Rotterdam 2009: Tributes and Thematic Programs

The 38^th International Film Festival Rotterdam will pay tribute to Polish film director Jerzy Skolimowski (FOTO), Paolo Benvenuti from Italy and Peter Liechti from Switzerland. All are expected to attend the festival for retrospectives of their films.

Rotterdam’s new section Signals will also include five thematic programs. ‘Size Matters’ comprises exhibitions and films that focus on cinema and visual art in relation to ubiquitous electronic screens. ‘Hungry Ghosts’ deals with recent Asian ghost movies. ‘First Things First’ focuses on very first films by now established film auteurs.

‘Young Turkish Cinema’ offers an overview of the vibrant film culture of Turkey. And finally, the film history is alive and well in ‘Regained’. Signals includes the following retrospective and thematic programmes:

Jerzy Skolimowski retrospective
The career of filmmaker, playwright, scriptwriter, painter and actor Jerzy Skolimowski (Poland, 1938) is as versatile as it is international. Starting his directorial and scriptwriting career in 1960, he also contributes on the scripts of Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water and of Andrzej Wajda’s Innocent Sorcerers. After leaving Poland, Skolimowski directs several films in the US and France. His acting career includes roles in his own films and, more recently, in Julian Schnabel’s Before Night Falls and David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises. Skolimowski’s latest film, Czery noci z Anna (Four Nights with Anna), marks a triumphant return after seventeen years.

Paolo Benvenuti retrospective
Paolo Benvenuti (1946) is one of the least known, but finest contemporary Italian filmmakers. In Rotterdam his films will for the first time be presented in an international retrospective programme. Benvenuti’s challenging work, from his first feature Il Bacio di Giuda (1988) to his latest, sixth, film Puccini e la fanciulla (2008), is based on very careful and precise historical researches. Additionally, Benvenuti has also made short films and documentaries. He made his directorial début with the short film Fuori gioco (1969) and assisted Straub & Huillet on some of their films shot in Italy. His latest film Puccini e la fanciulla (Puccini and the Young Girl), co-directed with his partner Paola Baroni, screened out of Competition in Venice and will be part of the Rotterdam tribute along with six features and seven short films by Benvenuti.

Peter Liechti retrospective
Swiss filmmaker, scriptwriter and camera man Peter Liechti (1951) started his filmmaking career with Sommerhügel in 1984; he has since build on an idiosyncratic body of work consisting of both documentary and fictional experimental films, most of them short and shot on 16 mm. Signature characteristics of his works are an essayistic use of fictional texts, music, voice over and narration. His latest film The Sound of Insects – Record of a Mummy, which will have its international premiere in Rotterdam 2009, is an adaptation of the novella ‘Miira ni narumade’ (‘Until I am a Mummy’) by Shimada Masahiko, which itself is based on an actual diary of a man who committed suicide by self starvation. For the upcoming festival, Peter Liechti will make a special 'carte blanche' programme of a number of films, with which he has certain affiliations, among which Picture of Light (1994), by Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler (Gambling, Gods and LSD), who collaborated on Liechti's The Sound of Insects as narrator in voice over.

Size Matters
The thematic programme ‘Size Matters’ focuses on both the ubiquitous presence and the content of audiovisual screens in this post-cinema age. The electronic screen is making a major breakthrough in both the private and public spaces. Within ‘Size Matters’, the IFFR realizes the group exhibition ‘Aspect Ratio’, brought together by festival programmer Edwin Carels and a project for the public space, entitled ‘Urban Screens’, curated by festival director Rutger Wolfson. By projecting three commissioned films on high-rise office buildings in Rotterdam, ‘Urban Screens’, poses the question of what the language and tradition of cinema may contribute to the function and software of these screens. More information about ‘Urban Screens’ will be announced shortly. ‘Aspect Ratio’ confronts media art and art installations with a focus on the human factor in a progressively expanding technological universe. The exhibition will include works by Ken Jacobs, Simon Starling, Roy Arden, Louise Decordier, Carlo Zanni, Morgan Fisher, Joachim Koester and JODI. The referential work will be Ray and Charles Eams’ short documentary film Powers of Ten (1977).

