Czech legend Jan Nemec chose Rotterdam for the world premiere of his new fi lm The Ferrari Dino Girl, because, he says “Rotterdam is for discover-ing new talent in world fi lm, ha ha!”That is of course a joke, for Nemec is a long-es-tablished talent and a key fi gure from the Czech New Wave, with features such as Diamonds of the Night and A Report on the Party and the Guests. The 72-year-old director, in a phone conversation from Prague, praised Holland for being supportive of him when he was just starting out. “My interna-tional career started in the early 1960s when I was in Amsterdam for a student fi lm festival, and that was my fi rst international award (for his gradua-tion fi lm from Prague’s FAMU fi lm school, A Loaf of Bread). That was the time of deep Communism, so I got a lot of respect after this prestigious prize. I had my fi rst fi lm in Amsterdam and so my last could be in Rotterdam”, he says, but adding “I hope this is not my last fi lm.”

FESTIVAL HIGHLIGHTThe director himself is sorry not to be attending IFFR. But he had two heart surgeries last year and couldn’t risk traveling because of the fl u spreading through Europe. Even without the director pres-ent, the world premiere tonight will be one of the highlights of IFFR 2009; a project impressive for

its moving personal remembrances, experimen-tations with form and historical importance. The Ferrari Dino Girl links a series of autobiographi-cal stories: starting in 1968, Nemec shot incendi-ary footage of the Soviet invasion of Prague, and wanted to get this shown internationally – taking the fi lm canisters to cross the border to Vienna with an Italian man and a Bardot-esque Czech woman, Jana.

The idiosyncratic project is both a historical docu-ment containing his famous footage of 1968, and an artistic contemporary revisiting of the past through newly shot images. (Karel Roden plays the director, mostly heard through voiceover narration.)

RESTORED FOOTAGENemec was inspired to make The Ferrari Dino Girl when he was able to acquire his original

footage from 1968 from Austrian television. “The original footage I shot in 1968 has been shown hundreds of times, but I never got the credit or money from this material,” Nemec says. “It was also used for propaganda purposes and for a lot of commercial companies. Once I got it, I just wanted to pick up the negative and make it into something, just this little story.” The pro-ject builds on his other recent autobiographical projects Late Night Talks With Mother (2001) and Landscape of My Heart (2004). The original footage was in better-than-expected condition – “It was very complicated to fi nd it, but once I did, I was quite happy that it wasn’t de-stroyed or edited.” The footage, used in his lauded 1968 short documentary Oratorio For Prague, has been restored thanks to funding from the Czech government and now makes up a central part of The Ferrari Dino Girl. For the fi lm’s new material, Nemec returned to the actual locations from decades ago. “It’s like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime. Ev-erything is authentic. History was me going back to ask the same questions,” says the director, who lived in exile in Germany and the US before re-turning to Prague in 1989.

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DAILY TIGER

38TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM #7 WEDNESDAY 28 JANUARY 2009

NEDERLANDSEEDITIEZ.O.Z

THE CAR’S THE STAR

Toast of the town: “Doing instead of talking is the Rotterdam approach,” explained Rik Grashof, Rotterdam’s Alderman of Culture (second left) to guests at Monday evening’s IFFR Buyers and Sellers Dinner. An avowed cinema fan, Grashof pointed out he would have to skip dessert so as not to miss the screening of Kora-Eda Hirokazu’s Still Walking. Hosted by the City of Rotterdam and IFFR, the function was attended by 140 guests including leading Dutch and international producers, fi nanciers and distributors. NC

photo: Bram Belloni

Czech veteran Jan Nemec recalls the Prague Spring for his autobiographical fi lm The Ferrari Dino Girl. By Wendy Mitchell

Jan Nemec (second left) in The Ferrari Dino Girl

338TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAMwww.FILMFESTIVALROTTERDAM.cOM

Artist and filmmaker Morgan Fisher speaks to Stephanie Harmon about his return to Rotterdam

Avant-garde artist Morgan Fisher is no stranger to IFFR. In 2005, his work was shown in the festi-val’s Cinema Regained programme. At this year’s festival, however, there’s even more of Fisher’s art to explore. Besides his films being screened in the Signals: Size Matters programme, his 2004 piece Aspect Ratio is included in the exhibition of the same name in TENT; this work consists of a series of mirrors in proportions consistent with film formats such as Techniscope and Panavision. The artist returned to IFFR for the opening of Aspect Ratio, before traveling on to Frankfurt, where his latest show, Portikus Looks at Itself, opens this Friday.

