould, Reijer Zwaan

Competition Script: Ester Gould, Reijer Zwaan Production: CTM Docs (NL), The Other Room (NL) Co-production: Serendipity Films (BE)

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China crisis Sophia Luvarà

Director Sophia Luvarà and producer Iris Lammertsma talk to Melanie Goodfellow about delving into China’s gay scene for her Berlinale Panorama and TEDDY competition pic Inside the Chinese Closet.

Sophia Luvarà’s Inside The Chinese Closet, supported by the Netherlands Film Fund, explores what it means to be a young gay adult in China through a touching portrait of two Shanghai residents juggling personal desires with parental expectations.

Homosexuality was legalised in China in 1997 but it is still very much taboo, especially in the provinces. “It’s legal but gay people still have a tough time linked to society’s views,” says Luvarà. It took the Italian filmmaker three years to find people who were willing to talk on camera about their experiences as a gay person. “I met many, many people with great stories but they all backed out at the last minute,” she recounts. “This went on for years.

I was going back and forth, staying a month at time.”

She credits Dutch producers Boudewijn Koole and Iris Lammertsma at Amsterdambased Witfilm with keeping the project on track. “I was upfront with them from the start that it would be difficult to convince people to take part, but Boudewijn and Iris trusted me and believed that I could make the film, although sometimes I didn’t believe it myself,” says Luvarà.

“I would sometimes think what am I doing here? Am I crazy? Knowing they were there was a huge help.”

In the end, Luvarà managed to convince two young Shanghai residents – Andy and Cherry – to participate in the film on the proviso it was never broadcast in China.

“I also wanted to get people’s families involved too but that was nearly impossible – very often people didn’t even want me to meet them – but I did manage to meet Cherry’s family and interview her mother.”

At first, Luvarà had planned to revolve the documentary around the phenomenon of fake marriages between gay youngsters as a ruse to keep families happy. But then, another, very Chinese, angle came to the fore: the pressure on the only children of China’s 30-year ‘one child’ policy to give their parents a grandchild. The documentary touches on the subject of fake partnerships but homes in more closely on the issue of bearing a child as Andy and Cherry explore options such as surrogacy.

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Producer Lammertsma first connected with Luvarà while attending the Sheffield Doc/Fest some four years ago. “I’d just started working with Witfim, having moved into documentary from theatre,” she says. “I’d put the word out that I was looking for new talents and Sophia sought me out. She had a simple trailer and we thought it had the makings of an attractive story.”

“Then she found Andy, who is one of the main characters,” continues Lammertsma. “He is this very nice, loveable guy who is under huge pressure from his father to get married and have a child. It gives a particular insight into Chinese society through a specific community.”

Other upcoming Witfilm films include Transit Havana, about Cuban President Raul Castro’s gay rights campaigner daughter Mariela Castro and the country’s progressive transgender stance, and The Three Lives of My Father, exploring Chinese mass migration through the family of a second-generation Chinese-Dutch director.

“We’ve really grown a lot recently.

We used to have two or three documentaries a year and now we have nine in production,” says Lammertsma. “We focus on author-driven works. We’re really looking for a different way to tell a story, which is more artistic or experimental.”

Inside the Chinese Closet

Berlinale Panorama

Sophia Luvarà

Competition Script: Sophia Luvarà Production: Witfilm Sales: Films Transit

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Fight Club based Kaliber Film, which he founded in 2007.

Mete Gümürhan

Dutch-Turkish producer Mete Gümürhan talks to Melanie Goodfellow about his directorial debut Young Wrestlers ahead of its Berlinale world premiere.

Turkey’s national sport of oil wrestling, in which fighting competitors douse themselves in olive oil, has an increasing global following thanks to social media and the spread of the sport by Turkish expats. Less well known are the children’s tournaments that run alongside the main championships in June and which are taken every bit as seriously by the young contenders and their families.

Dutch-Turkish producer and filmmaker Mete Gümürhan’s feature documentary Young Wrestlers explores the phenomenon in the province of Amasya in Northern Turkey. The feature documentary, supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and premiering in the Berlinale Generation section, marks a directorial debut for Gümürhan who has spent the best part of a decade producing under the banner of his Amsterdam and Istanbul-

The Rotterdam-born filmmaker, who studied film at the Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam and is also an alumnus of Berlinale Talents, IDFAcademy, CineMart’s Rotterdam Lab and EAVE, now divides his time between the Netherlands and Turkey.

For Young Wrestlers, Gümürhan and his crew followed pupils at the Amasya Wrestling Centre, a boarding school where children train to be wrestling champions while getting an education too. The film focuses on half a dozen 12-year old boys including the motherless Baran, who struggles with his weight, Harun, a strong contender who is training hard to catch up after breaking his arm, and Ahmet who is in awe of his older brother, an Olympic wrestler.

Gümürhan says the idea of exploring the world of child wrestling came to him while producing Dutch Willem Baptist’s award-winning doc I’m Never Afraid, about a young motor-cross enthusiast. “It switched me on to the topic of children in sport,” he explains, adding that he likes the honesty of children.

“They don’t have a mindset that they have to back up what they say or do... They don’t have an ego yet.”

Gümürhan is directing the work through Kaliber Film with the

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support of his new partners at the company Aydin Dehzad and Bas Broertjes. The pair jointly produced Nima Mohaghegh’s 2014 Student Academy Award- nominated Sacred Defense – set against the backdrop of the Iran-Iraq War – while studying production at the Netherlands Film Academy.

The pair will be attending IFFR’s Rotterdam Lab this year.

Other upcoming productions on the company’s slate include Gümürhan’s debut fiction feature MNK Boy about a Dutch-Turkish 12-year-old getting used to life in Istanbul after moving there from Rotterdam when his father gets a job with a Dutch bank in Turkey. Production companies attached included Dutch Topkapi Films and Turkey’s Filmalti. The film also won the support of the Turkish Cultural Ministry’s cinema fund.

Gümürhan is also developing a second feature doc about child labourers on different continents.

“I want to follow the lives of several children who do heavy work but still find hope in their misery” he says.

The unique blend of diverse cultural backgrounds that makes up Kaliber Film creates a perfect bridge between East and West. This influences the kind the stories we find important.

