If New York is the “the city that never sleeps”, then Rotterdam is, according to the title of a 1928 documentary made about Europe’s biggest port The City That Never Rests. Directed by Friedrich von Maydell and shot by Holland’s leading cameraman of the era, Andor von Barsy, it was intended as an hour-long inducement to potential investors – but now stands as an inadvertently poignant record of a metropolis whose historic centre was flattened by Luftwaffe bombing only a dozen years later.
For decades solely available in edited form, a restored version of von Maydell and von Barsy’s movie was unveiled this month as part of the 40th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). Attracting well over 300,000 patrons each year to its film showings, live performances and exhibitions, IFFR proclaims itself to be the Netherland’s biggest cultural event.
And that bustling restlessness manifests itself in the sheer number and breadth of films selected. Over the course of 11 days, more than 200 features and dozens of shorts are shown across half a dozen venues – the first screenings kicking off just after 9am, with many auditoria closing their doors after midnight.
The more conscientious patrons head home, while their hedonistic peers repair to nearby watering-holes including Chez Alain, the legendary bar at the Grand Hotel Central. This is a cramped, crowded, smoky spot which resembles a British boozer circa the period when Hubert Bals and his pals set up IFFR (as Film International) in 1972.
The Central isn’t to everyone’s tastes, but can be regarded as the festival’s true heart. Here filmmakers (some illustrious, many just starting out), journalists and the public all mingle.
Every now and then, there is talk of the council demolishing the Central, despite the fact that Rotterdam doesn’t exactly have a surfeit of pre-1940 inner-city buildings. Likewise, one frequently hears predictions that the finest IFFR cinemas – the mirror-walled, deliciously retro Luxor, which looks more like a burlesque nightclub, mere yards from the Central – is also living on borrowed time.
These are examples of bureaucracies undervaluing unique cultural assets. Rotterdam regulars worry that the festival’s relatively compact cosiness will be sacrificed in the name of yuppie-friendly progress.
It’s debatable whether the programme alone would be enough to keep international visitors coming back year after year, as Rotterdam – which trades heavily on being a “public” festival that sells many thousands of tickets – has long shown far too many films, with quantity getting the upper hand over quality (the choice of “XL” to brand the overstuffed 40th festival smacked of making a virtue out of bigger-is-better necessity).
The enterprise’s eclecticism and scale ensures there’s something for all tastes – from accessible American indie fare such as Black Swan, Blue Valentine and Somewhere, to more taxing propositions from exotic experimenta farthest geographical and conceptual reaches. But picking one’s way through the tangled strands of the sprawling programme can be a hazardous business, with many duds along the way. Nevertheless, Rotterdam continues to serve a valuable purpose. Over the course of its 40th edition, the following features stood out as worthy of tracking down if and when they make it to these shores:
Finisterrae was for many the discovery of Rotterdam 2011, a wonderfully unlikely blend of high art and low comedy from Sergio Caballeo. Making his feature debut, Caballero has crafted a deadpan fable of refreshingly original texture, one which incorporates elements of Samuel Beckett and Luis Buñuel, plus highbrow spiritual cinema from the likes of Ingmar Bergman Andrei Tarkovsky.
However, as this unlikely saga unfolds – a pair of shrouded Russian “ghosts” trek the ancient pilgrim-path to Santiago de Compostela in damp, windy northern Spain, then on to Cape Finisterre in search of rebirth – a more offbeat vibe (part Monty Python, part Alejandro Jodorowsky) quickly emerges.
The results are frequently hilarious and, despite being shot on high-definition digital video, seldom less than painterly to look at. The cinematographer is 29-year-old prodigy Eduard Grau, also responsible for Tom Ford’s A Single Man, who delivers a final reel that’s about as exquisitely beautiful as cinema gets these days.
Spectacularly divisive among critics, Finisterrae quickly gained something like instant cult status among Rotterdam ticket-buyers. It was rightly – if perhaps surprisingly – rewarded with one of IFFR’s three equal top prizes, the Tiger Awards, in a 14-strong competition section restricted to first and second-time directors.
The other Tigers proved more predictable, going to relatively conventional art-movie fare in the form of Thailand’s partly IFFR-funded romance Eternity by Sivaroj Kongsakul and strong critical favourite The Journals of Musan, a chronicle of the mishaps befalling a meek North Korean defector in Seoul, by Park Jung-Bum.
The next big thing from below the 38th parallel may well be Yoon Sung-Hyun, present in competition at Rotterdam with his remarkably assured debut feature Bleak Night. An ambitious, intelligent and convincing examination of the turbulent dynamics between a trio of teenage boys, Bleak Night tackles the subjects of bullying and suicide with a gritty, steely sensitivity and is built four-square around a trio of fine performances by the youthful leads.
The film is especially relevant, as South Korea has long suffered from one of the world’s highest suicide-rates, which some commentators reckon is partly attributable to the pressures to conform and succeed felt by many of its younger citizens.
Outside the competition section lurked a promising talent wh hasn’t even completed his studies yet. Swiss writer-director Michael Krummenacher shot Beyond These Mountains (which he co-wrote with Silvia Wolkan) over the course of 20 days in his home-town of Schwyz with a bunch of friends and film school colleagues, for a reported budget of 20,000 euros.
Audiences who got past the unappealing video surfaces of the movie were rewarded with a humorous and psychologically penetrating study of two young women and their less-than-healthy friendship. Its decidedly Swiss tone of quietly suffocating eeriness is boosted by Krummenacher’s flair at exploiting the depths and planes of the frame (a technique which so few directors even attempt these days.)
While festivals like Rotterdam are for many all about recognising the next wave of young auteurs, in such a vast programme there is space to reconnect with older masters. Takashi Miike (Audition) returned with a brace of violent features including the rousing samurai epic Thirteen Assassins – timely, given the festival’s selection of martial arts classics from nearly every decade of the 20th century.
From Russia, contrasting examples of the nation’s tradition of soulful, pitch-black humour came from sexagenarian Svetlana Proskurina, courtesy of the beautiful nightmare that is her rural picaresque Truce – and from veteran provocateur Alexei Balabanov. The latter’s bleakly witty miniature The Stoker sees a concussed Afghan war hero eking out a living tending apartment-block boilers – their furnaces proving useful to cops and criminals alike when inconvenient corpses require speedy disposal.
Sticking to the fiery theme, keep an eye out for Denis Villeneuve’s harrowing Incendies from Quebec (based on Wajdi Mouawad’s stage-play Scorched). Winner of the IFFR audience award, this gripping thriller of family secrets plays out against a complex backdrop of Middle East politics over several decades and is the bookies’ front-runner for the Oscars’ Foreign Language category. A successful wager might fund a visit to that restless Dutch port for XLI next January.
