Opening with the world premiere on Sat-urday 24 of Esther Rots’ Can Go Through Skin (Kan door huid heen) – an intense drama about a woman trying to put her life back together after a brutal assault – Dutch Treats is IFFR’s sidebar showcas-ing recent Dutch product to international visitors. Geoffrey Macnab reports

2008 ended on an upbeat note for Dutch filmmak-ing. “The second half of the year picked up both nationally and internationally for Dutch films,” Dutch screen agency Holland Film’s Managing Di-rector Claudia Landsberger says. Local movies again performed robustly at the box-office. Leading the charge was Martin Koolhoven’s Winter in Wartime, an epic yarn about a 14-year-old boy during the last year of the Second World War in Holland, which at-tracted 50,000 spectators during its opening week-end alone. Ben Sombogaart’s Bride Flight (screening in Dutch Treats), which tells the story of the 1953 air race from London to Christchurch in New Zealand, also caught the imagination of local cinemagoers.

HOME anD awayMeanwhile, Dutch films were well represented at international festivals in the autumn. Mijke De

Jong’s Katia’s Sister (shortly to be seen in Berlin’s Generation programme) was in competition in Locarno, screened to acclaim in Toronto and was a prize winner in Seville, and Heddy Honigmann’s brilliant documentary Oblivion, about Lima’s for-gotten citizens, elicited enthusiastic reviews in San Sebastian, where Arno Dierickx’s psychological drama Blood Brothers was also in competition. Sev-eral Dutch titles – among them such Dutch Treats as Can Go Through Skin and Winter Silence will also be seen in Berlin next month. “We had films in San Sebastian, Locarno and Toronto. And the Dutch domestic films did well (at the box-office),” Lands-berger notes. One trend is evident. Mainstream films (especially kids’ movies) are performing well domestically, while art house titles are strug-gling to find audiences. Critics may like them, and festivals may programme them – but that doesn’t mean Dutch cinemagoers are flocking to see them. “We’ve worked hard for many years to get a good market share. All the producers can be very happy. Good, mainstream films are now proving they can be successful on home turf,” Landsberger says. She acknowledges that the picture for Dutch art films is less rosy. “But it’s not just the smaller Dutch films that have a problem. It’s all smaller international films that have this commercial problem. We know that dis-

tributors aren’t going to take the risk of giving these films big releases.” Dutch titles in Rotterdam aren’t just confined to Dutch Treats: several local films are also included in the main programme, in the Shorts, Made In Rotterdam and Size Matters sections. Addi-tionally, the festival provides Dutch filmmakers with a chance to meet international industry representa-tives at IFFR’s co-production market, the CineMart.

SMaLL wORLDSAsk Landsberger what trends she can spot in Dutch Treats and she is hard pressed to answer. Filmmak-ers are tackling hugely diverse subject matter. One noticeable factor is the number of women filmmak-ers and producers. However, Landsberger points out, “girl power” is nothing new. “Every year, we have a lot of very savvy and knowledgeable female producers, and that’s a new phenomenon. We’ve always had a lot of female directors... the Dutch have no difficulty in seeing women in these roles.” One trend Landsberger has noticed is the number of inward-looking, closely focused dramas. While the Netherlands’ documentary makers tend to look beyond national boundaries, dramatic directors are often taking a more introspective approach. “When I think of Calumcho, Winter Silence and Can Go Through Skin, they’re all about very small

worlds.” Whether it’s Noud Heerkens’ Last Con-versation (set entirely inside a car with Johanna ter Steege playing the rejected lover behind the wheel) or Robert Jan Westdijk’s In Real Life or Cyrus Frisch’s Dazzle (featuring Rutger Hauer), many Dutch filmmakers are working on an intimate canvas.

nEw InTERESTDutch distributors have a sometimes ambivalent relationship with the Rotterdam Festival. As Lands-berger point out, distributors will sometimes say: “no, we don’t want to release a film in conjunction with Rotterdam because people will think it’s an art house film, it’s a difficult film.” However, the pres-ence in Dutch Treats of Can Go Through Skin just before its Dutch release suggests this mentality is changing. Rotterdam’s Dutch Treats is now seen not just as a platform for showcasing Dutch movies to in-ternational visitors, but as a way of generating local interest too. The Dutch Treats sidebar also provides a chance for films that screened at autumn festivals to be ‘rediscovered.’ “It is very important for us to have a small showcase of the films that have been seen already somewhere internationally but have not had such a huge visibility,” Landsberger says. “And people, when they come to Rotterdam, are keen to see what the crop of the year for the Dutch is.”

