ClickTheCity At Rotterdam: Introduction
posted on Wednesday, January 21, 2009 in Festivals, Movies
As this goes up, I will be on a plane bound for the Netherlands, where I will be attending this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam. I will be blogging from the festival, providing capsule reviews of films that I see, news stories from the festival, and general ramblings about how cold it is in the Netherlands.
I’m being sent to Rotterdam through the festival’s Trainee Project Young Film Critics, where six critics under the age of thirty from around the world are invited to cover the festival and receive training from far more experienced professionals from the International Federation of Film Critics. Participants of the program get a surprising amount of access to the festival, and even get to take part in jury deliberations. With any luck, I’ll be able to leverage all this access and give you a glimpse behind the curtain of one of the largest film festivals in Europe.
A little history: the International Film Festival Rotterdam started in 1972, founded by Hubert Bals. It quickly established itself as a home for alternative cinema, shunning bigger, commercial productions and giving focus to the unique voices emerging from the developing world. The main award of the festival is the VPRO Tiger Award. Introduced in 1995, it is only awarded to filmmakers producing their first or second film, maintaining the festival’s focus on innovation. The list of winners is composed mostly of really obscure names only familiar to devotees of alternative films. The one big exception is Christopher Nolan, who won the award in 1999 for his first film, The Following. Nolan, of course, went on to direct the cult favorite Memento, and the two most recent Batman films, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.
Many of our local filmmakers have exhibited films at Rotterdam. This year alone, Rico Ilarde, Khavn de la Cruz, Roxlee, Mario Cornejo, Raya Martin, Lav Diaz, Francis Xavier Pasion and Adolfo Alix Jr. will all be sharing their films with the international public. The festival’s relationship with our local independent filmmakers has been long and fruitful. Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals fund has provided many grants to the likes of Raymond Red and John Torres to help develop their projects. They also helped bankroll the Cinemanila Boracay Co-production meeting, giving rise to even more films from our country.
This year’s festival brings the writing and directing debut of Michael Imperioli, a haunted house exhibition, a chance to see Rachel Getting Married and a new Beat Takeshi film, a focus on young Turkish cinema, nights that all end with parties and drinking, a program on Asian horror, and just more films than I’m ready to comprehend. Hopefully it will all work out, and I’ll be able to give you all a glimpse of what’s coming next in alternative cinema. Come back over the next as ClickTheCity goes international, and I give you all the coverage one person can provide.
I’m being sent to Rotterdam through the festival’s Trainee Project Young Film Critics, where six critics under the age of thirty from around the world are invited to cover the festival and receive training from far more experienced professionals from the International Federation of Film Critics. Participants of the program get a surprising amount of access to the festival, and even get to take part in jury deliberations. With any luck, I’ll be able to leverage all this access and give you a glimpse behind the curtain of one of the largest film festivals in Europe.
A little history: the International Film Festival Rotterdam started in 1972, founded by Hubert Bals. It quickly established itself as a home for alternative cinema, shunning bigger, commercial productions and giving focus to the unique voices emerging from the developing world. The main award of the festival is the VPRO Tiger Award. Introduced in 1995, it is only awarded to filmmakers producing their first or second film, maintaining the festival’s focus on innovation. The list of winners is composed mostly of really obscure names only familiar to devotees of alternative films. The one big exception is Christopher Nolan, who won the award in 1999 for his first film, The Following. Nolan, of course, went on to direct the cult favorite Memento, and the two most recent Batman films, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.
Many of our local filmmakers have exhibited films at Rotterdam. This year alone, Rico Ilarde, Khavn de la Cruz, Roxlee, Mario Cornejo, Raya Martin, Lav Diaz, Francis Xavier Pasion and Adolfo Alix Jr. will all be sharing their films with the international public. The festival’s relationship with our local independent filmmakers has been long and fruitful. Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals fund has provided many grants to the likes of Raymond Red and John Torres to help develop their projects. They also helped bankroll the Cinemanila Boracay Co-production meeting, giving rise to even more films from our country.
This year’s festival brings the writing and directing debut of Michael Imperioli, a haunted house exhibition, a chance to see Rachel Getting Married and a new Beat Takeshi film, a focus on young Turkish cinema, nights that all end with parties and drinking, a program on Asian horror, and just more films than I’m ready to comprehend. Hopefully it will all work out, and I’ll be able to give you all a glimpse of what’s coming next in alternative cinema. Come back over the next as ClickTheCity goes international, and I give you all the coverage one person can provide.