Asked about what he’s been working on, Fisher doesn’t mention filmmaking: “I’ve been doing painting lately. It’s very important for me to think of myself as a painter. Specifically: I mean, paint-ing as a specific practice. Although I have done these mirror pieces, which isn’t painting, but is kind of related to painting. When I first showed that work, I talked about how it was related to painting, photography and film. It lies in a kind of intersection between these.” Fisher, who graduated from Harvard in 1964 with a degree in art history, draws inspiration from the painting of Blinky Palermo, Gerhard Richter, and Ellsworth Kelly. Like these minimalists, Fisher’s work is a critical investigation of painting itself. His Edge and Corner Paintings show (2005), con-sisted of gray monochrome canvases, the sizes of which were determined by the sizes of the doors

and windows of the gallery space. “I want to be able to do painting, but I’m very suspicious of what seems to go without saying in painting, and I think this parallels my interests in film. I’m interested in subjecting to interrogation the assumptions that seem to govern the medium – in the one case film, in the other, painting. With painting, the assump-tion is that it’s rectangular and that you can put it wherever you want. A lot of these paintings derive from the architecture of the gallery.”

ANTI-cOMpOSITIONAL“This is true in my films, too. The films, I would like to say, are anti-compositional.” To elaborate on this point, Fisher brings up a comment made during the Q&A after a screening of his shorts ear-lier this week: “I was talking about this idea of a diagram, or the model. Someone in the audience said it reminded them of something that occurs in music – the score. I liked this idea of a score, that implies that different people could realize the work … as long as it adheres to a certain model, it can look different, but it’s still the same film. It can be different in its particulars, but if it’s the same in its underlying scheme, then it’s the same film.” Asked about how these “schemes” come into exist-ence, Fisher answers immediately: “Well … they just tend to come. But here’s the thing: the last film I made was in 2003, and the last one before that was 1984, and then there were a bunch in the early seventies and the sixties. … I don’t want to do work until I feel confident that it’s a good idea; and if the idea comes, that’s great, and if it doesn’t, well, then I don’t make a film. But the ideas tend to come whole, in their entirety, and they come pretty much as a diagram. … Sometimes they need to be developed ever so slightly. But it’s not as if I’ve decided to stop making films, it’s just I’m waiting for the idea. Well, I’m also looking, it’s not as if I’m only waiting for a new good idea…and I’m sure that one will come.”

pAINTINg INTO THE cORNERS

REALITy BITESSheffield Doc/Fest programmer Hussain currimbhoy on why IFFR is an exciting place for documentaries When I’m viewing for Sheffield Doc/Fest’s 2009 programme, the desire and respon-sibility to represent as much of the docu-mentary filmmaking world as possible is an imperative; as is a comprehensive sample of the disparate cultures that produce it. IFFR is renown for its voracious appetite for the innovative and the genre-bending in cinema, and their doc feast upholds this tradition in good stead; yet the attention to documentaries that borrow leaves from the books of fiction film, installation works and artistic investigations is what makes this programme especially pertinent to docu-mentary programmers like me . Uruphong Raksasad’s Agrarian Utopia is a pearl, as is the majestic two-and-a-half-hour Rerberg and Tarkovsky. The Reverse Side of ‘Stalker’ by Igor Mayboroda as well as Sun-rise/Sunset by fellow Russian veteran Vitaly Mansky are personal favourites of the fes-tival so far, and not just for their deft han-dling of subject and narrative allure. They represent the programme’s recognition of the insights documentarians can garner from filmmakers past and present. Some of these lessons carry over into 2009’s documentaries as the tectonic shifts of dig-ital and on-line filmmaking start to be felt. Doc/Fest’s investment in fostering cross-platform documentary works that engage all forms of media, including web-based, digital and gaming mediums, emphasise common ground between IFFR and Doc/Fest programmes in exhibiting the best works by young, progressive filmmakers. Like IFFR’s CineMart, Sheffield Doc/Fest’s now booming MeetMarket attracts com-missioning editors, producers and decision-makers from the world over, sparking new collaborations with filmmakers to pitch ideas and take nascent doc projects that much closer to production. The MeetMar-ket is seeing a steady rise in cross-platform documentary projects pitched. A charge led by people like Holland’s Submarine cross-production studio. Similarly, wholly self-funded or very-low-budget films, which have become a mainstay at IFFR, continue to have a formidable pres-ence. By and large, Doc/Fest’s 100-strong film programme is largely auteur work. Broadcast-driven docs are of exceptional quality in the UK, but conscious efforts to showcase the independent essence of the in-dustry offer a counterpoint to the prevalent working practice and highlights works that are, as some might say, ‘freer’.