DaILy TIGER

38TH InTERnaTIOnaL FILM FESTIVaL ROTTERDaM #2 FRIDay 23 JanUaRy 2009

nEDERLanDSEEDITIEZ.O.Z

DUTCH CROpS Up aLL OVER

Co-executive producer David Greenberg and actors Aunjanue Ellis and Steve Schirripa celebrate at the after-party of the world premiere of The Hungry Ghosts, which opened the 38th IFFR on Wednesday evening. Introducing Michael Imperioli’s Tiger competitor to guests at the opening-night ceremony in the Grote Zaal in De Doelen, IFFR director Rutger Wolfson announced the con-tinuation of Foreign Aid support for the Hubert Bals Fund. See page 5 for full story

photo: Ruud Jonkers

338TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAMwww.FILMFESTIVALROTTERDAM.cOM

IFFR’s Hungry Ghosts – the festival’s strand of recent Asian supernatural films – inevitably prompts questions of definition. It’s easier, I think, to en-joy Asian horror in its many and varied forms than to explain why we enjoy it, or why it’s perceived to be generally better than the Hollywood version. Do Asians have a more profound, more widespread belief in the supernatural? Are their many cultures more open to matters mythological, irrational, metaphysical?

IMpOSSIbLEOne thing I learned while writing a piece for a film magazine that asked critics and writers to sum up their thoughts about Asian cinema, is that this cinema is basically impossible to sum-marise. Too many cultures, with too much his-tory behind them, express their passion, scepti-cism and terror in too many different ways. Do Asians have a stronger belief in ghosts? Yes – but at times they show an equally strong rational-ism; a belief that there are other things to worry about besides phantoms (for example, Joko An-war’s impressive Forbidden Door / Pintu Terlar-ang, screening in the Hungry Ghosts season). Is Asian culture more open to the supernatural? Yes – but at the same time, it’s equally open to technological change and our ambivalent re-

sponse to this (for example, Hideo Nakata’s Ring / Ringu, 1998). Are Asian horror films better than Hollywood’s? Yes – usually – with the caveat that many of these Asian films are often inspired by or are clever variations of their Hollywood counterparts. When it comes to writing about Asian horror (and Asian cinema in general), it is advisable to avoid too many generalizations – the chances are there’ll be a handful of films somewhere, sometime that will prove you wrong. That said, is there anything to say about the cur-rent crop of Asian horror? A few cautious obser-vations…

HuNGRIERAsian filmmakers generally have lower budgets, are quicker to resort to low-tech gimmicks like extreme camera angles, trick editing, prosthetics and on-camera effects. And thanks to the lack of a large production budget, they are more modest abosut showing off their monsters, wraiths and what-have-yous (with the added benefit of gen-erating more terror at the sudden entrance of a latex-and-corn-syrup creation through a careful build-up of suspense). They are on the whole (and I love this, the word being entirely appropriate to the theme of this portion of the festival) hungri-er. What with smaller budgets, smaller audienc-es, and no guarantee that they’ll see any of their money back, Asian filmmakers tend to take more

chances, pour more energy and intensity and sheer unnerving fear into their films than their better-backed Hollywood brothers.