We want to shine a light on parts of the world that are not often shown in Dutch cinema. In this way we aspire to take on a guiding role within the Dutch film industry.

Young Wrestlers

Berlinale Generation

Mete Gümürhan

‘Children are more easy-going. They don’t have an ego yet’

Script: Mete Gümürhan Production: Kaliber Film (NL), Filmaltı (TR)

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Caught on film I thought it would be fantastic to make a film about the creation of a piece of art.”

Maurice Dekkers

Rene Redzepi is nicknamed the “Prince of Denmark” and is often called the best chef in the world. Last year, he announced that he’d be taking his world famous Noma restaurant to Tokyo for a two-month residency.

Food-obsessed filmmaker Maurice Dekkers decided to follow him there and the result is new feature doc Ants on a Shrimp, a world premiere in Berlin’s Culinary Cinema strand and sold internationally by Fortissimo.

Dekkers had originally intended to make a TV series about “cooking techniques” with the celebrated chef. They’d already started writing the series together when Redzepi mentioned his plans to head to Tokyo. Immediately, the director decided to change tack and make a film in Japan instead. He realised that this would be a unique opportunity to spend time with the chef when he was devising a completely new menu.

The director likens his subject to an artist. “Obviously, this wasn’t real art…but I guess this was the art of food. With that in my mind,

Dekkers acknowledges that there have been many recent films about chefs. “Most of the time, they’re about the struggles in their personal life.” That wasn’t the direction that he wanted to go. Instead, in Ants on a Shrimp, the focus is on the process.

The aim was to give the audience the illusion that they were part of Redzepi’s team as they raced against time to create 14 new dishes. (The film stops on the day the restaurant opens.) Their work is filmed in sweaty, realist fashion. There are lots of setbacks along the way.

“To be honest, I didn’t want to make pornography of food,” the director declares. “I know that when you are in a kitchen, it is hard work…I wanted to film it very raw. When you get the food on the table, it always looks fancy but you’ve got no clue what is going on behind the scenes.”

Redzepi and his close-knit kitchen crew worked punishing hours in the lead-up to the opening of the Tokyo restaurant, “testing, testing, tasting, tasting” as the director puts it. The chef went on trips all over Japan to check ingredients and develop ideas.

Dekkers accompanied him on several of these trips and also spent three months filming in Tokyo.

There are some surprising insights into the lives of the cooks. For

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example, the head chef is shown ordering himself a pizza in the middle of the night. “I wanted to show that, also. These (the kitchen staff) are just normal guys and they are working very hard to achieve something. They’re eating pizza and they’re drinking Red Bull.”

For all his Michelin stars, Redzepi is renowned for dishes that are “quite simple.” Sometimes, customers who’ve flown all the way around the world to arrive at Noma experience a sense of anti-climax that the cooking isn’t more elaborate. Even so, as Dekkers points out, an immense amount of work will have gone into anything the chef serves up. “Some­ times, people will be disappointed.

They’ll say what is this? It is just a potato. There is a lot of thinking and a lot of effort that has gone into that potato. Not every dish is comfort food…the dishes he creates, you’ll think of 4 weeks after you eat it. It stays with you, like good art.”

Yes, Dekkers sees similarities between the process of cooking and his own struggles as a filmmaker.

That was one reason why he was able to strike up such an easy rapport with Redzepi. The chef was generally easy-going and friendly to everyone but he could also become tense and frustrated when at work.

“I could recognise that in him and he could recognise that in me as well,” the director reflects on the anguish of creation.

Geoffrey Macnab

Berlinale Culinary Cinema

Ants on a Shrimp

Maurice Dekkers

Script: Maurice Dekkers Production: BlazHoffski Sales: Fortissimo

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A Stapel Diet Rosie Stapel

Portrait Of A Garden is Rosie Stapel’s first film as a director after many years as a production designer, scenic painter and props guru on films ranging from Paula van der Oest’s The Domino Effect to Peter Greenaway’s The Tulse Luper Suitcases.

The film, screening in Berlin’s Culinary Cinema section, takes viewers on a journey through “the secrets” of a very old, very well maintained Rotterdam kitchen garden. Stapel first started shooting in the garden in January 2013. At that stage, she had little idea of how the film would develop. “I didn’t have a strategy,” she recalls. “My research was going to be the film.”

No, the director admits, she didn’t have green fingers herself. The garden was being tended by two perfectionists – a 60-year old gardener and an 85-year old pruning master. Stapel looked to these two experts to guide her. “I tried to stay with them as much as possible to get the information I needed.”

At first, the old-timers were a little wary of the filmmaker in their

midst. “For the first month or maybe even the first two months, it was quite difficult. They tried to forget me – but they didn’t!” the director recalls of her initial struggles to relax her subjects.

However, she was in the garden for 100 days and they couldn’t help but become accustomed to her presence. “In the end, I was part of the garden.”

Peter Greenaway, with whom Stapel has worked several times, was an obvious influence on the look of Portrait Of A Garden. She may have been working with a video camera but she took immense care in framing and shooting the film.

“I really worked on the composition.

Every shot is actually a painting,” she says.

It was a strange year for the garden.

The frost lingered and the plants were slow to blossom. “It took a lot of time until spring came. In May, a lot of things were still under the ground. The wintertime was very long and it was quite wet at that time,” the director remembers.

Even so, everything was OK. “I was waiting for a big disaster as a movie maker but it didn’t come.”

The director acknowledges the similarities between her own job and that of the gardeners. She ended up shooting a gargantuan 500 hours so there was certainly a lot of pruning to be done in the editing suite. Stapel had to (as she

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puts it) “thin” the film out and she recruited Jozef van Wissem (the Dutch minimalist composer best known for his work on Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive) to write the music score (for flute).

The film is full of philosophical references. (In the credits, Stapel thanks the famous Dutch thinker and author, Spinoza.) One goal was to explore the way humans interact with nature. She held a special screening of the film for the 60-year-old gardener in her studio and then arranged for it to be shown to the older gardener on a big screen in the kitchen garden itself.

“The older man said ‘Rose, thank you so much. I am so impressed that you can make this of an old man!”