gUEST cOLUMN

IFFR Director Rutger Wolfson was delayed at a fea-ture screening in Pathé on Monday night, but still made a point of rushing over to the Lantaren to con-gratulate the winners of the short Tiger awards. “It was five years ago that we started the Tiger Awards for Short Film,” he noted. “We wanted to make [the shorts programme] stronger and more important over the last couple of years, and I think we have suc-ceeded.” Wolfson’s insistence on meeting the short winners is just one small sign that Rotterdam takes its shorts se-riously. Across IFFR there are 366 short films (up to 30 minutes) and 39 short features (30-60 minutes). With the programme restructuring and simplifica-tion, the shorts are no longer in a separate section, but are programmed across the three main sections: Bright Future, Spectrum and Signals. And Tiger Awards for Short Film winners can be proud to no longer be labeled “cubs.”“At a lot of big film festivals, the shorts feel so sepa-rate. But Rotterdam really supports shorts,” says Maria Pallier, from Spanish broadcaster TVE, who served as one of the jurors for the short-film Tigers. Pallier noted that she had been attending IFFR since 1996, usually buying ten to fifteen shorts each year, and plans to do the same this year. Pallier praises not just the quantity, but also the di-

versity of shorts in the festival programmes – “there is such a variety, from short fiction to filmmakers ex-perimenting with new forms. They do take the risk to show new formats. There’s absolute freedom in style and length.” Indeed, some other festivals insist shorts be under 20 minutes or even under 10 minutes – a trend fur-thered by some online platforms and mobile phone companies looking for short content. Yet here, length isn’t a pressing issue – the three Tiger Awards for Short Film winners Bernadette, Despair and A Necessary Music had running times of 38, 30 and 20 minutes respectively. “Years ago it seemed that most festivals didn’t want to screen films that were 25 minutes to one hour,” explains programmer Peter van Hoof, who has over-seen shorts programming at IFFR for the past four years. “Rotterdam does screen those kinds of films, and it helps the filmmakers know they can show their work no matter what length. People should take as long or as short as they need to tell their story.” Kimi Takesue, a New York-based filmmaker who has traveled widely with several shorts over the years (in-cluding this year’s Suspended), says that Rotterdam has a different mentality with shorts. “At Sundance, people tend to see shorts as a stepping stone to fea-tures,” she says. “It’s so focused on accessible, com-

mercial cinema. There’s a real respect for shorts as an art form here.” Gertjan Zuilhof helps programme shorts in his role scouting for rising Asian filmmakers. “To get feature films for the Tiger competition in future years, I have to know short filmmakers,” Zuilhof says. “I don’t want to make a distinction between long and short film, I just want to follow filmmakers that I like. If Lav Diaz makes a six-hour film, I want to see it. And if he makes a short I also want to see it.” Shorts are treated as art but without ignoring in-dustry. “We also encourage contact with short film professionals,” notes Van Hoof. For instance, in 2009 the festival welcomed 25 experimental short film distributors and also hosted a panel on online video platforms. Other innovations this year were the creation of a year-round international online platform, New Arrivals, a collaboration between IFFR and Dutch broadcaster NPS; also there were six shorts commis-sioned to screen on mobile phones as part of NPS Micromovies. For audiences who missed the shorts programmes earlier in the festival, Lantaren 1 will host the Short Film Marathon, consisting of 61 films, from 10 am Saturday until 1 am Sunday. Van Hoof says proudly: “It’s always sold out.”

THE SHORT cIRcUITWendy Mitchell samples the diminutive riches of IFFR’s selection of shorts

Aspect Ratio

Despair A Necessary Music BernadetteHussain Currimbhoy photo: Ruud Jonkers

538TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

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Mid-fest stats (to Monday evening) from the IFFR video library indicate that the most popular film so far among attendees is Si-mon Ellis’ Dogging: A Love Story, followed by Edwin’s Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly and The Hungry Ghosts (Michael Imperioli), all of which compete in VPRO Tiger Awards Com-petition. The number of views per day reg-istered on the digital system, which streams IFFR titles, peaked at 1,145 on Monday evening – this figure does not include view-ings on DVD.