SpRINGbOARDI’ve also noted that much of the source mate-rial often isn’t new. Many ideas are borrowed from Western (often Hollywood) sources; but just as often, this merely acts as a springboard for catapulting the original concept into realms undreamt of by its originators. The premise of David Lee’s Yes, I Can See Dead People (screening in Hungry Ghosts) clearly comes from M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999); except that the former goes one better by adopting a breezy tone from the opening scene, when the hero off-handedly admits he can see ghosts left, right and centre. We sit there all perked up, ready to put Shyamalan aside and follow this movie wherever it wants to go, the old premise having just been given a lively new spin. Is this a lack of original-ity? I like the image of some craftsman, hun-gry (again that word) and hurried, scrounging around a junk pile, finding something old and fa-miliar and discarded, realizing with a demented gleam in his eye that he can do something with it. Not cutting-edge creativity, but not slavish imi-tation either; these people have to make money entertaining audiences; and no one likes a story-teller who repeats himself too much.

SpIRIT OF THE TIMESIFFR’s Hungry Ghosts programme gets Philippine film critic Noel Vera thinking about what makes Asian horror unique

FIRST STEpSAs IFFR’s First Things First strand celebrates debut films by estab-lished auteurs, script consultant and tutor at Amsterdam’s Film Acad-emy Ernie Tee surveys the tricky art of making your first film

Debut films often find themselves caught on the fault line between two lives: thefilm enthusiast bids farewell to the life that unfolded before filmmaking began, and steps into a new life: one in which he is en-titled to call himself a filmmaker. In this re-spect, a first film can also be seen as a form of initiation, whereby the new filmmaker is finally accepted into the guild of film art-ists and creators. From that moment, there is no going back: the carefree days of film consumption are gone for good. This film enthusiast is no longer a member of the au-dience or a contemplator. He has become a filmmaker. And filmmakers simply relate to film in a completely different way from those other people, in that other life. It is little wonder therefore that the ‘Young Turks’ of the Cahiers du Cinéma period – the biggest and most intelligent film consumers of their era – ceased any activity outside of filmmaking immediately upon completing their first films (even though Godard said he always continued to contemplate in his film-making). Clearly, the relationship between experience and creation is not an easy one. Rarely will it happen that a filmmaker im-mediately establishes his credentials as an auteur with his first film; after all, breaking free from old conditions is never a process that takes place overnight. It always takes a while for a filmmaker to find his ‘sonatine’ – as Kitano Takeshi called his fourth full-length film, which he himself regards as marking the beginnings of the development of his own voice. More than the search for its maker’s individual signature, a first film is often a struggle with the question of how to definitively break with the past. Some-times, this struggle will be expressed in fear of presiding and accepted conventions; at other times in sheer overconfidence, or the contrived development of a highly personal theme in an equally personal style. In the former case, this results in films with hope-less narrative meanderings; in the latter, in unsubtle pamphlets, behind which – with a generous dose of good will – a headstrong talent may faintly be discerned. A good ex-ample of such an overconfident film is Lars von Trier’s graduation film, Images of Libera-tion, in which we can detect many things he’d express in the films he made before Dogma, but in their most indigestible form.The phenomenon of ‘first films’ is no less interesting for all this, however. After all, a filmmaker expresses himself not only through his signature, but – perhaps even more clearly – through the capricious path taken towards this.

Ernie Tee

GuEST cOLuMN

Yes, I Can See Dead People

working under the alias ‘Influenza’, Rotterdam-based visual artist Jeroen Jongeleen’s work is meant as a wry ex-amination of the city, writes Stephanie Harmon

Jongeleen’s palette is street media: postering, stick-ers and graffiti – and the city of Rotterdam itself. ‘How free can we be in the public space?’ he asks. Jongeleen has created three projects to explore this question during IFFR 2009. Two of these – the mesmerizing animated sticker projects Influenza/Dancing Black Square and Influenza/Composition II (Chrome Square), are screening during the festival. A third project uses Rotterdam as an installation/intervention site, and involves hanging tagged plastic shopping bags on prominent buildings. “Cities today are professionally designed to eradi-

cate most of our traces, and this is about leaving a very individual, very personal mark in an archi-tectural surrounding that’s becoming ever more depersonalized. It’s nothing new, but somehow it’s like a very romantic land art kind of gesture. Like an artist going into the Scottish highlands and putting some stones in a pile... but in my case, I love cities, and my stones are the plastic bags you can find everywhere… People might think it’s litter, but once they know that it’s an artist actu-ally doing these silly things, they might think that other things are suspicious as well. I’m very inter-ested in the traces we leave behind, and the bags also address traces we don’t want to be reminded of, and our own responsibility for these things. It’s kind of like a parasite project in the shadow of the festival.”Influenza/Dancing Black Square is shown as an in-

situ project in the SubUrban Video Lounge from 20 January through 1 February. Influenza/Compo-sition II (Chrome Square) will also be shown in the compilation programme Ready for My Close Up.