The director has now returned to the day job. She has no doubts, though, that she will direct again soon. In the meantime, she is delighted that Portrait Of A Garden is screening in Berlin as part of the Culinary Cinema programme. “It is about the importance of taking care of our earth…we’re living in a period when everything goes quicker and quicker but the garden dictates a certain natural time – everything needs time to grow. You can’t make it quicker than nature intends.”

Geoffrey Macnab

Berlinale Culinary Cinema

Portrait of a Garden

Rosie Stapel

Script: Rosie Stapel

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Marijn Frank

Photo: Harmen de Jong

Food for thought

When director Marijn Frank had her brain scanned, it transpired that she responded more feverishly to images of meat than to images of sex. Her impulse was similar to alcoholics shown a bottle of whisky or compulsive gamblers passing a betting shop.

In her very funny and illuminating film Need for Meat, selected for Berlinale Culinary Cinema section, Frank tries to overcome her meat obsession by taking a job in an abattoir, before plumbing her own psychological depths during an intensive course of therapy.

“This has been an issue for a long time for me,” Frank stresses. “I grew up in one of those macrobiotic, vegetarian families. ‘Eating meat is for people who don’t think,’ my Mum used to say. But when I was five I wanted to start eating meat and I’ve never been able to stop since. I’ve wanted to be a vegetarian since I was in my twenties but somehow I didn’t manage. But since my daughter Sally was born, three and half years ago, I thought, if I’m ever going to make this

documentary about meat, this is the moment. Because it wasn’t all about me anymore, I had to decide for her too.”

Frank is buffeted within a vortex of indecision as she assesses the advantages of a meat-free diet. She witnesses her first animal slaughter and talks to committed (and very persuasive) vegans. She visits horrendously crowded battery chicken farms and is told that half a billion animals are slaughtered every year in the Netherlands alone to meet consumer demand.

But despite all this, when it comes to meat Frank just cannot stop herself, especially when sexy chef Joris comes on the scene. He is a man whose meat is ethically reared and lovingly prepared, and her carnal desires re-surface once more, so much so that she dreams of a naked marinade massage beneath his professional hands. And the steak he cooks for her is lustily, greedily and messily consumed.

“You need a little bit of lightness and humour just to digest a film about the subject,” Frank claims.

“The dream sequences were important so that I could introduce a bit of fantasy and sexiness. It wasn’t all hard core reality.”

Dramatic tension is raised to breaking point at the film’s end when a key and recurring ‘will she/ won’t she?’ question is resolved. Is Frank prepared to slaughter, albeit

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ethically and with professional guidance, one of the cows that will provide the delicious meat that she craves? “I wanted to be there with the camera at all the key moments.

Capturing these moments when they really happen makes a film special and exciting,” she underlines.

Frank is grateful to fellow Dutch filmmaker Suzanne Raes to whom she accords co-director status.

“I did the research, but Suzanne came up with some very important ideas for the film, such as the therapy that put everything into the context of an addiction, but also the fantasies and the dreams,” she says.

“Suzanne was always there for me when I was completely messed up, which was a lot in this film. She was a good friend as well as my mentor.”

Judging by her excitement after the world premiere at IDFA 2015, Frank isn’t bearing any emotional scars after her experiences on the film, but it was a tough and revelatory journey nevertheless. “I never thought the film was going to have such a big impact on my life – I was completely a mess by the end,” she stresses. “The therapy was pretty hard core, and also working in a slaughterhouse I was constantly pushing my own boundaries and thinking ‘if I can do this what kind of person does that make me?

Could I fight in a war now?’ It was all much more intense than I expected it to be.” Nick Cunningham

Berlinale Culinary Cinema

Need for Meat

Marijn Frank

Script: Suzanne Raes Production: IDTV Docs

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Viking in Sweden Catti Edfeldt and Lena Hanno Clyne

Viking Film’s Marleen Slot is minority co-producer on the Swedish Siv Sleeps Astray, which opens Berlin Generation.

She talks to Nick Cunningham.

The business of co-producing films for children is made considerably easier when the countries involved are Sweden and the Netherlands, both of which have continually raised the bar in terms of support for the genre. The co-production Siv Sleeps Astray, produced by the Swedish outfit Snowcloud Films and co-produced by Amsterdam-based Viking Film very much continues in this vein following its selection as Berlin Generation 2016 opener.

Siv Sleeps Astray is about a young girl’s first sleepover, and a magical one at that, replete with fantastic exploits within a new and strange world, with a pair of funny and highly talkative badgers for company. The film explores that first thrilling sense of displacement within an unfamiliar space where normal family rules no longer apply, where stuff is waiting to be discovered and where adventure is waiting to be had. “It is a film for the

really youngest audience,” comments Viking Film’s Marleen Slot. “I really liked it because aside from the real world and the problems that children have in the real world, it is combined with fantasy. That is what attracted me to the film and I think it is what will attract audiences.”

“The directors made a perfect choice for Siv (Astrid Lövgren),” continues Slot. “She plays the part so amazingly and is a true sweetheart to look at. You really feel close to her.”

Slot first met producer Petter Lindblad at Cinekid when she was at Lemming Film. They met again at the event a few years later when he pitched Siv and when Viking Film was up and running. Petter had just formed Snowcloud, after leaving Danish production house Copenhagen Bombay for whom he set up its Stockholm division.

“I really fell for the project and then we were together at the Producers’ Lab in Hamburg,” points out Slot.

“I read the script and we decided to give it a go and work together on it.”

Slot was able to secure coproduction finance from the Netherlands Film Fund as well as a cash rebate via the Netherlands Film Production Incentive. “This was such a good co-operation and we could really bring something to the table. It was already very clear from the beginning that the

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directors wanted to have the father and grandmother of Cerisia (Siv’s sleepover friend) to come from another country, so that’s why we decided they could come from the Netherlands and to get Barry Atsma (Stricken) and Annemarie Prins (Accused) to play those parts. The costume designer during the shoot was from the Netherlands and during post-production we also had very good involvement with a Dutch composer. The final sound mix was done here too. It was great having those talented heads of department on board.”

‘It was great having those talented Dutch heads of department on board’ Viking Film is also minority co-producer on IFFR Tiger contender Oscuro Animal (see page 6), a gritty tale of three women who must flee their homes in war-torn Colombia.

“It teaches me so much more as a producer when working with countries outside of the Netherlands and sometimes outside Europe. I am very happy that we are given the opportunity to work on those kinds of films here in the Netherlands because it also helps me to produce my own films. It is great to be able to work that way.”

