International Film Festival Rotterdam
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Rotterdam at 44, Volume #1: State of the Union
What to make of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, now in its 44th year? Here, at a festival known for its wandering and curious ethic, its willingness to parse difficult questions and screen difficult movies, a taking of stock seems to be underway. Diehards, among which I count myself, think of Rotterdam as more vital than ever, a bulwark against the tides that would homogenize and compartmentalize our notions of what moving pictures can do and should be. In other quarters, such as The Hollywood Reporter, for instance, dismay, irrelevance and malaise seems to be the controlling narrative. The festival’s […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 24, 2015 -
2015 Rotterdam International Film Festival Line-Up
Falling smack dab in the middle of this year’s Sundance, the Rotterdam International Film Festival presents a hearty, intercontinental alternative to the Park City indie calendar starter. The program has trickled out over the last few weeks, and looks to be about buttoned up with the Spectrum and Bright Future sections announced today. Of note on the American end is the world premiere of Nathan Silver’s Stinking Heaven, which I covered on a set visit this summer, and the international premiere of Britni West’s Tired Moonlight, starring Alex Karpovsky. There’s also a generous helping of some of last year’s most notable festival circuit […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 7, 2015 -
“I Jumped on a Running Train:” Interim Artistic Director Mart Dominicus on Rotterdam 2014
The Artistic Director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam since 2008, Rutger Wolfson had begun work on this year’s edition of the festival, the 43rd, when fate interceded. In November, Wolfson was hospitalized with a rare autoimmune disease. (Happily, he is expected to make a full recovery.) With the festival two months away from its starting date, Mart Dominicus — a lecturer at the Netherlands Film Academy, a screenplay and editing coach, and a member of the festival’s Supervisory Board since 2010 — stepped in to become Artistic Director for this year’s festival. At the festival’s end, Filmmaker sat down […]
by Laya Maheshwari on Feb 5, 2014 -
At Rotterdam, Cinema’s Components Stretched
The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) prides itself on being devoutly non-mainstream and an unabashed patron of independent cinema. Now, “independent” doesn’t necessarily mean “good” (something the Rotterdam programmers would do well to realize). However, it does let one explore work that exists on the fringes of conventional formats, be it artistically or technically. As it happens, I saw two films at the festival — within 12 hours of each other — that challenged the norms of a movie and its components. The resulting juxtaposition left me quite intrigued by the experiments undertaken, and whether there was some method to […]
by Laya Maheshwari on Feb 3, 2014 -
Caveh Zahedi’s CineMart Diary
Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi attended the 2014 International Film Festival Rotterdam CineMart with a film seeking financing: The Sky is Blue Like an Orange, about the artist Joseph Cornell. For three days he and screenwriter Arnold Barkus met with assorted financiers. Zahedi’s diary is below. December 10, 2013 I receive an email informing us that our project about the artist Joseph Cornell’s relationship with a waitress in the early ’60s, has been accepted to Cinemart. January 21, 2014 We receive our list of meeting requests. We have 37 meetings scheduled over a three-day period. The last time I was at Cinemart […]
by Caveh Zahedi on Feb 2, 2014 -
Angular Visions: Vertical Cinema at Rotterdam
What would vertical cinema be like? It is a question that must have percolated in the minds of many a cinema enthusiast. After all, there is no rule decreeing that a film can be made only in horizontal format. But, of course, theaters, distributors and historical viewing practices have made us think of cinema in no other way. However, there could have been an alternate universe where films resembled portraits, not landscapes. At the 43rd International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), underway right now, delegates got a peek into that alternate universe through a special section called Vertical Cinema. A Sonic […]
by Laya Maheshwari on Jan 28, 2014 -
Serbian Shocker Clip Arrives on DVD from Artsploitation Films
Winner of the Best Feature Tiger Award at the 2012 Rotterdam Film Festival, Maja Milos’s Clip has stirred controversy on the festival circuit for its graphic and downbeat look at the sexual rebellion of a barely-teenage Serbian girl. The first feature of its young female director, and partially financed by the Serbian government, the film takes its title from its 14-year-old protagonist’s penchant for recording her drug-and-sex-fueled environments on her cell phone. Brandon Harris covered the 2012 International Film Festival Rotterdam for the Spring, 2012 edition of Filmmaker and below is his take on the movie. Clip is released on […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 11, 2013 -
Critic’s Notebook: In Rotterdam, a Strong Crop of American Indies
With its famously catholic tastes and sprawling slate, the International Film Festival Rotterdam is a place to get lost. A week into its 10-day run, a fairly subdued 42nd edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam has unfurled a smattering of buzz-worthy world premieres and its usual mix of budding talents from unusually farflung spots on the globe, high-art provocations, exhaustive considerations of an emerging national cinema or two and obscure auteur retrospectives. However, I’ve found that it’s always the surprises here that grab you, little films you’d otherwise never see except in this context, that make the trip worthwhile. I […]
by Brandon Harris on Jan 30, 2013 -
International Film Festival Rotterdam
Terence Nance, the Brooklyn-based, wavily afro’d, avant-garde director of An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, remarked that Rotterdam, where his movie had its international premiere, was the only film festival with a 24-hour DJ. I can’t say whether he’s right or not, but I hope he’s wrong. Surely some other place knows how to put on a festival as dynamic. If such an event exists, however, I’ve yet to find it. The International Film Festival Rotterdam, now in its 41st edition, has garnered a reputation for its sprawling, catholic tastes and commitment to new media and the avant-garde. It is much […]
by Brandon Harris on Apr 17, 2012 -
Artificial Paradises — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Artificial Paradises world premiered at the 2011 International Film Festival Rotterdam before screening at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival. It opens theatrically in New York City at the reRun Gastropub on Friday, March 30, 2012. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) Yes, Yulene Olaizola’s Artificial Paradises is about drug addiction. But not only does Olaizola take her time in revealing this agenda, her patient filmmaking and reverence for the gorgeous natural environment in which she shoots keeps that agenda from elbowing its way into the foreground. It’s this gentle approach that distinguishes Artificial Paradises from the rest of […]
by Michael Tully on Mar 29, 2012