bAGGING AND TAGGING THE cITY

Jeroen Jongeleen photo: Daniëlle van Ark

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ROOTINg FOR BREDA During IFFR, Holland’s newest film festival – the International Film Festival Breda (first edition 25-29 March) – has announced some early details of its programme, Geoffrey Macnab reports. The festival is to open with the Dutch premiere of Stephen Daldry’s The Reader. Other features already confirmed include 50 Dead Men Walking and Terribly Happy. Meanwhile, among the sidebars will be a programme of films chosen by photographer-turned-filmmaker Anton Corbijn (director of Control). Corbijn, who has chosen such films as Performance and Taxi Driver, will be in attendance. The festival director is Leo Hannewijk. Breda aims to showcase work exploring the crossover between gaming, computers and cinema. The town is already home to a photography festival and a graphic design festival, so the film festival is regarded as a natural third step. There will be around 70 short films screening, open-air screenings as well as live cinema performances.Some observers have questioned whether there is space for another international film festival in the Netherlands, especially at a time when sponsorship is under pressure and public arts spending is in decline. Before Christmas, the VSB Fund – the largest private donor to arts events in the Netherlands – announced it would be reducing spending on culture by more than 50%, from EUR 62m to EUR 30m next year. Film festivals are bound to be affected by the shortfall. The question is just when the impact will be felt. However, Hannewijk has expressed confidence that Breda can put down roots. The city and province of Breda is pumping EUR 450,000 into the inaugural event, the overall budget of which will be EUR 525,000.

cINéART TAkES ON BABAjIDistributor cinéart has taken all Benelux rights to jiska Rickels’ IFFR world premiere Babaji, an Indian Love Story. wendy Mitchell reports

The distributor plans an eight-screen dig-ital launch of Babaji, a documentary about an eponymous Indian wizard, in the Netherlands on May 7, with a Belgian release to follow. Cinéart managing director Wallie Pollé previ-ously worked with Dutch director Rickels on her documentaries Untertage and 4 Elements when he worked at distributor A-Film. “I recog-nized her talent immediately, she has her own view on things,” he says, adding that Cinéart is also releasing another Indian story, Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire (showing at IFFR to-morrow). Cinéart is a Brussels-based distribu-tor which launched its Dutch operations one year ago. In addition to Slumdog and Babaji, Cinéart has Benelux rights to six other titles at the festival: 24 City, 35 Rhums, Because We Were Born, The Chaser, Private Lessons and Unspoken. Rickels shot the film over just 30 days, in north-east India. When she and her crew arrived, they weren’t sure if Babaji would even agree to do the project. “We wanted to take the risk,” she says. “Luckily, he was really open minded and a nice person to work with.” Coming from outside the culture was a benefit, the director says. “If you see it from outside, Hindi culture can be more surprising or interesting. You maybe notice the details or see the rituals in a different way.” Rickels, who recently relocated to Berlin, is now planning a project about the music ofthe Silk Road.

I’LL BE wATcHINg… Dan Fainaru, Tel Aviv-based critic for Screen International, recommends Spectrum title Il Divo by Paolo Sorrentino. Fainaru calls the portrait of former Italian Prime Minister Guilio Andreotti, “a brilliant tour de force displaying the masquerade of democracy in its most frightening, grotesque aspects.” He continues: “Paolo Sorrentino’s picture may be about Andreotti and Italy, but could eas-ily apply, with slight cosmetic adjustments, to many other Western regimes.”

Il DIvoPaolo Sorrentino

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The long-running saga over whether or not the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs will continue to support Rotterdam’s Hu-bert Bals Fund (HBF) appears finally to be over. Interim funding has been secured for this year, and the government has now indicated that it will continue to back HBF in the future.

