Rotterdam International Film Festival & Berlin International Film Festival

Conventional wisdom runs like this: you go to Berlin to sell the film you've finished and you go to Rotterdam to finance the one you are about to make. Like much conventional wisdom, this statement contains more than a grain of truth but fails to tell the whole story.

Berlin's European Film Market, produced by veteran Beki Probst, receives a lot of attention: it is very well-attended by distributors and (especially) tv buyers looking for small, relatively inexpensive pick-ups before they shell out big bucks for "erotic thrillers" at the AFM in Los Angeles a few weeks later; Rotterdam's Cinemart is equally well-attended by superfunds, tv investment people and distributors looking for pre-buys on the cheap.

But both of these festivals are not just markets. A film gets much more attention if it is actually part of an official section. But, in Europe, where and in what official section a film plays can have serious consequences for the media exposure and type of sale a film receives. This should be extremely important to young filmmakers, particularly those wary of critical labeling and narrowcasted audiences. After all, a European launch is not about a visit to the Brandenburg Gate; it is the moment when film and filmmaker get defined by the world's most influential art-film opinion makers.

The relative significance of various events and their sections is, obviously, a fluid thing, subject to changing fortunes, effective scouting and the quality of new films available. Such calculations have become more difficult still due to a kind of "class warfare" currently being fought between a few upstart medium-sized festivals, including Rotterdam, and the legendary "Big Three" (Berlin, Venice and Cannes).

One of the battlegrounds for this fight is the American independent scene. Teams of Berlin and Rotterdam programmers swooped into Toronto and the IFFM last fall, trumping each other's invitations at every turn. Rarely have low-budget American films been so aggressively courted. But, paradoxically, these two festivals also picked up far fewer Sundance titles than ever before, making their U.S. selections seem a little like also-rans. (There are a number of explanations for this. Many filmmakers certainly have a Sundance-or-bust production schedule now that blinds them to the outside world. But many invitees also remain convinced that their film will be invited to Cannes on the basis of its selection in Sundance. This is wrong and dangerous: Cannes, in all of its sections, never invites more than four or five American independents and only two or three of those normally premiere at Sundance. This number will only get smaller as Cannes becomes jealous of Sundance's increasingly important international position.)

The 25th International Rotterdam Film Festival certainly suffered from this fight. A new insistence by Berlin on premieres in every section cut out a swath of the Festival's normal programming, particularly the films they traditionally shared with the Berlin Forum. This was a sad state of affairs for Director Emil Fallaux, in his last year heading the Festival. Fallaux has been a champion of envelope-pushing American indies for his five-year tenure; he has invited challenging films and has positioned them elegantly for his local audiences. His is a curatorial influence that will be missed.

Rotterdam is the economic heart of The Netherlands, a massive Europort with numbingly sterile architecture - the place was carpet bombed at the end of World War II - and an easy-going egalitarian atmosphere. The festival is known for programming the most challenging new international films for an incredibly sophisticated public; these people brave blizzards to see that "hot" new experimental short from Moldavia. The festival also features wonderful retrospectives - this year a tribute to "Pink Porn" director Kumashiro Tatsumi, a complete recreation of the very first Rotterdam Festival and a multimedia event called "Exploding Cinema" - and generally very good projection. (Although Jennifer Montgomery's Art for Teachers of Children was the guinea pig from hell for one venue's 16mm machines.)

The major innovation of Fallaux's directorship, resisted by some who felt it compromised the non-competitive nature of the event, was the creation of the Tiger Awards, a special competitive section for young (or young-thinking), innovative filmmakers. Three equal grand prizes are awarded in the spirit of Festival "equality."

Representing the United States in the awards was Eve Annenberg's sweet Lower East Side comedy, Dogs: The Rise and Fall of an All Girl Bookie Joint. Annenberg had nothing but positive words for the Festival: "It has been a fantastic experience. We were shocked to find out that Dogs was the only American film in the Tigers. It was a huge honor and the media coverage has been wonderful." Annenberg's film, the story of a group of funky gals who go into the illegal gaming business, went on to generate a great deal of interest in the Berlin Market on the basis of a strong Rotterdam outing.

Alas, Annenberg did not win. The Tigers were awarded to Gillies MacKinnon's tough, beautifully acted remembrance of gang warfare in 1960s Glasgow, Small Faces, Zhang Yuan's (Beijing Bastards) latest toxic report from the underbelly of Chinese society, Sons, and Japanese director Hashiguchi Ryosuke's Like Grains of Sand. This latter film, perhaps the true discovery of the winter festivals, also won the FIPRESCI critics' prize. It is an astonishingly moving and exquisitely detailed portrait of teenage desire; its climax, a kiss between two boys, could well be the most romantic movement in recent cinema.

The Audience Award, with obligatory voting by every audience member, went to Angel Baby, Michael Rymer's much traveled autopsy of a clinically psychotic couple.

Other important discoveries included Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas' lyrical black-and-white thriller, Foreign Land from Brazil; and a hard-hitting Egyptian comedy about three unmarried women trying to find true love, Life...My Passion which shows that Jane Austen's influence extends farther than we think.

