International Film Festival Rotterdam 2019
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Rotterdam 2019: Livestreaming the Ephemeral in Present.Perfect.
If the International Film Festival Rotterdam can be credited for just one thing–and this would leave aside their robust global funding initiatives and industry market–it would be expanding the definition of what fits at a festival. And, therein, the definition of film. For instance, IFFR spotlights everything from installations to initiatives like this year’s Blackout program (curated by Julian Ross), which centered on performances using the now defunct Kodak 35mm carousel slide projector. It follows, then, that the festival’s centerpiece program, the Bright Future section, challenged the narrow idea of film being a title card followed by three acts and […]
by Kiva Reardon on Apr 5, 2019 -
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2019: “The Spying Thing”
In his introduction to “The Spying Thing,” a 20-title selection of espionage films that he curated with Gustavo Beck, long-time IFFR programmer Gerwin Tamsma goes back to the deep well of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and finds in it a timely new metaphor. Jimmy Stewart’s wheelchair-bound peeping tom is now a 21st-century government or multinational corporation, collecting data from his neighbors without their knowledge or consent, constrained only by the length of his lens (technology) and by the walls of his apartment (the pesky rule of law that governs democracies and capital). Grace Kelly’s wealthy socialite, then, is the […]
by Darren Hughes on Apr 2, 2019 -
“I Love Silence, and I Like to Be Bored”: Romina Paula on Her Rotterdam-Premiering Directorial Debut, Again Once Again
“My life is not what one would term heroic.” The narrator of Romina Paula’s second novel, August, returns to her home town in Patagonia to memorialize a childhood friend five years after his death. Emilia’s in her early 20s and has been living with her brother in Buenos Aires. She’s still in college; her boyfriend is in a band. Once back home, she reunites with the love of her youth, Julián, who is now a father, married, somewhat happily. Emilia’s a familiar character making familiar first steps into adulthood, but Paula heightens every sensation and plumbs every potential cliché for […]
by Darren Hughes on Feb 18, 2019