DEBATEIt is more than two years now since the debate over whether Foreign Aid money should be used to sup-port culture-based projects in developing countries began in earnest. The Dutch invest around 0.8% of the country’s gross national product in developing countries. The chief goals of foreign aid spending are to fight hunger and poverty. Some parties have lob-bied for this spending to be reduced. It was against this backdrop that the festival has been trying to se-cure its long-term public funding. In November, a report into the activities of the Hu-bert Bals Fund, IDFA’s Jan Vrijman Fund and the Rijksacademie (both also dependent on Foreign Aid money) by academics Anneke Slob and Eltje Bos was delivered to Minister for Development Cooperation, Bert Koenders. The report is understood to have been very favourable in relation to HBF’s activities. “Indeed, this evaluation was very positive about how efficient we are and the kind of projects we support,” HBF manager Bianca Taal comments. With ‘bridging’ funds available, HBF will be able to operate during 2009 to the same level as in previous years. The Ministry of Foreign Aid has also signalled its intention to strike up a new, long-term partner-ship with the Fund in 2010. Immediately after the Festival, Rotterdam delegates are expected to enter into discussions with the Ministry in The Hague about the scope of future funding.

RELIEFAfter close to three years of mounting uncertainty, the decision by the Ministry to continue backing HBF has been welcomed by the Festival. “It is a huge

relief,” Taal comments of the Government’s com-mitment to the long-term financing of HBF. “We are very, very happy that we can go into the future with this prospect of continuing to work with the Minis-try.” However, in his opening speech on Wednesday, festival director Rutger Wolfson admitted it was “still unclear how substantial the support will bein coming years.” An outspoken Wolfson insisted that HBF, along with the Jan Vrijman Fund at the International Documentary Film Festival Amster-dam (IDFA), should receive stable backing as a mat-ter of urgency. “Perhaps the Netherlands doesn’t count as a strong film nation internationally, but it does have two festivals that belong to the inter-national top of their field. This festival, of course, and IDFA. For these festivals (and thereby also the Netherlands) to remain strong international play-ers, the Hubert Bals Fund and the Jan Vrijman Fund desperately need continuity in the current level of funding,” he said.

It is hoped that Minister Koenders will be in Rot-terdam this week to see some of the films backed by the Fund. Taal pointed out that IFFR 2009 has “a very rich crop” of HBF-backed films, with 33 titles (a record number) featuring in the programme.Looking to the future, the festival is examining ways to boost distribution of HBF-backed films in their countries of origin. HBF also recently started a partnership with Dutch distributor Cinemien, which has an online platform (some 15 HBF titles are available through this platform).

ANNIVERSARyThis year, the Hubert Bals Fund is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. Life on a String by Chen Kaige was the first film to receive funding from the Fund in 1989. Since then, the Fund has received thousands of applications. “It (the number of appli-cations) is steadily increasing. Last year, we received around 760 applications in total,” Taal notes.

BRIDgINg THE gApFollowing a period of uncertainty, the Hubert Bals Fund has securedcontinued Foreign Aid support. Geoffrey Macnab reports

Bianca Taal photo: Ruud jonkers

Il DivoSitutated on the fourth floor of De Doelen, the Film Office helps to forge links between IFFR filmmakers and distributors, sales agents and financiers. Industry consultants inform film-makers and buyers alike about the selected films, the attending industry guests, local film market developments and the international festival circuit. In addition, filmmakers are en-couraged to attend the Meet The Programmers sessions on Saturday and Wednesday, during which IFFR programmers will explain their se-

lection criteria for this year’s festival. “The Film Office is there to service filmmak-ers and producers and to help establish and implement festival strategies as well as target the right sales and distribution companies,” the Film Office’s Jolinde den Haas told Nick Cunningham.Photo, left to right: Mary Davies, Hayet Benka-ra, Rik Vermeulen, Jannie Langbroek, Jolinde den Haas, Nikolas Montaldi, Carlijn Wiegant and Thomas Crommentuijn.