Housed in perhaps the single ugliest building of post-war Europe, the legendary Berlin International Film Festival is the second largest gathering of film professionals after Cannes. Once a monolith, the conduit for the great Eastern European cinema of the '60s and the radical fringe of the '70s, the festival has suffered in recent years. Reunification has made the city whole, but, according to many, it has also compromised the city's edge; from an island of decadence and East-West tension to just another European megalopolis.

Last year's festival underlined this trend. A festival so lackluster that even its director, Moritz de Hadelin referred to it as a "disaster," a giant seemed primed for a fall. But to the credit of de Hadelin and the other section programmers - Wieland Speck for the Panorama and Ulrich Gregor of the Forum - they redoubled their efforts and authoritatively shut out prior European premieres for a whole range of films. It was bloody, but the Festival seems to have benefited. The European media, calling for de Hadelin's head through 1995, was praising him this year.

Reality check. De Hadelin's "success" was based not on a particularly strong slate of Competition films or intelligent organizational changes to a horrifyingly bureaucratic event; it was his ability to convince the studios to give him the Christmas Oscar contenders and deliver stars. Of course, the European media is happy; they can bank all their work here for the succession of pre-Cannes big releases in Europe. But what of the other films?

Disappointing new work from Hungarian Ildiko Szabo (Bitches; she made cult hit Child Murders in 1993); Taiwanese Edward Yang (Mahjong; his Confucian Confusion was a Cannes entry last year) and Korean Park Kwang-su (A Single Spark; To the Starry Island was a Festival hit two years ago) made one despair for the state of the current cinema; however, not very good films from good directors are better than...

The simply bad, such as Dani Levy's masturbation fantasy, Silent Night and the execrable Australian mess What I Have Written, which raised questions of taste and judgment.

The Golden Bear went to Sense and Sensibility, Ang Lee's second Berlin win, after The Wedding Banquet came to international attention here a few years ago. It seems unlikely that Sense needs the push.

The Silver Bear was awarded to Bo Widerberg's All Things Fair, an earth-toned autobiographical remembrance of a boy's affair with his teacher. While much of the film was well-liked - particularly the light-hearted first half, before the teacher becomes a psychotic stalker - many of us found it simply dull, dated and dumb.

The director's prize was shared by Richard Loncraine for Richard III - an odd choice considering the film is entirely Ian McKellan's - and Yim Ho (The Day the Sun Turned Cold) for The Sun Has Ears. Very well-liked (but not seen by this critic), Yim's story of a young peasant woman's awakening to the political hardships of 1920s' China will certainly be seen on the festival through 1996.

Best actress went to Bertrand Blier's eternal muse, Anouk Grinberg in his Mon Homme - this one is especially baffling; her mewing whore routine is now, let's see, about 20 years out-of-date. Best actor was Sean Penn in Dead Man Walking.

Apart from the Competition, Berlin has two other main sections for new films: Panorama is an offshoot of the Competition, with much of the programming done by de Hadelin's staff. It is a real grab bag every year, with lots of clunkers and a few gems. (Tokyo Decadence came out of this section a few years ago). It is also well-known as an important site for new gay and lesbian cinema to premiere.

The Forum for Young Cinema is an oppositional program, cooperative with the festival administration but steadfastly independent in its programming selections. It tends to pick more daring work - like gay serial-killer movie Frisk this year - and attracts a hipper, more traditionally Berlin crowd.

Panorama hits included Serbian policier Premeditated Murder, rumored for a U.S. remake pickup, Bruce LaBruce's Hustler White, featuring Tony Ward as a hustler in an (early) Felliniesque L.A. frolic and Greta Schiller's thoughtful documentary on the American women in 1920s' Paris, Paris Was a Women. But the buzz was all about the French. Didier Le Pecheurs Des nouvelles du bon dieu, Pierre Salvadori's Les apprentis and Cedric Klapisch's Chacun cherche son chat, provided refreshing, buyer-friendly youth-lite cinema.

Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express sequel Fallen Angels and Todd Verow's Frisk were the big debates of the Forum, splitting audiences down the middle. Tellingly these films were picked up in the fall Festivals in North America and sat on until Berlin. So too with about a dozen other prominent Forum titles.

For the intellectuals, Oleg Kowalow's strange journey in Sergei Eisenstein: Autobiography proved provocative if scattered fodder.

The Berlin Market yielded few surprises this year. Megabuzz only attached itself to one film, the U.K. Channel Four's gay-teen love story, Beautiful Thing, featuring the usual dynamite ensemble British cast and a fun soundtrack. American independents in the market are give a big push by two umbrella organizations, one run by the New York Foundation for the Arts, the other by International Media Resources, but as quality is suspect - they feature few films from Berlin, Rotterdam or Sundance - the little gems these organizations unearth can often be passed over.

As usual, the best cinema of either Rotterdam or Berlin or anywhere else on the planet was to be found in the legendary Berlin retrospectives. This year they featured William Wyler and Elia Kazan, with spectacular new prints, a great screening venue and a beautiful poster. Perhaps this is why the Berlin Festival often seems somewhat underwhelming - you know truly great cinema is just down the road.

Rotterdam International Film Festival & Berlin International Film Festival by Noah Cowan
Sundance Film Festival by The Editors
International Film Festival of Mannheim-Heidelberg by Diane Sippl
Hawaii International Film Festival by David James