Catti Edfeldt/Lena Hanno Clyne

Photo: Karolina Pajak

Siv Sleeps Astray

Opening Film Berlinale Generation

Script: Lena Hanno Clyne and Thobias HoffmĂŠn Production: Snowcloud Films (SE) Co-production: Viking Film (NL) Sales: SF International

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The vanishing have gone near. “I was very, very impressed by Sergeant – a great short that, despite its low budget, kept me glued to my seat.”

Nikola Ljuca

“It’s kind of a sweaty film!”

Derk-Jan Warrink of Lemming Film jokes to Geoffrey Macnab of young Serbian director Nikola Ljuca’s debut feature Humidity.

The film, premiering in Berlinale Forum and supported by the Netherlands Film Fund + Hubert Bals Fund Co-production Scheme (NFF + HBF), is about a successful and charismatic businessman whose wife vanishes in bizarre circumstances and whose life suddenly begins to unravel. This wasn’t an obvious choice for Amsterdam-based Lemming to board as minority co-producers.

Nor, as Warrink recalls, was it an easy film to finance.

Warrink met Ljuca’s producer Natasa Damnjanovic in 2011 at the Berlinale Talent Campus – and they immediately hit it off. “She pitched me the project and screened me Nikola’s short gay love story Sergeant.” The Dutch producer was immediately struck by the cinematography and by the confident and sensitive style in which the young director dealt with material few other Serb directors

Humidity was selected for co-production markets CineLink in Sarajevo and CineMart 2012, where it won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award worth €30,000.

This was a sure sign that the project had credibility in the international marketplace. Even so, it took two years to get the movie financed and into production. The problem, at least initially, was that the Serbs couldn’t provide any financing from their home country. Everyone agreed the script was top notch and Ljuca was a young talent to watch but that, apparently, wasn’t enough.

“Most of the film funds don’t grant you money if the home territory is not in yet,” Warrink explains.

“It was very hard to get funding out of Germany and France without Serbian support.” Nor did it help with some potential financiers that Nikola Ljuca was a first-time director.

In the end, NFF + HBF (which supports filmmakers from emerging industries) agreed to back the project. Humidity was put together as a Serbian/Dutch co-production. By 2014, when the film went into production, the producers were finally able to attract some Serbian backing through the Film Centre Of Serbia.

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While the budget didn’t extend to Warrink being on the Belgrade set, he was nonetheless happy that he was able to contribute to the production. “Of course, they are young filmmakers. It was their first feature film, just like it was my first co-production. The combination of knowledge and network, from both Dart Film and Lemming Film, benefitted the film hugely.”

The Dutch contribution includes cast members Dragan Bakema (who lives in the Netherlands but has Serbian origins) and Dutch actress Maria Kraakman (Schneider vs Bax) as well as the film’s sound editor.

Warrink himself had just been collaborating on Yorgos Lanthimos’ surrealistic comedy drama The Lobster, starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz, produced by Element Pictures. This, he suggests, was a great experience to draw from.

Humidity wasn’t high-budget, Warrink maintains. Nevertheless, post-production support was offered by the Netherlands Film Fund, which gave the filmmakers the opportunity to achieve what they did. “We appreciate the help and support offered by the Fund, who stayed with us through to the end.”

Warrink is keen to collaborate with the Serbs again. “It was great to work with Nikola and Natasa. They’re incredibly passionate and gave their all for the film. I’d definitely like to follow them on their new projects.”

Humidity

Berlinale Forum

Nikola Ljuca

Dragan Bakema, star of Humidity Script: Stasa Bajac, Nikola Ljuca Production: Dart Film (RS) Co-production: Lemming Film (NL), Marni Films (GR), Cinnamon Production (RS), Two Thirty Five - 235 (GR)

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Asli Özge

Photo: Emre Erkmen

To Berlin via Holland

All Of A Sudden, selected for Berlin Panorama Special and co-produced by Topkapi Films, is the third feature from muchheralded young Turkish writerdirector, Asli Özge, following on from her debut Men On The Bridge (2009) and Lifelong (2013). Geoffrey Macnab reports.

Amsterdam-based Topkapi Films, who co-produced All Of A Sudden, has long made it a policy to support auteur-driven films from emerging directors like Özge. As the company’s Arnold Heslenfeld puts it: “We are always interested in working together with the long-term with talent and we are interested in looking for projects we think will have a chance in the international market.” Heslenfeld also talks of “developing relationships… with the people behind that talent.”

That is why the company has partnerships with production companies like Zentropa (with whom it worked on Thomas Vinterberg’s The Commune) and directors such as Belgian wunderkind Felix Van Groeningen or the acclaimed Iranian-born Babak Jalili.

Topkapi was introduced to filmmaker Özge by Bero Beyer, now IFFR artistic director but who had co-produced Özge’s debut Men On The Bridge and who had also worked as Feature Film Consultant at the Netherlands Film Fund where co-pro is high on the agenda.

All Of A Sudden is a drama about a wealthy and complacent man who, after being caught up in a completely accidental event, is made to face up to his own weaknesses and starts to question his seemingly stable and comfortable life. As Heslenfeld remembers, the Topkapi executives were initially uncertain about the first drafts that Özge provided.

“They were not clear enough about what was the theme of the film but she really improved the scripts amazingly. That is, of course, her talent.” Özge’s passionate producer Fabian Massah was young and relatively inexperienced. He was looking to Topkapi for guidance as well as co-production support. “We could help him a bit and advise him on what he could and couldn’t do…

Fabian wasn’t leaning on us but he wanted to have our advice.” Topkapi was able to bring in financing from the Netherlands Film Fund. There was German regional film funding backing, some French support, and some money from Eurimages too – but nothing from Özge’s home country, Turkey.

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But for Topkapi, this wasn’t just a case of providing cash. There was creative involvement too.

Heslenfeld’s partner and cofounder of Topkapi, Frans van Gestel, advised on the editing.

Dutch crew worked in key creative roles and part of the postproduction was done in the Netherlands.

Pim Hermeling’s September Films is set to handle the Dutch release.