photo: Ruud jonkers

738TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAMwww.FILMFESTIVALROTTERDAM.cOM

Andrey Khrzhanovsky talks to Wendy Mitch-ell about his imaginative tribute to the Rus-sian poet, Joseph Brodsky

Leading Russian filmmaker and animator Andrey Khrzhanovsky makes his first trip to Rotterdam with the world premiere of Room and a Half, a fea-ture inspired by the great poet Joseph Brodsky. Khrzhanovsky is emphatic that the film is “not to be interpreted as a biography or portrait of Brod-sky.” Instead, the filmmaker imagines Brodsky, exiled in the early 1970s following years of con-flict with the Soviet authorities, taking a journey back to the motherland. He calls the film “mostly a fantasy” and says that he and co-writer Yuri Arabov were inspired by Brodsky’s idea that the “most important thing is the size of the idea.” Brodsky has long felt a kinship with Brodsky. He felt moved to start the years of work on the project after reading Brodsky’s essay In a Room and a Half, a depiction of his early family life. “We were born within six months of each other, and our parents were born the same year. And my youth and childhood were also spent in the same ‘one-and-a-half ’ rooms,” says Khrzhanovsky. “What drew me to Brodsky’s personality was that he was an absolutely free spirit in a time when freedom was suppressed,” the director says. Khrzhanovsky himself graduated from Moscow’s film school, VGIK, in 1962 and his first short was 1966’s Once Upon a Time There Lived Kozyavin. His subsequent works include No Less Than a Miracle, My Favourite Time, School of Fine Arts, the docu-

mentary Meetings With Pushkin and short One and a Half Cat. Room and a Half is an original blend of scripted fiction (some scenes were shot in Brodsky’s ac-tual apartment), archive footage and animation. Khrzhanovsky is quite accustomed to such a gen-re-bending style. “Working in several styles and genres is a natural way of working for me. In the Sixties, the composer Alfred Shnitke and I named this style of working ‘polistilistika.’Although this is Khrhanovksy’s first visit to Rot-terdam, he notes that Brodsky wrote a poem about the city, and he has heard good things over the years about IFFR from friends and colleagues. “I’ve heard for a long time that Rotterdam is one of the most serious festivals for cinema, and the festival has an excellent reputation in Russia,” he says. What’s more, Rotterdam has a family draw – his son Ilya’s debut feature, 4, won a Tiger here in 2005. “I would be happy to see it if we could start a festival family tradition – my grandson (Ilya’s son) is already making his first film at age ten.”

Room and a Halfandrey Khrzhanovsky

Pathé 7 Fri 23 Jan 21:45Cinerama 5 Sat 24 Jan 17:00 Venster 3 Sun 25 Jan 11:30 * Venster 3 Tue 27 Jan 16:15 * Cinerama 4 Wed 28 Jan 17:15

* Press and Industry screenings

“I’m definitely, strongly against vio-lence,” writer/director Yang Ik-June of Tiger competitor Breathless tells wendy Mitchell

This may come as a surprise, given the many violent scenes in his directorial debut, which shows small-time Korean gangsters punching teenage girls and then using hammers on each other. There is a deeper message in this depiction of gang violence and domestic abuse, however, he says. “I wanted to show violence stealing ordinary people and fami-lies and how serious it is when it is transferred to others and their children,” Yang says. Actor Yang plays the lead role of debt collector Song-Hoon, who is haunted by family violence, yet tries to slowly make amends with his young neph-ew. He also has an unlikely common bond with an unhappy high school girl, who also has a violent home life. Yang, who previously acted in films such as Maundy Thursday, Les formidables and No Manners, sees his own film as ultimately about family. “I just wanted to write a story and it just turned out be one about family and surroundings created from family. Be-cause my family and my father, who had ultimate power within the family (as in most typical Korean families), had influenced me the most, they natu-rally came out to be my first story.” He concedes that some audiences might find the

film “quite violent and emotionally exaggerated” yet says there is good reason for that – “the conflicts that sons and daughters have against their parents are exploded in the movie.”Acting in his own directorial debut was certainly a bigger challenge, but Yang has drawn critical praise for his performance – Screen International called the performance both “strong” and “compelling.”The director is honest about wearing many hats on set stretching him in front of the camera, but he says somehow it worked even better that way. “When I do both jobs, I lower my emotional gauge down to 40% of what I have,” he notes. “Because I don’t have enough time to memorize the lines and be in a mood to play the role, it somehow delivers fresh and vivid moments to my acting.” He’s enjoying the flexibility of being both an actor and a director. “Whenever there’s a good project for me to act, I’ll play, and if there’s a good story I wish to make then I’ll write and direct again.”