Video Library Top 10 1 Dogging: a Love Story 2 Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly 3 The Hungry Ghosts 4 Sois sage 5 #37 6 Myth Labs 7 Bernadette 8 Block B 9 Six Apartments 10 Coagulate

NEw IRISH wAVE RIDES ROcKY ROAD

DV8, the South African outfit that fi-nances, produces and distributes South African film, is aiming to capitalize on the football fever already descending on the country in advance of the 2010 world cup. By Geoffrey Macnab

Here in Rotterdam, DV8’s Jeremy Nathan has re-vealed details of The African Game, a hugely ambi-tious multi-media project that will encompass a book, an exhibition, an 8-part TV series, mobile and internet content and a feature documentary – all on the subject of African football fans. “We will be following the fans and the mascots in Cameroon, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Angola and South Af-rica as they prepare for 2010,” Nathan explains. DV8 is partnering with MTN (Mobile Telephone Networks South Africa) on The African Game. “We will start the distribution of certain elements of the content in December this year, with an exhibition which will be both a physical exhibition and an in-ternet exhibition. Any small (football) club in the world can download stills and media. We’re going to look to galleries, museums, libraries and football clubs to host exhibitions.” The aim is to celebrate Africa “through the lens of football.” Nathan promises that the project will look at the politics of Africa through football. He predicts that South African filmmakers will benefit from the huge upsurge in internet and sat-ellite infrastructure being promised by the Gov-ernment in time for next year’s World Cup. “The spin-off is that filmmakers will be able to use that,” Nathan said. He forecasts that, using the net, both local and international filmmakers will be able to distribute their films nationwide. No longer will

film distribution be confined to the major cities – movies should now be able to travel all over the country. Alongside its digital initiatives, DV8 remains active as a feature producer. The company recently com-pleted Madoda Ncayiyana’s My Secret Sky, which premiered at the Dubai Film Festival just before Christmas. The film, which follows two children as they travel from their rural village to the city after their mother’s death, will be released theatri-cally in South Africa in the summer through Ster-Kineor. DV8 is handling sales on the project itself. The company is also readying Shirley Adams, the first feature by new director Oliver Hermanus, a 25-year-old who recently graduated from the Lon-don Film School. This is a Dardennes-style drama about a coloured woman from a township whose son is left paralysed by gang warfare. The mother battles to keep her son alive against heavy odds. DV8’s third new project is State of Violence by Khalo Matabane. This is now fully financed and due to shoot in the spring. Here in Rotterdam, Nathan was striking an up-beat note about the prospects for African cinema, in spite of the lack of African projects in CineMart this year. Some have asked why South African film-makers, in particular, have not been able to capital-ize on the Oscar-winning success of Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi (2005). However, Nathan argues that expecta-tions were often unrealistic. “Tsotsi did something incredible. It managed to awaken people’s atten-tion globally to the fact that we have an industry; that we have talented directors as well as actors. We weren’t able to capitalize on that as a nation. We didn’t come through with a whole lot of good films after Tsotsi. It (filmmaking) is still sporadic, but

I see that changing,” Nathan reflected. “I feel very strongly that we are entering a Phase 2 of South African cinema. Phase 1 started with Mapantsula in 1988 and ended with Tsotsi in 2006. Phase 2 is about younger, newer, more educated filmmakers. You’re able to finance them now.”

