International Film Festival Rotterdam 2018
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Committed to Paper: Writer/Director Paul Schrader on First Reformed
With Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, which has topped many critics’ lists so far this year, on iTunes today, we’re unlocking from our paywall Darren Hughes’s interview with the writer/director from our Summer print edition. When discussing his latest film, First Reformed, Paul Schrader regularly recounts a conversation he had over dinner with the Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski. Schrader, who famously discovered cinema as a college student after coming of age in a strict Calvinist home, has very intentionally spent his career exploring darker, more transgressive aspects of the spiritual condition. He was intrigued, however, by Ida, Pawlikowksi’s quiet, black-and-white study […]
by Darren Hughes on Jul 31, 2018 -
Sustainability and History: The 2018 International Film Festival Rotterdam
The 47th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam presented 531 films of various lengths, 140 of which were world premieres, and welcomed more than 2,400 industry professionals. To tick off each special event, master class, conference, installation, curated program, party, award winner and grand announcement would consume this entire report. (The IFFR wrap-up press release clocks in at 1,400 words.) Needless to say, IFFR benefits from and suffers for its size, in mostly predictable ways. There are few places other than Rotterdam in January where one might watch Phantom Thread scored live by an orchestra, spend a night in […]
by Darren Hughes on Mar 9, 2018 -
Fact and Constructed Fictions in the Bright Future Section of the International Film Festival Rotterdam
What is film but a desire to make visible that which we cannot see? Love. Hate. Or in the case of the latest from Penny Lane, pain. After having bowed at the International Film Festival of Rotterdam before, Lane’s return to the Bright Future section with the world premiere of The Pain of Others isn’t a surprise, but she’s certainly earned her place there. The found-footage, experimental doc, which despite being compiled of YouTube videos and newsreels, feels dense enough to require a dissertation on delusion, suffering and this digital age. Working in a similar form to the all-archival constructed […]
by Kiva Reardon on Feb 18, 2018 -
“The Narrative Model Used in TV Series Brings Us Back to a Stage That We Long Surpassed in Cinema”: Lucrecia Martel’s Rotterdam Masterclass
Lucrecia Martel’s Zama was one of the few titles to escape the sweeping critical scorn heaped upon the cinematic year 2017. After getting passed on by Cannes (potentially because one of its producers, Pedro Almodóvar, was president of the jury – though that would only have disqualified it from the main competition) and inexplicably landing an out of competition slot in Venice, the long-anticipated fourth feature by one of today’s most distinguished auteurs was received with Twin Peaks: The Return-levels of enthusiasm in certain quarters. The comparison to Twin Peaks isn’t merely incidental: both are works of staggering confidence and […]
by Giovanni Marchini Camia on Feb 12, 2018 -
Notes on Quotes (Or, The Problem of Quotation, Authorship and Authority)
Part 1: Notes on a Quote Like all great adventures, it began with a grammar dispute. In preparation for the film festival premiere of my film The Pain of Others, I was recently preparing the online edit. The online edit is a sort of crossing-the-Rubicon moment, primarily marked by the dawning horror that the time has come to accept all of your artistic choices because there’s no turning back from them now. (No really, the film is great.) One of the things on my to-do list was to check the quotation serving as epigraph. The quotation was: “One of the […]
by Penny Lane on Jan 30, 2018