These, though, aren’t easy times for foreign language arthouse fare in the Dutch market. The DVD market is disappointing and VOD isn’t yet making amends. TV and pay-TV also seem to have lost their appetite for auteur-driven films from names unknown to local audiences.

That, Heslenfeld suggests, is why major festivals are now so important. With a Berlin premiere, All Of A Sudden (sold internationally by leading French company Memento) has the perfect potential launch pad.

Heslenfeld suggests that demand in the Netherlands for traditional, middle of the road arthouse has disappeared almost entirely.

That is why Topkapi encourages filmmakers whose movies aren’t right for festival selection to re-think their work in mainstream terms. Nonetheless, the company’s commitment to new, edgy and distinctive voices like that of Asli Özge remains undimmed.

Berlinale Panorama

All Of A Sudden

Asli Özge

Photo: Emre Erkmen

‘We’re developing relationships with the people behind the talent’

Script: Asli Özge Production: EEE Productions (DE) Co-production: Topkapi Films (NL), Haut et Court (FR), WDR-Arte (DE/FR)

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Art of deception Reinier Selen

Eight years ago producer Reinier Selen heard the extraordinary story of Han van Meegeren (1889-1947), the Dutch artist and forger famous for his fake Vermeers. Now his A Real Vermeer is in production ahead of an Autumn 2016 delivery.

“I was quite fascinated that, first of all, never had a film been made about him and also what I liked about it so much was that this man’s motivation to start forging Vermeers was revenge,” Selen reflects.

Van Meegeren’s misfortune was to be a brilliant classical painter working in the style of Rembrandt and Vermeer in the age of modernism and Picasso. He was understandably hugely resentful of an art establishment that rejected him. “His motivation to start forging was basically anger.” What’s more, there was something heroic, Selen suggests, about the way that Van Meegeren fought back against the cultural elite of the time. His achievement is that his paintings hang in galleries all over the world, even if no-one knows they are by him.

This is a film which has had a very

lengthy gestation. At first, Selen’s company Rinkel Film had thought of making an English-language movie about the forger, working with veteran Belgian screenwriter and director Dominique Deruddere as collaborator. When that didn’t work out, Selen decided to make the film in Dutch. He brought producer San Fu Maltha of Fu Works aboard the project at an early stage.

Maltha, producer of Black Book, is known as a strong minded and fiery figure. “Of course, he has that reputation but I really enjoy working with him. He is very loyal to the people that he works with,” says Selen.

In 2011, the producers recruited Rudolf van den Berg (Tirza, Süskind) as director. Van den Berg’s company Cadenza, run by Jeroen Koolbergen, also joined the production. “Rudolf is a director who wants to tell stories about exceptional characters in exceptional circumstances,” Selen suggests. “What we like about him is that he wants to make quality films for a wide audience. He is not interested in making films which just are for the ‘happy few.’”

Jeroen Spitzenberger (star of Süskind) was eventually cast as Van Meegeren. As Selen explains, it’s a challenging role. On the one hand, Van Meegeren is a charming, very warm, loving artist, in love with his wife and mistress but he is also frustrated and angry, a guy who creates a lot of turmoil.” Upcoming

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Flemish actress Lize Feryn (best known for TV series In Flanders Fields) was cast as the artist’s muse and the love of his life.

Some of Van Meegeren’s own frustrations were shared by the filmmakers as they tried to put the €3.7m budget together for the film and Selen admits to a certain exasperation at the failure to attract any backing from Dutch broadcasters.

“The funding process was really, really long,” Selen sighs. “We recently discovered that we have 30 financing dossiers on our server.”

In the end, Selen found support from Tarantula in Luxembourg and Belgian outfit Living Stone. It helped, too, that the filmmakers managed to secure money from Eurimages and there was continuing support from the Netherlands Film Fund and the Film Production Incentive. Now, finally, the movie is in production, shooting in Luxembourg and in Croatia. Laurent Danielou’s Loco Films is handling world sales. Even before the main cast was chosen, Cinéart got on board, taking Benelux distribution rights.

For Selen, seeing the cameras finally roll is both a relief and a vindication.

Don’t expect, though, to see real Van Meegeren paintings in the film.

They’re under copyright and so, by a neat irony, the producers have had to recruit another artist to forge the master faker’s work. Geoffrey Macnab

A Real Vermeer

Production report

Rudolf van den Berg

Photo: Patricia Peribanez

‘His motivation to start forging was basically anger’

Script: Jan Eilander, Rudolf van den Berg Production: Rinkel Film (NL), Fu Works (NL), Cadenza Films (NL) Co-production: Tarantula (LU), Living Stone (BE)

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Producer profile

Hanneke Niens

Hanneke Niens, producer of IFFR opening film Beyond Sleep

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Character Building Hanneke Niens, producer of IFFR opening film Beyond Sleep, talks to Melanie Goodfellow about her near 20-year career.

Hanneke Niens, who co-founded Amsterdam-based KeyFilm with Hans de Wolf in 2008, belongs to that rare breed of producer who successfully switch between art-house and mainstream fare with ease. “I like to make accessible art-house films and intelligent audience-oriented pictures. I’m not into every genre or really plot-driven films. I like strong character driven pictures with a target audience. It doesn’t need to be a big target audience but there needs to be a target,” says Niens.

The experienced producer will be at IFFR this year with Boudewijn Koole’s ambitious opening film Beyond Sleep, inspired by Dutch writer Willem Frederik Hermans’s classic novel (see page 6).

Other recent productions include the Dutch feel-good drama Ventoux, about a group of old friends reuniting on a cycling holiday in the South of France; Antoinette Beumer’s hit romantic comedy Soof, which drew some 800,000 spectators at home; Saskia Diesing’s multiple awardwinning coming-of-age tale Nena, which premiered in the Berlinale’s Generation Plus section in 2014, and Palestinian Hany Abu Assad’s The Idol, on which KeyFilm was a minority co-producer.

“The reasons for getting involved in an art-house film or a more mainstream work are very different but I enjoy both types of film. On Soof, we had so much fun. We loved the story and were really proud when it became a box office hit. On Nena, I was struck by the autobiographical story and its unique signature and wanted to make it even though I knew it would have a smaller audience.”