SOuTH AFRIcA: FINANcING pHASE TwO pEAK VIEwING

Despite a year of successes, the Irish Film Board is entering uncertain times. Attending cineMart, the Board’s head Simon perry talks to Geoffrey Macnab These are topsy-turvy times for the Irish Film Board, Ireland’s national film agency. On the face of it, Irish filmmaking is booming. However, the financial crisis is beginning to affect funding. In 2008, 25 feature films (not including documen-taries) started production in Ireland. “It was defi-nitely, in terms of volume, a record year,” suggests Simon Perry, Chief Executive of the Irish Film Board. There was much to celebrate. Lance Daly’s Kisses (sold internationally by Focus) has blazed a trail across festivals from Galway to Locarno and Toronto. The Irish have been active on the co-production front, too. Oscar-winning Bosnian director Danis Tanovic’s Triage was lured to Ireland. Colin Far-rell headlines the cast, playing a traumatised photojournalist recently returned from a grueling assignment abroad. Neil Jordan has just made a new Irish film in West Cork, the €7.6m Ondine. Both Ondine and Triage may be ready for Cannes. New talent continues to appear. Perry cites film-makers like Ken Wardop, now making his first feature (100-1 Outsiders) and Steph Green (whose short New Boy has just been nominated for an Os-car) as leading representatives of a New Irish Wave. Meanwhile, thee new ultra low-budget films have been commissioned through the Film Board’s ‘Catalyst’ training and production programme. The first of these, Eamon, written and directed by Margaret Corkery, is in post-production and will premiere at the Dublin Film Festival. Two others, One Hundred Mornings by Conor Horgan and Redux by PJ Dillon, are also close to comple-tion. “We at the Irish Film Board really want to encourage strong, specifically Irish voices, clear signatures, evident authorship,” Perry comments. However, the Irish Film Board boss acknowledges that Irish filmmaking is being affected by the eco-nomic crisis. 2008 may have been a banner year for Irish cinema, but cuts are now inevitable. The Irish Government is on a money-saving spree.

Spending on public services is being reduced dra-matically. In some ways, the Irish Film Board is well-positioned. It is relatively small and its recent successes are easy to demonstrate. Even so, the Board faces a 13.5% decrease in its budget (from €20 million to €17.3 million). It is conceivable that further cuts may also be necessary. In the short-term, the area bound to be affected most is co-productions. “It has been so odd to have this very optimistic and prolific year, and then suddenly the brakes are being slammed on,” Perry reflects. He hopes that Irish production will continue as before, but acknowledges co-production may suffer in the short-term. “I wouldn’t rule out being able to do one or two minority co-productions, but a real programme of minor-ity co-production based on reciprocity will have to be reconsidered, and maybe put on hold.” Even if this does happen, Perry will try to ensure that the Board does not become too inward-look-ing. He has been attending the CineMart in what he calls “a spirit of optimism.” He has been casting his eye over various projects in Rotterdam. “We’re always looking for films that can be partly made in Ireland, or with Irish technical or creative contri-butions,” he notes. The Film Board, he adds, is not looking “to change the project or contaminate it with artificial Irishness. Quite the reverse – we are absolutely about invisible co-production.” Ireland remains an active and enthusiastic member of Eurimages (the Council of Europe fund for the co-production, distribution and exhibition of Eu-ropean cinematographic works). In recent months, some of the 33 Eurimages members have ques-tioned whether being part of the Fund is to their benefit. Perry has no such qualms. “Membership is absolutely essential for a country like Ireland. We benefit very much from being the only English-speaking country that is a member.” With tax in-centive Section 481 paying out on the first day of principal photography, Ireland – Perry contends – remains an attractive location for international filmmakers. This, combined with Ireland’s mem-bership of Eurimages, ought to keep the Irish active as co-production partners whatever the fluctua-tions in the national economy.

Natacha Devillers of Paris production house Les Petites Lumières announced yesterday that IDTV (the Netherlands) is joining Cine-Mart project The Snakehead as co-producer. This agreement marks the fourth collabora-tion between the two companies, following Shanghai Trance (David Verbeek, 2008), R U There? (David Verbeek, currently shooting) and The Chinese Black and White Photo (Haol-un Shu), for which IDTV raised Hubert Bals Fund Plus finances. “I’m thrilled that IDTV is coming on board,” Devillers said yester-day. “I’m very happy to be able to pursue a collaboration that will give great impetus to the project.” IDTV’s Frans van Gestel com-mented: “It’s a strong project, an important story – both culturally as well as commer-cially – a strong director and an important theme.” The project, described by Devillers as the criminal odyssey of Chinatown’s Sister Ping, will be directed by Guka Omarova whose Native Dancer (2008) was selected for Toron-to and Pusan. NC

IDTV jOINS SNAKEHEAD

Simon Perry photo: Ramon Mangold

Dogging: a Love Story

738TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAMwww.FILMFESTIVALROTTERDAM.cOM

Japanese writer/director Naito Takatsugu went fishing close to home for the story for his debut feature. By wendy Mitchell