BReatHlessYang Ik-June

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* Press and Industry screening

FAMILY VIEwINgVPRO Tiger Awards Competition

VPRO Tiger Awards Competition

Trying to make a film with a dozen teenag-ers? The only thing harder might be herd-ing cats, wendy Mitchell reports

Even Henry Bernadet, co-director of At West of Pluto (À l’ouest de Pluton), admits that he’s sometimes scared of teenagers. “It’s because we don’t know them, we don’t communicate with them. They put up a shield to look like they are tough and don’t want to be sociable, but what they need is for adults to talk to them like friends our own age.” First-time Quebecois feature directors Bernadet and Myriam Verreault can qualify as teen experts

after spending nearly four years working on VPRO Tiger Awards contender At West of Pluto. They even did what most normal adults would fear most – re-turning to their own suburban high school – to cast current students for the project. After casting twelve leads, they workshopped the script for six months. Production then took a year and a half of interrupted shoots at nights and weekends. At West of Pluto observes one day in the life of twelve teenagers in a suburb outside Quebec City, with glimpses of a teenage party, a boy’s first love, bud-ding musicians choosing their band name and one boy’s dismay when Pluto is declassified as a planet. The documentary-style shooting and the actors themselves give the film an unusual realism. “On TV, you see teenagers who are 25-year-old actors; we felt the need to pass the real teens the mic,” Bernadet says. The directors wrote the script, but let the teens im-provise when necessary. “Sometimes they said, ‘I don’t even know what that word means, I’d never say that.’ So we’d encourage them to do the scenes their own way,” he says. Bernadet and Verreault haven’t directed together in

the past, but had a lot in common – including attend-ing that same high school (albeit four years apart). “We have very similar tastes and views,” Bernadet says. Verreault also edited the film. Both wanted to present the comic and tragic aspects of teenage life. “That period of life is so intense,” Bernadet says. “It can be cruel, but exhilarating.” Bernadet isn’t sure what his next project will be; he’s not convinced it will be about teenagers again. “I don’t want to be a teenage guru,” he says with a laugh. “I’m just interested in observing the human condition. I’m not the Quebecois Larry Clark.”

at West of Pluto / À l’ouest de PlutonHenry Bernadet / myriam Verreault

Pathé 5 Fri 23 Jan 19:15 Pathé 5 Sat 24 Jan 10:30 Doelen Willem Burgerzaal Sun 25 Jan 14:15 * Pathé 5 Mon 26 Jan 16:00 Pathé 5 Sat 31 Jan 19

* Press and Industry screening

SMELLS LIkE TEEN SpIRIT

pOETRY IN MOTION

ScREENINg EARLYA concerned Christian Klandt appeared in The Daily Tiger offices yesterday to report that the screening dates of his film Weltstadt have been changed. Due to unforeseen cir-cumstances, this acclaimed German drama will now screen today at 11.45 in Lantaren 2, not at 12.30 as reported in the programme guide. The screening scheduled for the 25th January is cancelled.

938TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAMwww.FILMFESTIVALROTTERDAM.cOM

Dutch actress Johanna ter Steege ended up alone in a car with 24 digital cameras for company when making Noud Heerk-ens’s Last conversation (screening in IFFR’s Bright Futures section). The one-shot, feature-length film, inspired by Jean cocteau’s La Voix Humaine, is a road movie with a difference: a jilted woman drives across town toward the house of her married ex-lover. During the journey, she has her last conversation with him.

