PART ONE
According to one of The Netherlands' foremost journalists, the Dutch filmgoer
averages ONE movie a year, which would rate it lowest among European countries
in terms of attendance. All the more surprising, then, that Rotterdam's
International Film Festival, which closed on the night of February 3d after
eleven days of heavy movie-going (and partying), lasted 25 years.
To celebrate its 25th anniversary, Emile Fallaux, the Festival head, had
the brilliant idea to reprogram, as a sidebar, its entire 1972 selection:
36 films chosen by Fest founder Hubert Bals, plus six that, for some reason
or other, never made it in time for viewing. At the opposite end of the
spectrum--from past to future--Fallaux pushed for the creation of another
sidebar ("Exploding Cinema") dedicated to CD-ROMs, interactive
cinema and the Internet. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first
time a "legitimate" Film festival gives such room to new technologies.
The US package included Sidney Pollack's "Sabrina", Abel Ferrara's
"The Addiction", Robert Benton's "Nobody's Fool" and
Mike Figgis' "Leaving Las Vegas". With 300 films from 49 countries,
shown in such sections as an official competition (for the Tiger Award),
a tribute to Tatsumi Kumashiro, a "pink" (read "soft-porn")
director from Japan, who died in 1995, and a special focus on "Mekong
Cinema" (more about this later), one had a startling--and revealing--view
of the evolution of cinema in the last quarter of a century.
The most striking feature of the 1972 selection was the abundance of openly
political films, often made by such collectives as the Group Medvedkine
or the US's Newsreel. Peter ("They All Laughed") Bogdanovitch
still thought he was a socio-political director, even though his "Targets"
paled in comparison with Dalton Trumbo's "Johnny Got His Gun".
Mexico had dispatched Jorge Sanjines ("The Blood of the Condor")
and Paul Leduc's pre-Warren Beatty film on John Reed ("Mexico Insurgente").
From the Third World came Iranian Darius Mehrjui ("Cow" and "The
Postman") and Senegalese director Mahama Traore. With, respectively,
"Women in Revolt", "I Love You, I Kill You" and "Garden
of Delights", Paul Morrissey (USA), Uwe Brandner (Germany) and Carlos
Saura (Spain) dynamited a few sexual taboos. Documentaries dealt with often-hidden
realities head-on, be it Marcel Ophuls' "The Sorrow and The Pity"
(on French collaborationists during the German occupation), Noriaki Tsushimoto's
"Minamata" (on an entire population being slowly but fatally poisoned
by chemical and indusstrial waste), Frederick Wiseman's "Essene"
(on a monastery in Michigan) or "Winter Soldier," by the WinterFilm
Collective, Vietnam Veterans Against The War.
Tracking down the prints of all the 1972 films was an almost impossible
task: not only had the existing prints to be of screening quality, they
simply had to *exist*! "Made by amateurs, some of those films have
not made it into film history," says Fallaux, "but they were relevant
at the time, they reflected the 'zeitgeist' of the era." Yet, in co-production
with the Netherlands' Film Museum, all the films made it to Rotterdam.
There was another danger: "I didn't want this return to 1972 to be
just a nostalgic throwback, a wallowing in 'good times past'. I wanted it
to be the seed of a debate over whatever happened to films, filmmakers and
filmgoers in the last twenty-five years."
"On the one hand, it's obvious that even low-budget filmmaking has
now become more mainstream--at least to me," Fallaux continues. "Especially
in the last few years, the proliferation of TV channels, therefore a growing
demand for low-budget films, has turned 'independent filmmaking' into big
business. Tales abound as to how often, after a first feature, independents
are offered three-picture deals in Hollywood. That has really set a different
tone than you had 25 years ago. So for real independence, you have to look
even further into the fringe. That's where you may find the poets, the experimentalists,
the new energy.
"Perhaps kids nowadays have little sense of film history, but their
desire and ambition to work with images is no less strong. It was the case
in the 1970s when music videos started. It is the case today with the new
media. One should not look down on that energy, whose impact is far reaching,
more than perhaps we might think. The democratizing effect of the Internet
and the new media, and part of the excitement is not just games, it's also
political."
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PART TWO
"Exploding Cinema", the Rotterdam Festival's debuting sidebar
focusing to the multi-media and the Internet, was headquartered at the Nighttown,
near the railway station. A peek at the future, no doubt, but upon entering
the cavernous basement where a battery of computers had been set up, the
visitor could feel the same energy, the same passion one found at the Cannes
Film Festival in the mid-70s when, as the sun barely rose on the still-sleepy
Croisette, filmgoers coming out of a seven-hour long screening would literally
break into fistfights over Hans-Jurgen Syberberg's "Parsifal".
The computer has now replaced both the projection booth and the screening
room. A hit weekly program on Canadian TV "Reboot EX" is entirely
computer-generated, the same way as John Lasseter's "Toy Story",
made at Pixar and distributed by Disney.
In one area, Douglas Gayeton was presenting his interactive version of "Johnny
Mnemonic" made directly for the CD-ROM. Different actors (no Keanu
Reeves--sorry!), substantially different story. Scriptwriting as we know
it no longer really applies, nor does the traditional role of the filmgoer.
"Who says I want to interact with a movie?" asked an intrigued
but wary visitor. "When I go to the movies, I just want them to tell
me a story."
"That is indeed the key question," Gayeton replied. "We're
just offering a different approach to a same basic material for those who
want to experiment with it."
Gayeton predicts that in the near future, films will be shot simultaneously
for the big screen AND for the CD-ROM.