His Tiger competitor The Dark Harbour is about a lonely fisherman in a small port town, who finds an unexpected relationship with a woman and her child. “I grew up in a place that was within one minute walking distance of a harbour,” Naito remembers. “It was such a small, small port town to the degree of just having one fish market. My parents’ plan for raising me didn’t include giving me a computer or comic books, so my days of playing consisted of fishing on the breakwaters of the harbour. So small harbours have a meditative effect on me; that’s why I decided to set this film in a small port town.” Naito’s previous 50-minute project Midnight Pigskin Wolf won a prize at Tokyo’s Pia Film Festival. The Dark Harbour already had its world premiere at that festival, after the festival funded the film through its long-running Pia Scholarship programme. The Dark Harbour shows the loneliness of the setting, but also celebrates its grumpy but charming small-town characters, who are shown in humorous situa-tions – such as fishermen trying to dress like Johnny

Depp for a matchmaking session with city women. Of his main character, Manzo, the director says: “I really didn’t ‘make’ him. From my own perspec-tive, he’s just ordinary. Maybe he is just like myself. I wasn’t thinking and writing a long time to reveal this character, it was just inevitable decisions about what the character does and doesn’t do.”There are some touching emotions behind the co-medic situations and the man’s genuine search for companionship and love. “I think the audience should decide on the genre of this film, more than me as the author. But I agree that it’s not 100% a com-edy,” Naito says. The director arrives in Rotterdam today ahead of the international premiere in the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition, and he has modest hopes for the trip, saying he will be happy if “even one person watches this movie and enjoys it.”

The Dark harbourNaito Takatsugu

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HARBOuRINg AMBITIONS

Jean-Charles Fitoussi tells Edward Lawrenson why he likes to be surprised by reality

VPRO Tiger Awards Competition

“The director is not like God, he’s just someone who is surprised and responds to reality.” Thus Jean-Charles Fitoussi describes his attitude to film-making during his attendance at IFFR. It’s an ap-proach that he applied to Je ne suis pas morte (I’m Not Dead), his second feature, which is playing in the Bright Future strand. There was no script, Fitoussi says of the three-part film, just a few ideas, notably a desire to investigate changing states of love through his portrait of Alix, a 27-year-old woman moving between relation-ships. Marked by a formal elegance and playful, melan-choly, digressive tone, the film’s development was guided by Fitoussi’s insistence that he “didn’t want to know what would happen in the film.” He con-tinues: “For the first part, I was writing scenes the night before shooting, then rehearsing the next day. And in the second and the third part, I didn’t write anything; I arrived on location and decided the dialogue together with the cast. “It’s precise but it’s also improvised. I don’t know what I want until I see it. When something fits – it’s like a tune in jazz, and when it comes you know it can’t be any other way.” So his actors must have had a lot of faith in this method. “Yes, it’s all a question of faith,” he says, “but they trusted me.”Most of the performers are non-professional, but his lead, Alix Derouin, does aspire to continue act-ing. “I met her in a theatre,” says Fitoussi. “I don’t like theatre so much, but I went to see a piece and it was very boring and suddenly I looked at the au-dience – the audience’s faces were more interesting than the scene on stage. I saw her face in the crowd and I approached her. All of the actors I met by

chance like that.” There is a tenuous Dutch connection to the film in the form of a long shot of a poster of a Paul Verho-even season, playing at the Cinematheque Francais. It was the last programme before the Cinemath-eque changed venues, and its inclusion in the film was Fitoussi’s tribute to the institution. He’s since seen Verhoeven’s films and is a big fan. “I feel a close connection to him , even though our styles are different.” He’s a particular admirer of Turkish Delight: “I was very surprised that it was such a success with Dutch people. In that film – as with all Verhoeven’s movies – you have a very strong feeling of tragedy, how life is all so transient. I was impressed that tragedy could be popular. In France, there is not any sense of tragedy, the popular films make you forget reality.”

Je ne suis pas morteJean-Charles Fitoussi

Cinerama 5 Fri 30 Jan 12

Austrian director caspar Pfaundler tells wendy Mitchell about blending into the scenery for his Tiger competitor Schot-tentor

