International Film Festival Rotterdam
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ROTTERDAM PHOTOS AND NOTES
For almost two decades I’ve been traveling to the International Film Festival Rotterdam immediately following Sundance, struggling to keep my jet lag at bay while I attend a few Cinemart meetings, hit the informal but productive Cinemart cocktail hours, and delve into the fest’s always excellent and eclectic program. This year several fellower Sundancers made the trip as well, including sales agent Ryan Kampe, producer Adele Romanski, the IFP’s Amy Dotson, the Sundance Institute’s Anne Lai, and director Terrence Nance, whose An Oversimplification of Her Beauty was programmed here and was one of the Park City’s true discoveries. Above is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 3, 2012 -
IN ROTTERDAM, AMERICAN FILMS THAT COULDN’T EXIST ANYWHERE ELSE
After the rush of sales in Park City this year, it seems the entire American cine-punditry is racing to declare this the beginning of a new golden age in American Independent Film. I sure hope they’re right. One wonders if March’s SXSW Film Festival in Austin will continue the trend and finally push that festival into true market status. Nearly 40 films were acquired in Park City and many more that premiered there will surely be acquired in the weeks and months to come. Yet for some of the most daring new American films, the sales rat race at Sundance […]
by Brandon Harris on Feb 4, 2011 -
THE ROTTERDAM FILM FESTIVAL VISITS BAM
The International Film Festival Rotterdam has always been an exciting oasis in the festival calendar, a place to see new directors, experimental programming, and to connect with new projects away from the din of more market-defined festivals and red-carpet affairs. (Full disclosure: I’m on the board of Rotterdam’s CineMart.) This year’s festival was a good one — you can read Michael Tully’s wrap-up here — and now New Yorkers have the opportunity to discover the filmmakers of the Tiger Competition. The Tigers consist of films by new filmmakers, and the gamut runs from edgy dramas to intriguing doc-fiction hybrids to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 2, 2010 -
Rotterdam 2008: Who’s Afraid of Kathy Acker?
Who’s Afraid of Kathy Acker?, premiering here in Rotterdam, is Barbara Caspar’s thoughtful and creative film biography/essay on the late writer, whose formally inventive novels, published from the ’70s through the mid-90s, challenged assumptions about gender roles, sexuality, and the literary canon. A beguiling and intensely contradictory figure, Acker is best known for books which creatively appropriated texts from Great White Male writers, retelling them in an emotionally raw, sexually blunt, and politically questioning female voice. And with her appearance in several conceptual art videos in the ’70s, her close-cropped dyed blond hair, her tattoos and her piercings, Acker was […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 29, 2008 -
THE COAT TAILS OF THE PENGUINS
In Europe, the domestic theatrical business is as perilous as it is in the States. After spending time with a number of foreign distributors while at the Cinemart in Rotterdam, I was struck by the topics of conversation: declining audiences, fewer young people going to the movies, the threat to conventional theatrical from DVD day-and-date, and worries over the impact of new distribution platforms, like first-run downloading of feature films direct to cell phones. (Apparently, this was tried with The Interpreter in Italy and theatrical bookers revolted, booting the film off a number of Italian screens during its first run […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 8, 2006 -
ROTTERDAM AWARDS
After the various industry complaints about Sundance “at the breaking point” of overcrowding and rampant commercialization this year, a trip to Rotterdam is like visiting an alternate film festival world. Relentlessly polite and civilized, the International Film Festival Rotterdam with its accompanying financing conference, the Cinemart (which I had a project in this year), provides a low-key tonic to the frenzy of Sundance and the upcoming bustle of Berlin. This year, a lot of Rotterdam industry folks had a Sundance hangover as Sundance’s international program and a desire to closely monitor U.S. premieres lead to a larger than usual delegation […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 2, 2006 -
THOUGHTS ON SUNDANCE: MAKING CENTS OF THE SPECTACLE
In today’s world of accelerated web journalism, normally I’d think I’m past the Sundance shelf date filing these final thoughts a couple of days after I returned from Rotterdam. But, despite all the columnists and websites, I notice that Sundance wrap-ups are still occurring and that a number of premiere films have yet to receive any press out of the festival at all. Like many others, I weighted my own attendance towards the festival’s first half (blame Rotterdam again) and will try to catch up on a number of films I missed on tape back here in New York. For […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 6, 2005 -
SAINT — AND SISTER — HOOD
One of the buzz films to emerge at this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival has been Teona Strugar Mitevska’s How I Killed a Saint. The 29-year-old director attended the MFA program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and on one level, her film could easily fit within the American indie “dysfunctional family” tradition. It tells the story of Viola, a young girl who returns home after travelling abroad for three years, having left behind a family secret and returning to tense relationships with her out-of-it parents and alienated, delinquent brother. Except in this case, Viola is returning in 2001 from […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 1, 2004