Prior to KeyFilm, Niens spent nearly a decade at IDTV Film, which she co-founded and helped build into one of the Netherlands’ biggest film and TV production houses, producing films such as Ben Sombogaart’s 2003 Oscar nominated Twin Sisters and Pieter Kuijpers’s Godforsaken!.

Her decision to leave and set up shop with De Wolf came from a desire to get back to producing. “It was a really successful company both in terms of the box office and awards, but I found myself being a manager rather than a producer/filmmaker,” she explains.

“I wanted to focus on producing and be more of a part of the creative process again.”

Niens and De Wolf’s collective filmography now runs to some 40 feature productions, roughly 15 of them literary adaptations and the rest original works. “About 60% of our projects start with us, from our ideas, perhaps inspired by a novel or something we read in the newspapers on a movement, a trend or an urgent issue having an impact in Holland or

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internationally and then we approach a writer and a director.”

After IFFR, Niens and De Wolf will head to the Berlinale, where the Dutch lead actor of Beyond Sleep, Reinout Scholten van Aschat is an EFP Shooting Star this year (see back cover). Niens plans to support sales and promotion on the film and also network for new co-productions.

She notes KeyFilm has become increasingly active on the coproduction front since the intro­ duction in 2014 of the Netherlands’ 30% cash rebate for film production.

“International producers now actively seek out Dutch producers as minority co-producers so we’re having quite a few meetings in Berlin,” says the producer.

The company’s first cash rebatesupported co-production was with Vienna and Luxembourg-based Amour Fou on Austrian director Virgil Widrich’s upcoming epic family drama The Night of a Thousand Hours, starring Amira Casar.

Upcoming majority productions on KeyFilm’s slate include Clara Van Gool’s dance feature The Beast in the Jungle, which the director is creating in collaboration with poet Glyn Maxwell; Saskia Diesing’s next feature Dorst, an adaptation of a novel by Esther Gerritsen (who co-wrote Nena), and the feel-good comedy Barry will Come Tomorrow.

DOP profile

Richard Van Oosterhout

Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship

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Lensing by candlelight Richard van Oosterhout

The work of respected Dutch DOP Richard Van Oosterhout will be seen on both sides of the Atlantic this January in Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship which premieres at Sundance before moving on to Rotterdam.

He talks to Melanie Goodfellow.

Love & Friendship, inspired by Jane Austen’s unpublished novella Lady Susan, is set within the opulent drawing rooms of 18th Century English society and stars Kate Beckinsale as a devious young widow.

“I’ve done costume dramas before but set during World War 2. Love & Friendship was entirely different. It’s set in 1790 and I only had daylight and candlelight to work with, so that was interesting,” says Van Oosterhout. “My job is all about framing and lighting so I like to set myself new challenges and do something new on every film I work on. I hate doing the same thing twice.”

Van Oosterhout notes how his attachment to the film was due in part to the heavy Dutch component within its construction. The film is an Irish-French-Dutch feature

involving production company Revolver Amsterdam and is made with the backing of the Netherlands Film Fund selective scheme. “In the first instance it was about the money and who was paying for the film,” says Van Oosterhout with characteristic Dutch directness, adding: “As part of the coproduction deal it was decided the cinematographer should be Dutch.”

He also suggests that his recent work on the children’s picture The Legend of Longwood, also shot in Ireland, may have helped land him the position. “I already knew some of the crew and how they work in Ireland which was helpful,” he says.

“I’d read the script and loved it.

It was different and special so I really wanted to work on the film.”

The production joins a growing list of feature credits for which Van Oosterhout has won critical acclaim including &Me, Little Black Spiders, Nowhere Man, Wolfsbergen, Guernsey, Rosie, Atlantis and Black Swans.

Upcoming films to which he is attached include Job Gosschalk’s musical-inspired De Zevende Hemel and Ties Schenk’s family drama Monk.

In between times, Van Oosterhout has also found time to co-edit the book ‘Shooting Time’ featuring a series of interviews with nineteen top DOPs and looking principally at how technology is changing the art of cinematography. Now a respected figure in the Benelux cinemato­

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graphy world, belonging to Dutch and Belgian cinematography societies as well as the European Film Academy, Van Oosterhout reveals he fell into the profession by chance.

Prior to moving behind the camera he worked as a technician for a small theatre company, before deciding to study architecture/ interior design and photography.

He then moved to Belgium to study film but dropped out, instead opting to work as assistant to Chris Dercon who went on to head up London’s Tate Modern. Then he tried to make his way as an artist before finally landing up on film sets to pay the bills. He credits Dutch cinematographer Marc Felperlaan with giving him his first break on set. “I worked as grip for a long time, before moving on to focus puller, assistant camera and then finally DOP,” he says.

Van Oosterhout says he is not a DOP who likes to prep a film too much before hitting the set. “I like to work intuitively rather than from a storyboard. Of course, there are a lot of discussions before you start shooting but I like to work with the conditions on the set rather than from pre-set ideas. It’s so different when it’s black and white on paper to when you’re on the set. I think this approach brings a special ingredient to the production which can’t be added at the writing or editing stage.”

In short...

In a sign of the Netherlands’ flourishing short film scene, six Dutch productions will screen at the Clermont-Ferrand Int’l Short Film Festival this year. Melanie Goodfellow reports.

The Netherlands will be out in force at Clermont- Ferrand International Short Film Festival this February, regarded by many as the Cannes of the European short filmmaking scene. Two Dutch titles, the non-fiction work 9 Days – From My Window in Aleppo and the stop-motion animation Red-End and the Factory Plant, will play in the International Competition.

9 Days – From My Window in Aleppo was born out of a collaboration between Syrian photographer Issa Touma and Dutch filmmakers Floor van der Meulen and Thomas Vroege, and follows the early days of the Syrian civil war.

Vroege proposed the project to Touma after hearing him give a talk in Amsterdam about the importance of making art in war zones, during which he showed some of the footage used in the film.

“You see the birth of a war on the street. It’s very rare that you see that from the perspective of civilians rather than conventional media,” says Vroege. “There was only one or two hours of material and some photographs so the short format was a natural fit.”

Vroege is now making the feature documentary Theater of the Crowd, which won the €125,000 Dutch Cultural Media Fund Documentary Award in 2015 and which looks in more depth at the start of the Syrian conflict.