The VPRO Tiger Awards Competition might have been less interesting this year if Austrian writer/director Caspar Pfaundler had gone to film school – his second feature Schottentor breaks a lot of the established rules. “At film school, they’d tell you, ‘never do this in-ner monologue, it’s too soft.’ And they’d say, ‘never make a film about filmmaking.’ Yet I didn’t break the rules just to break them, I just didn’t care. I still knew I had to be careful,” Pfaundler says.The director, who is again based in Vienna after living briefly in Taiwan, wanted to explore the idea that people’s public interactions don’t always re-flect their private thoughts. The film explores the daydreams and inner monologues of several char-acters – including a lonely teacher, a flower seller, and a film director – passing through Vienna’s train and tram station, Schottenpassage. “I needed one main location. I knew the area around this train station because it was near the university I used to attend,” he explains. “Also, it is an area with an interesting construction, differ-ent levels and unique lighting.” Two other sources of inspiration were Sigmund Freud, who used to live in the area of the station, and Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler’s play La Ronde, which links one character to another. Schottentor is a remarkable technical achievement, considering its modest budget – just €220,000 and shooting time of just 16 days (plus two-and-a-half days of shooting in 2006 for a short version of the project). Pfaundler didn’t attempt to close off the station for the shoot, choosing instead to capture its everyday rhythms. This meant no added lighting or boom mikes for the crew. “I told everyone that we didn’t want to be

like a film crew who goes in yelling ‘action!’ and be-comes like an army taking over a place. Instead, we have to be part of the scenery; we need to become part of the atmosphere.” His DoP Peter Roehsler was also the producer of the film. It took a leap for his actors and himself to work with the characters’ innermost thoughts. “It was frightening to start listening to my own inner voic-es. Or inner voices. It’s not very comfortable,” he says. “But I wanted to tell a story of all these people somehow lost in the world, with the hope that they aren’t lost in themselves.”

SchoTTeNTorcaspar Pfaundler

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MuSIc OF cHANcE

VPRO Tiger Awards Competition

TRAIN OF THOugHT

The Dark harbour

(continued from page 1)

In Nemec’s own narration to the film, he jokes that he might make another “major film,” about the Kremlin or Chelsea Football Club’s Russian owner Roman Abramovich, but in reality he’s working on a screenplay about a “Czech James Bond,” which is also likely to star Karel Roden. Nemec also says in The Ferrari Dino Girl that he’s now “happy making my obscure artistic films that nobody sees” – but of course he is happy to have an audience at a festival like IFFR. “Rotterdam is interested in art-oriented film, exploring new film languages, so that’s why I thought this festival was a better fit than Cannes or Berlin. I am honored they wanted to show the film,” he says. “I am still happy to be making movies.”

And if the title The Ferrari Dino Girl sounds confound-ing for a film about the Prague Spring, the meaning is revealed in the film, when the lovely Jana is compared to the limited-edition make of car that all the boys wanted in that era, the Ferrari Dino. Nemec laments that he never had a Ferrari, just “the poor man’s ver-sion, the Fiat.” And now that he’s got grandchildren, he laughs, “I’ve only got a very small Toyota.”

The Ferrari DiNo GirlJan Nemec

Pathé 6 Wed 28 Jan 19:30 Cinerama 7 Fri 30 Jan 12:15 Venster 2 Sat 31 Jan 20:15

I’LL BE wATcHINg...Head of the Netherlands Film Fund, Toine Berbers: “... will see the movies we supported, of course. And I hope to see a few others, if I am not too tied up in meetings. There are a few very nice foreign movies I’ve been wanting to see for some time. I’ve got a little list. I will try to see La Vie Moderne by Raymond Depardon (Cinerama 4, Sat 31, 12.30). I’d like to see Los Bastardos by Amat Escalante (Pathé 5, Thu 29, 21.45; Cinerama 5, Sat 31, 12.00) and Parque Vía by Enrique Rivero Huerta (Cin-erama 1, Tue 27, 12.00). It’s not that I am especially interested in Spanish titles, honest! Also on my list is Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi by Ian Olds (Pathé 2, Thu 29, 16.15).”

Je ne suis pas morte

caspar Pfaundler photo: bram belloni

938TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAMwww.FILMFESTIVALROTTERDAM.cOM

Norwegian producer christian Fredrik Martin relishes the fresh input he gets from cineMart. By wendy Mitchell

As Norwegian production company Friland AS prepares its largest production yet, the €3.8m Pio-neer, producer Christian Fredrik Martin knew that attending CineMart would be key to getting the film funded. “There’s a limit to what I can bring from Scandi-navia, so I’m dependent on getting other partners,” says Martin, who founded Oslo-based Friland in 2002 with partner Asle Vatn. “I had some ideas about how to structure the fi-nance, but there’s been new input from here that gives real possibilities to think about,” he says. The Norway-set thriller is likely to be shot in the first