It's also a great way to recycle old works. Based on Robert Montgomery's
"Lady in The Lake" in which one barely caught a glimpse of Raymond
Chandler's star detective, Philip Marlowe (the camera was HIS p.o.v.), in
the "Raymond Chandler" interactive CD-ROM, YOU become Philip Marlowe,
investigating in the Hollywood of the glamorous 1940s.
"I don't know where it's all going," a visitor muttered, "but
I sure want to be part of it."
All right, I won't make you linger. The partying. The Rotterdam Festival
focusing on directors, there were very few stars around to party with. Which
was great--who needs 'em? The second-floor cafeteria was the Festival's
gathering point and watering hole (strike water, make that gin, scotch,
genever, tequila and coffee, coffee, coffee). Everybody met there around
7 p.m. to make plans for the evening and for the night. Then on to dinner,
on to a film or two, then back to the Cafeteria. When that closed at 2 a.m.
it was time to go out and paint the town all shades of red. Male, female,
animal or mineral, the Dutch could redefine the notions of "loose"
and "cool". Need I say more?
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PART THREE
A gathering of the Mekong Filmmakers in the Rotterdam Festival's press conference
room. Excluding China--which the likes of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige have
made a must on the Festival circuit--programmer Wouter Barendrecht focused
on the other countries that line up the Mekong River: Burma, Thailand, Vietnam,
Laos, Cambodia. The Golden Lion that the 1995 Venice Film Festival gave
to Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung's "Cyclo" "gave us an
ideal opportunity to take a closer look at what was going on in that part
of the world," Barendrecht said.
With tremendous elegance and diplomacy, Tran Anh Hung, whose "Scent
of the Green Papaya" was a (relatively) major hit, called himself "an
aberration": "I live in France, and when I went to Vietnam to
shoot 'Cyclo', I had foreign financing and western equipment." In order
not to "give a distorted view of Vietnamese cinema", Tran Anh
Hung said that with two films in the Festival program--"The River"
and "Nostalgia for a Countryland"--director Dang Nhat Minh was
"far more representative" of what was going on in Vietnam in terms
of cinema.
Dang Nhat Minh expressed a number of concerns that are common to all Mekong
filmmakers. The key word here is "crisis": in financing, equipment
(sometimes old beyond repair), production, technical expertise, distribution.
Audiences are also defecting to video ("Everyone in Rangoon has a VCR,"
Barendrecht said). With (or without) the fall of dictatorships, most Mekong
countries are now switching to a free-market economy. "The impact on
our lives is undeniable (we live in much better conditions)," Minh
said. "As far as culture is concerned, however, it's not as positive
as one would wish."
In less than five years, per Thai director Chatri Chalerm Yukol (a prince,
no less), film production in Thailand has plummeted from 150 to barely 25
films a year (though there are still about 400 direct-to-video films, mostly
actionners, made every year). The recent reestablishment of diplomatic ties
between the US and Vietnam; the release of Burmese dissident Aung Sa Suu
Ryi after years of house arrest (one of the most remarkable scenes in John
Boorman's "Beyond Rangoon"), which brought Burma back into the
"concert of nations" (the "1996: Visit Myanmar" campaign
is in full swing); the elimination of taxes on imported films and the eradication
of laws forbidding foreigners to own real estate in Thailand; the local
governments, who subsidize, most of the time, the concerted efforts by governments
to attract foreign productions in their territories ( see Catherine Deneuve's
"Indochine", Jean-Jacques Annaud's "The Lover" and Oliver
Stone's "Heaven and Earth")--all of the above has brought about
a proliferation of multiplexes and a tidal wave of films from Hong Kong
and mostly Hollywood.
If the deliberate naivete of films written and/or directed by Norodom Sihanouk,
King of Cambodia, aim to counter the negative image "The Killing Fields"
gave of his country, the more interesting Mekong films attest to the filmmakers's
preoccupation with the fundamental question of cultural identity: How to
keep one's cultural identity and talk of real life in your country when,
for obvious economic reasons, the local governments are more inclined to
subsidize films that have a box-office potential, i.e. films that conform
to the Hong Kong / Hollywood model?
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PART FOUR
Two impressive films from the Mekong. Chalerm Yukol's "Daughters"
focuses on four teenagers caught in the whirl of drugs and prostitution,
and their mother--herself a prostitute who discovers she has AIDS (Asia
can no longer ignore the epidemic). Believe it or not, "Daughters"
was a box-office hit in Thailand.
Which cannot yet be the case of "Sons" by Chinese director Zhang
Yuan, perhaps the revelation of this Festival. Unlike better known predecessors--Chen
Kaige's "Farewell My Concubine", Zhang Yimou's "Raise The
Red Lantern", "Shanghai Triad" and other so-called "Gong
Li Movies"--Zhang Yuan refuses to use the past as metaphor for the
present. "Sons" focuses on a family destroyed by alcohol. Having
beaten his wife one time too many, the father is locked up in a psychiatric
ward, and the two sons seem to be gearing up for the same fate. The amazing
thing to it all is that the real mother, father and sons play their own
parts (did anyone say "psychotherapy"?). Indeed, it was the sons
who approached the director (he lived in the same building) and suggested
he do their story. The script was drawn from interviews held--separately--with
each member of the family. The film is rough, tough, brutally honest. For
the moment, it is banned in China. Although the two prizes "Sons"
got on Awards night might change that.
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THE 25th ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
THE AWARDS:
The TIGER AWARD: to three films ex-aequo: "Like Grains of San",
by Ryosuke Nashiguchi (Japan); "Small Faces," by Gillies MacKinnon
(U.K.); "Sons," by Zhang Yuan (China)
THE INTERNATIONAL FILM CRITICS AWARD (PRIX FIPRESCI): "Sons".
Special Mention to "Safe" by Todd Haynes (USA)
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