Bethany de Forest and computer animation pioneer Robin Noorda’s 4K digital cinema stop motion work for Red-end and the Factory Plant follows a group of red-ants on a mission to save a fellow ant imprisoned in a factory processing carnivorous plants.

Experimental video artist and filmmaker Douwe Dijkstra returns for the second-year running to Lab Competition with his Supporting Film, exploring people’s rituals connected to watching films.

‘It is really special seeing your film watched by more than 1,000 people…’

“It’s a great festival. It’s amazing how many people come to the screenings. They’re always full. It’s really special seeing your film being watched by more than one thousand people at one time,” says Dijkstra, who attended last year with Démontable, which was also selected for Lab Competition.

Supporting Film was commissioned by the Netherlands International

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Short Film Festival Nijmegen as part of its drive to encourage the screening of short films ahead of the main features in cinemas.

“They invited me to think about a short film that I would like to see as pre-feature film,” he says.

The filmmaker spoke to 17 people, including one deaf man who communicated via sign language, before creating the short, consisting of multi-layered tableaux illustrating their words. “It really is made for the cinema and the big screen and works well when you see it play in a theatre. There are a lot of shots in there in which things are happening in a bigger picture,” he says.

Dijkstra is now working on a new short documentary hybrid, provisionally entitled Green Screen Gringo, combining interviews he did on the streets of Sao Paolo (while on an artist’s residency at the city’s Museum of Music and Sound) using his trademark collage-style of filmmaking.

Other Dutch works screening at Clermont-Ferrand include Joost Lieuwma’s comic Panic! which will play in the Youth Audience Programme. Tami Ravid’s Benin-shot dance and road movie Son du Serpent, produced by Family Affair Films, has been selected for the African Perspectives sidebar. It follows a man on a frantic search for his lost wife against an increasingly supernatural backdrop.

Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival

Dutch selections

Bethany de Forest and Robin Noorda’s Red and the Factory Plant

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More in short...

Berlin Generation 2016 Four Dutch short films have been selected for the prestigious Berlinale Generation section.

In Generation Kplus are Ninnoc by Niki Padidar (prod: Zuidenwind Filmproductions, world prem IDFA) about a girl who struggles when she is in a group because she doesn’t want to adapt to the ways of others, but nor does she want to be left out.

Jonas and the Sea by Marlies van der Wel (prod: Halal, sales: SND Films, world prem Heart of Gold Film Festival, Australia), is an animated short film about a man who casts aside everything in pursuit of his dream.

Skatekeet (Dir: Edward Cook.

Prod: Tangerine Tree, world prem IDFA 2015), is a short doc about a ten-year-old girl whose skateboarding skills stand out in a skate-world dominated by boys.

In Generation 14plus is Spoetnik, directed by Noël Loozen (Prod: Halal, world prem Netherlands Film Festival) about teenager Sam working at the fries stall Spoetnik across the street from a brothel that houses an alluring girl who evidently needs Sam’s help…

Comments Dorien van de Pas, Head of New Screen NL at the Netherlands Film Fund: “We in the Netherlands consider short films to

be a grown-up genre and we have invested in them heavily over the past 15 years through the project Kort!, run together with broadcaster NTR, Mediafund and CoBo-fund.

“We also fund the the production of approx. 8 short films per year by new talents. Producers like to work with them because they want to try out the relationship or try something new and innovative. There are a lot of great ideas and people from other disciplines such as artist Noël Loozen (Spoetnik) who are making their first short features.

“Since long, we also fund the post-­production of shorts across all genres, also experimental films and documentaries. Animation has our special attention too, so Jonas and the Sea is a good example of a young talented maker starting with a personal film.”

Dutch Tiger shorts 2016 Four more Dutch shorts will compete in IFFR Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films.

The Double, directed by Roy Villevoye and Jan Dietvorst, in which an exacting sculpture of a middle-aged white man is hammered out in a studio. Voices bring him to life, but who is he really?

Establishing Eden (Persijn Broersen and Margit Lukács) recreates the landscapes of New Zealand as

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confiscated by the entertainment industry to establish it as a new Land of Eden.

In Makino Takashi’s Cinéma concret, shadow presences gradually emerge, composed of layers upon layers of natural imagery that awaken the senses.

Night Soil – Economy of Love, directed by Melanie Bonajo and part of the current EYE exhibition of Dutch video artists, portrays a Brooklyn-based movement of female sex workers who regard their work as a way for women to reclaim power in a male-dominated pleasure zone.

Marten Rabarts, head of EYE International, comments: “Our shorts selected for Rotterdam, Clermont – Ferrand and Berlin once again announce the remarkable diversity of talent and voices coming from the Netherlands. Animation, experimental and women film-­makers feature strongly in the lineups, and they cast their gaze around the entire world, reconfirming our Dutch industry as global in scope, in spite of a relatively small homebase.

Geography is no obstacle in the pursuit of a great story.”

NB The jury for the 2016 Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films includes Mieke Bernink, professor on the Master’s degree course at the Netherlands Film Academy.

Berlinale/IFFR Tiger Shorts

Dutch selections

Jonas and the Sea by Marlies van der Wel

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EYE Exhibition

Close-Up: New Dutch film and video artists

Melanie Bonajo’s Night Soil – Economy of Love

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New Dutch disorder EYE’s Jaap Guldemond talks to Nick Cunningham about the museum’s latest exhibition, which focuses on the new generation of Dutch film and video artists.

Following EYE’s tentpole exhibitions of 2015 – William Kentridge’s astounding If We Ever Get to Heaven and the Michelangelo Antonioni, Il maestro del cinema moderno extravagaza – the museum’s gaze will be directed closer to home in 2016. A core remit of the museum, argues exhibition director Jaap Guldemond, is as much to celebrate new talent as to venerate the older order, which is why the works of 14 new, highly talented, idiosyncratic and diverse Dutch visual artists will be on display Jan 31 to May 22 to Dutch and international audiences alike.

The highly impressive Melanie Bonajo, for example, will examine the changing relationship of modern man to his surroundings within the context of enigmatic occult rituals. The worlds of hallucinatory imagination and science will collide with the presentation of works by Amos Mulder and Joris Strijbos/Matthijs Munnik respectively, while the political observations of belit sag ˘ and Hamza Halloubi offer the opportunity to contemplate and assess the contemporary Islamic world. Meanwhile, as some artists and filmmakers seek to create a

universe of their own making (Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña), artist and composer Mariska de Groot will capture light frequencies onto light-sensitive speakers in order to transform them into sound.