Hungry Ghosts
‘Hungry Ghosts’ is a film programme with features from East Asian countries about ghosts and supernatural apparitions. The specific quality of East Asian horror movies is that the people who make them and the people who watch them actually believe in ghosts. Compiled by Rotterdam festival programmer Gertjan Zuilhof, ‘Hungry Ghosts’ presents the striking and innovative recent work of, among others, Ronin Team (Art of the Devil 3), Riri Riza (Takut: Faces of Fear), Ekachai Uekrongtham (The Coffin) and Tsukamoto Shinya (Nightmare Detective 2). Houses are, as seen in these ‘ghost movies’, often the favorite dwelling place of ghosts. A real Haunted House group exhibition will be part of ‘Hungry Ghosts’. Southeast Asian filmmakers Amir Muhammad (Malaysia), Wisit Sasanatieng (Thailand), Nguyen Vinh Son (Vietnam), Lav Diaz (Philippines), Garin Nugroho (Indonesia) and Riri Riza (Indonesia) will each convert a room in the monumental exhibition building into their vision of the house of the spirits.

First Things First
‘First Things First’ comprises a series of first and very early works by filmmakers who have since carved out important, acknowledged bodies of films – and who are still producing important films. ‘First Things First’ raises the questions of where auteur-ship begins and how one finds his or her own voice. Can a major, original director be detected in his first works, or only in hindsight? Brought together by Rotterdam festival programmer Gerwin Tamsma, ‘First Things First’ presents early, often rarely seen works sometimes screened in combination with a new feature film that will be screened in the festival, sometimes in a compilation of short films. The programme includes Manoel De Oliveira’s Douro Faina Fluvial (1931), Jonas Mekas’ Williamsburg, Brooklyn (2003, footage from 1950), Otar Iosseliani’s Song about a Flower (1959), Alexander Kluge’s Brutalität in Stein (1960), Jean-Marie Straub’s Machorka-Muff (1963), Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Cute Girl (1980), Ulrich Seidl’s Einsvierzig (1980) and Ball (1982), Bong Joon-ho’s Incoherence (1993), Carlos Reygadas Adulte (1997) and Alberto Serra’s Crespia (the film not the village) (2003).

Young Turkish Cinema
‘Young Turkish Cinema’ explores the remarkable rise and recent development of independent filmmaking in Turkey. Filmmakers like Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Semih Kaplanoglu and Yesim Ustaoglu, whose early works have been supported by the IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund, are successful both in Turkey and abroad. A younger generation follows in their footsteps. ‘Young Turkish Cinema’, compiled by festival programmer Ludmila Cvikova, brings together recent works by both generations of Turkish filmmakers and collaborates with Istanbul-based film magazine Altyazi to publish an investigative special issue about the thriving Turkish film scene. Among the film selected for ‘Young Turkish Cinema’ are: The Small Town (1998), feature début by Nuri Bilge Ceylan; The Storm (2008) by Kazim Öz, a film supported by Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund and Black Dogs Barking (2008) by Mehmet Bahadir Er & Maryna Gorbach.

Regained
Continuing the strand of earlier Rotterdam editions, ‘Signals’ presents the eclectic thematic programme Regained with recently re-discovered or restored films, or films about film and filmmakers. Already confirmed for Regained are Igor Mayboroda’s documentary Rerberg and Tarkovsky. The Reverse Side Of “Stalker” and Mark Peranson’s Waiting for Sancho, a making-of film about Albert Serra’s El cant dels ocells (Birdsong) which also screens in IFFR 2009. Further titles will be announced later.

‘Signals’ is one of three main sections in the new IFFR programme format. ‘Signals’ consists of a series of focus and theme programmes. It highlights striking filmmakers or visual artists and reflects on topical as well as timeless ideas, themes and developments within cinema proper and cinema-related visual arts.

The other main sections are titled ‘Bright Future’ and ‘Spectrum’. ‘Bright Future’ presents some 70 works of first or second time filmmakers including the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition for first or second feature length films and the Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films. ‘Spectrum’ comprises some 100 recent films, both features and shorts by experienced film makers and artists who provide, in the opinion of the IFFR, an essential contribution to international film culture. ‘Spectrum’ brings together highlights of the film year, new work by prominent auteurs and topical, strong and innovative films by accomplished filmmakers.

The 38^th International Film Festival opens January 21, 2009, with the 26^th CineMart taking place January 25-29.The full programme line up will be published January 15, 2009 on www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com.