half of 2010, and financing of close to €600,000 is already in place from the Norwegian Film Insti-tute, Nordic Film & TV Fund, MEDIA, Filmkraft Rogaland and Sandrew Metronome. Martin himself came up with the concept for the film – a conspiracy thriller set in the formative years of Norwegian deep-sea oil drilling, 1979-1983. “I did a lot of research about this time and I was excited by what I found,” he says. Writers Hans Gunnarsson, K Valen and C Nicolaysen tackled the subject from a strong point of view of the main North Sea diver, Peder. Erik Skjoldbjarg, director of the original 1997 In-somnia and Prozac Nation (2001), is attached to di-rect. He was drawn to the subject but also the way it is explored through the main character. “Told exclusively from our main character’s point of view, the story stands out as exciting and original within its genre,” he says in a director’s statement. “He rep-resents a pioneering spirit in his quest to conquer physical boundaries under water.” “There’s real interest for the project here, we’ve had some interesting conversations,” Martin says. “We’re also going to Berlin with the Berlin-Rotter-dam Express.” Friland has previously produced Kissed By Win-ter (Vinterkyss), Tommy’s Inferno and Uro (the lat-ter selected for Cannes Un Certain Regard). And Johnsen’s Upperdog is in editing, and could be ready for a Cannes premiere. Martin is a three-time CineMart veteran, most re-cently in 2008 with Sara Johnsen’s Upperdog. After CineMart meetings, he brought on partners includ-ing Hungary’s Riva and the Hamburg Film Fund. “It proves to be a very efficient, transparent mar-ket,” he says. “You can meet people so easily.”

DIggINg DEEp

ADDINg VALuEprolific Amsterdam-based production house IDTV is enjoying an active IFFR this year. Nick cunningham reports

The company is overseeing the world premiere of Diederik vam Rooijen’s Bollywood Hero and Satur-day saw the Dutch premiere of Fien Troch’s Unspo-ken, the company’s second co-production collabo-ration with the Flemish director, following Someone Else’s Happiness (2006). Indonesian Jermal, for which IDTV (as minority Dutch co-producer) raised €50,000 from the Hu-bert Bals Fund Plus (HBF Plus), world premiered on Sunday. “HBF Plus is an extremely successful instrument for us,” IDTV managing director Frans van Gestel comments. “Even though it’s not much money, if you’re very clever and collaborate on films that are not too expensive, then you have a substantial part of the co-production budget.” The initiative, which Van Gestel helped set up with the Dutch Film Fund in his capacity as an IFFR board member, enables Dutch producers to act as minority co-producers on projects that have previously received regular Hubert Bals Fund backing. The company’s first HBF Plus collaboration was My Marlon and Brando (Hüseyin Karabey) which pre-miered at IFFR 2008 and enjoyed what Van Gestel describes as a “victory tour” through 70 interna-tional festivals, picking up several gongs en route, including the Fipresci prize in Jerusalem and the Tribeca Best New Narrative Filmmaker award. Van Gestel has secured HBF Plus funding on two further films, Uruguayan Gigante (Adrián Biniez), a co-production with Argentinean Rizoma Films and Germany’s Pandora, that will compete in the official competition at the Berlinale 2009, and Black and White Photo (Haolun Shu). The film, a co-production between IDTV and Les Petites Lu-mières (France), is currently being shot in China. At CineMart, Van Gestel is looking to get involved with one, or possibly two, “great projects”, either as a traditional co-producer or using HBF Plus fund-

ing. “The possibilities for co-production in the Netherlands are limited, but if we find two inter-esting projects, not shooting in the same year, we might be interested,” Van Gestel comments. The company will shoot three further films in the coming months, The Odd One Out by Johann Tim-mers, David Verbeek’s R U There? and Mijke de Jong’s latest offering, Joy. IDTV is also preparing a film about the life of poet Ingrid Jonker, called Smoking Ochre, to star Carice van Houten (Black Book); previous Oscar nominee Paula van der Oest (Zus & zo) is set to direct. The company is looking to raise finance for the film in Rotterdam and during the Berlinale next month. “Politically, the climate for art films is improving in the Netherlands, but the concern is not necessar-ily about financing films, it’s also about how we can reach the audience,” Van Gestel points out. “The films get smaller – that’s a money problem – but another problem is that the same number of people are going to see fewer films – the bigger, crosso-ver films – which means it is more difficult to find space in cinemas for the more innovative and dif-ficult pictures.”

Frans van Gestel photo: Bram Belloni

CineMart profile

CineMart profile

Christian Fredrik Martin photo: Ramon Mangold

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