“I started the car and the director and the sound man waved goodbye to me and wished me good luck,” Ter Steege recalls. During the journey, an actor telephoned her. This was the cue for the lover’s anguished monologue. Shooting took place in the Ardennes in Belgium. Heerkens and his crew followed four minutes or so behind the actress. “It is true that I am driving a car and it really is one take. You see a woman in a car for 70 minutes, phoning with her ex-lover. I get out of the car one time because I need to pee and one time because it’s too warm in the car. Finally, after 70 minutes, I arrive at the house of the lover and I have the line ‘you’ve got every-thing you want’ – then I turn and drive away.” There were false starts along the way. The first time Ter Steege made her journey, it was early in the morn-ing and very cold. She couldn’t use the heater in the car because the sound would have muffled her voice. The windows frosted up and the cameras – all on the exterior of the car – lost sight of her. On another occasion, the battery of the mobile phone of the ac-tor she was speaking to went dead. Ter Steege wasn’t happy with her acting on the third attempt. Finally – fourth time around – the film was successfully shot.

Yes, the actress was worried that she might be ar-rested for using her phone while behind the wheel. “There was one drive when the police stopped me,” she recalls. “It wasn’t because I was phon-ing but because they saw this strange car – with all the cameras, it looked like a huge insect!” Ter Steege describes Last Conversation as “the most difficult thing I ever did for camera.” However, next month in London, an installation by Turner Prize-nominated artists the Wilson sisters will commemo-rate a film project that surely would have been every bit as tough – if it had actually been completed. In the early 1990s, Ter Steege was recruited to star in Stan-ley Kubrick’s Holocaust drama, The Aryan Papers. Kubrick was an avowed fan of Ter Steege’s work,

having seen her in such films as George Sluizer’s The Vanishing and Istvan Szabo’s Dear Emma, Sweet Böbe. In The Aryan Papers, she was to have played Aunt Tania, a beautiful Polish-Jewish woman who tries to pass herself and her nephew off as Catholics during the Nazi occupation. Ter Steege was sworn to secrecy about the film, which Warner Bros was planning to shoot in Eastern Europe and Denmark. In the end, Kubrick shelved the project. Steven Spiel-berg was already at work on Schindler’s List. Kubrick was worried that his film would suffer if it appeared second. With the abandonment of The Aryan Papers, Ter Steege lost a role that would certainly have made her an international star. “I have been always very, very quiet about it,” Ter Steege says. She doesn’t hide

her disappointment that she lost the chance to play the lead in a Stanley Kubrick film. At the same time, not many other Dutch actresses can claim truth-fully that they were once Stanley Kubrick’s muse.

LAST cONVERSATIONNoud Heerkens

Pathé 4 Fri 23 Jan 19:00 Pathé 6 Sat 24 Jan 13:30 Pathé 2 Tue 27 Jan 16:15 Venster 3 Wed 28 Jan 09:30 * Pathé 4 Sat 31 Jan 19:00

* Press and Industry screening

DRIVE, HE SAID

Last Conversation

Johanne ter Steege dials in her toughest role yet in Last Conversation. Geoffrey Macnab reports

Stichting Dioraphte steunt kwalitatieve projecten op het gebied van kunst en cultuur met

een landelijk of internationaal bereik.

Ook het Hubert Bals Fonds van het IFFR mag rekenen op onze steun om filmmakers uit ontwikkelingslanden te steunen en hun films bereikbaar te maken voor een breed publiek

Niet straks maar nu. Omdat cultuur rijkdom is die je met elkaar deelt.

Steun ook het Hubert Bals Fonds en het IFFR. Als bezoeker, als vriend, als mecenas.

Stichting Dioraphte steunt kwalitatieve projecten op het gebied van kunst en cultuur met

een landelijk of internationaal bereik.

Ook het Hubert Bals Fonds van het IFFR mag rekenen op onze steun om filmmakers uit ontwikkelingslanden te steunen en hun films bereikbaar te maken voor een breed publiek

Niet straks maar nu. Omdat cultuur rijkdom is die je met elkaar deelt.

Steun ook het Hubert Bals Fonds en het IFFR. Als bezoeker, als vriend, als mecenas.