In a few days IFFR the International film festival at Rotterdam is going live again for the 37th time.!
The usuals visiter comes here to see nothing else than odd people in strange uncommon worlds, and so am I..
It all starts with that preliminary tension in a packed theater before the lights go out.. know how’s and advises are being exchanged, untill: suddenly the room gets dark and the journey to the unknown started. the silence that follows is truly a sacred one!
Film is the artform who’s stongest connected to realism. When the Lumiere brothers made there first imaging they created a medium that could truly show realism. This medium was later stretched out by the French illusionist george melies who proved that the cinema was pre-eminently a place where ‘real life’ could be forgotten! A medium that raised above the values of ‘high’ and ‘low’, but eventually evolved into a cultural industries controlled by yields..
Next to the existing mass medium some artist tried to create the so caled: tenth muse “an experimental, surreal or even absolute film which is more and more disappeard to the background into the fringes that we now call arthouse or festivalcircuit.. At the plush of the arthouse a resistance takes place against the smooth entertainmentculutre who’s working with unprecedented marketingbudgets anywhere on earth with formulas released on a target as big as the worldpopulation!
Anyhow let’s see what this year brings:
The famous Coen broters are the maestro’s of the festival and I’m looking out for there new masterpiece: no country for old men!
Also a new one by Kobayashi called: The Rebirth..
Then after Songs from the Second Floor
Roy Andersson is back with a film full of fliers. there are quite a lot this time, sometimes loosely connected, sometimes totaly isolated.
An experimental film which doesn’t necessarily have to be boring or inaccessible, but an experience full of wonder and discovery! You, the living
International hit: Juno.. a gripping, cleverly written and almost unsentimental drama
Unfinished Sky: a remake of the Dutch film: de poolse bruid
Paranoid park: a new one from directer Gus Van Sant! A skate film with an exciting thriller story, filmed by master cameraman Christopher Doyle! Van Sant is one of those rare directors who doesn’t like to repeat himself. In his latest film too, film making seems to have been rediscovered a little.. In order to provide a convincing picture of the skate world, Van Sant here worked with very young amateur actors. He found them through appeals on MySpace!
Persepolis: Animation film based on the autobiographical comic strip books by the Iranian-born Marjane Satrapi. It tells the painful and complex story of a country from within, but it also forms the idiosyncratic and often light-hearted ‘diary’ of an intelligent, lonely girl growing up in a diaspora.
Fear(s) of the dark: is the apt title for this ambitious omnibus animated film in black & white, in which everything comes down to fears – real or imaginary fears and primaeval fears of the dark. Big names from the world of the comic strip, illustration and graphic design, under the inspired supervision of Etienne Robial, make a series of animation films unique in their style. The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
The Darjeeling limited: The latest Wes Anderson is a crown on his oeuvre. Three brothers travel with too much baggage through India looking for themselves, enlightenment and their mother. High culture and pop culture in perfect symbiosis in a colourful film filled with fine songs, slo-mos, Adrien Brody and a cameo by Bill Murray.
I’m not there: Haynes gives everyone his own favourite Bob Dylan. Blanchett, Gere, Bale and three more actors all crawl into the skin of the mysterious pop icon in an unusually successful and layered experimental biographical film
There is much and much more but hey! most of the other 700 movies are international, European or Dutch-premieres so there’s not much to say about it! if you’re going, have fun!
Jazzy
Tags: Adrein Brody, artmovies, Bill Murray, Christopher Doyle, Coen Brothers, Fears of the Dark, festival, Gus van Sant, I'm Not There, IFFR, Juno, No Country for old men, Paranoid Park, Persepolis, rotterdam, Roy Andersson, Songs from the second Floor, The Darjeeling Limited, the Living, The Rebirth, Wes Anderson, You