All of which means, according to Guldemond, that the one major element that unites all of these artworks is that there is no one uniting element. “The way this new generation uses film and video and the moving image is completely open,” he continues. “Moving picture technology is easy to use, and even if you don’t have such a big budget you can have high quality work. But the most important thing is that the use of moving image is becoming more and more self-evident, using a cell phone or a video camera or whatever, people are probably using it more now than they use written text.”

The exhibition will again be housed in EYE’s sharply angled exhibition space which has, historically, proved a challenging environment for Guldemond and his team. The difficulties are compounded this time as museum staff look to satisfy the requirements of 14 artists all rubbing shoulders within the unique environment. “We figured out that the more open the space, the better it worked because of all those different angles and tilted walls,” explains Guldemond. “In a way the interference of seeing one

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work out of the corner of your eye while looking at another is what really interests us a lot. But of course most people that are working with the moving image are also working with sound, so to prevent all the works from interfering sound-wise we have had to build some walls and also even some ceilings upon those walls, creating a type of black box.”

Another artist on display is established Dutch auteur David Verbeek whose Toronto 2015 Competition selection Full Contact forms the basis of a two-screen installation. “He is still working on it so we have no idea if it will be 10 minutes or 40 minutes but it will be a new work based on the story and material from the film. That is exactly what we are interested to see at the EYE museum, where filmmakers come to use the exhibition space instead of the cinema theatre.”

The Dutch theme continues into Summer 2016 when EYE will stage an exhibition of the works of acclaimed Dutch cinematographer Robbie Müller, the lenser of choice for the likes of Wim Wenders, Lars von Trier and Steve McQueen.

“We will screen these works in combination with a lot of material he has been shooting for private use when working on the set or looking for locations, in hotel rooms. There are hundreds of hours. It will be fascinating to see.”

Dutch industry news

Short Cuts

Admiral

2015: strong year for Dutch film industry In 2015 cinema attendance in the Netherlands rose 7% to 32,951,335, the highest number since 1967. The most popular film of 2015 was Spectre (2.04 million visitors). The total revenue from ticket sales in 2015 increased 10.32% to ₏275.65 million from ₏249.88 million in 2014.

2015 was a good year for Dutch films even though the market share dropped to 18.7% from 20.84% in 2014. In total there were more than 6.1 million visitors to Dutch films. The top performing Dutch films were Vipers Nest 2 (818,113 visitors) and Admiral

(693,202). The art house sector performed well too, especially Still Alice (101,663 visitors) and 45 Years (94,499 visitors).

A key driver behind the success of 2015 was the further expansion of capacity in the Netherlands. The total number of cinemas increased by 34 to a total of 893, with greater investment also in technological innovation and customer satisfaction.

Even though the average price per ticket increased 3% to 8.37 euros, cinema remains very much a value for

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money form of recreation in the Netherlands.

The healthy development in the cinema sector contrasts starkly, however, with the home entertainment market. DVD and Blu-Ray sales dropped 23% in 2015. The Video on Demand market could not offset the decline, its growth stagnated by illegal downloading and illegal streaming movies and TV series.

EYE Discover EYE on set displays 95,000 photos that were taken on film sets over the past century-plus, and the EYE walk is a video tour for children aged 7/12 that brings exciting films from the EYE collection to life, such as Georges Méliès’ Voyage dans la lune and the horror film Nosferatu.

Every day the world of the moving image is explored and explained to visitors to Amsterdam’s EYE museum during the EYE discover presentations.

Visitors of all ages can view the Panorama collection of film devices that mark significant moments in the history of the cinema.

These include the legendary 35mm Mitchell camera, used to shoot many of Hollywood’s greatest films, a mutoscope showing Chaplin’s The Waiter and an über compact camera used by Dutch film pioneer Joris Ivens for his famous documentary The Bridge.

EYE explore presents the precursors of the two most basic pieces of film kit,

The compact camera of Joris Ivens

the camera and the projector, and when you put on your 3D-sound headphones EYE listen will present five classic films (Jaws, Chinatown, Run Lola Run, All is Love and Once Upon a Time in the West from the perspective of the cameraman, the scriptwriter, the editor, the casting director and the composer.

Comments EYE’s Digital Presentation Manager Irene Haan: “With a various range of playful, interactive and freely accessible presentations throughout the building, the public can explore the technical evolution and history of film.”

Short-sighted EYE The Short Film Pool, EYE’s short film distribution initiative that went live 18 months ago, is going from strength to strength with Dutch exhibition outlets now numbered at 27 cinemas. Funded by the Netherlands Film Fund and sponsored by Haghe Film and Gofilex, the Pool currently offers 250 short films from the Filmbank/EYE collections, Kort!, the NIAf (Netherlands Institute for Animation Film) and independent distributors. As a result of EYE entering into partnership with several European short film distributors, a selection of some 30 European short films is also available to Dutch exhibitors. Films (both Dutch and international) are updated on a regular basis. All films are converted to DCP format.

Still: Otto

cinemas that do not screen on a daily basis. Comments Pool head Peter van Hoof: “The Short Film Pool brings short film back to the cinemas, where it belongs.”

Subscriptions are priced at €500 per year plus €225 transportation costs. This fee is effectively halved for

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Reinout Scholten van Aschat, who stars in IFFR opening film Beyond Sleep, is the European Film Promotion Shooting Star for the Netherlands at the 66th Berlin Film Festival. Reinout is one of ten highly gifted young actors selected from across Europe by a jury of acclaimed industry experts.

On the big screen Reinout has featured in films such as Alex van Warmerdam’s Borgman as well as The Heineken Kidnap, for which he received a Golden Calf for Best Actor at the Netherlands Film Festival.

On Reinout’s performance in Beyond Sleep the Shooting Stars jury

citation reads: “Often filmed all alone in Norway’s Finnmark wilderness, Reinout affirms himself as the magnetic centre of the philosophical adventure story. In a riveting performance, he walks the delicate line between lucidity and madness.”

Photo: Janita Sassen

Reinout Scholten van Aschat: Shooting Star 2016