After the doors finally closed yes-terday on CineMart 2009, market chief Marit van den Elshout reflected positively on this years’ scaled-down event. By Nick Cunningham

“Reducing the number of projects really worked this year,” says Van den Elshout. “It helped create an atmosphere that was still in-tense, but not so dense. Less really was more. It meant that the focus was placed firmly on the selection, which is what we were aiming for.” The event again attracted 800 leading Dutch and international producers, distributors and financiers, who assessed 36 pitches from pro-ducers representing 31 countries. While many deals are bubbling under, the first confirmed nod was from Dutch production entity IDTV towards The Snakehead, pitched by Les Petites Lumières (France). “There are lots of deals not yet confirmed but which may be locked down in Berlin or Cannes,” Van den Elshout claims. “But it was nice to see that even the smaller, more difficult art house projects received a lot of attention. They had an angle that people could grasp and seemed a lot more accessible to the bigger players.”

CorE BusiNEssThis year, the Rotterdam Lab shifted focus to-

wards innovations in multi-layered storytell-ing and DIY distribution strategies, while re-taining its core function of integrating novice producers into the international film set-up. “We had very positive reactions to these work-shops,” she points out. “Lance Weiler and Brian Chirls really opened everybody’s eyes to alter-native approaches to their business. We want-

ed to present these different elements to people who are at the start of their careers (although there were quite a few established producers in attendance as well), and to offer them new sparks of innovation for when they are looking to develop their projects.” Following the inter-est in Weiler’s Him project, Van den Elshout confirmed that she is looking to “put out a call” to other such innovative, multi-layered yet ac-cessible projects for CineMart 2010.

PArt of thE ProCEss“In general, we have a lot of meetings at IFFR to see how we can support filmmakers as they distribute their films,” she continues. “And that of course feeds directly into what we do at CineMart – how we deal with the programme of the Rotterdam Lab, but also how we select the projects, what we do with the projects and how we follow their progress. All of these things feed into each other. CineMart does not work in isolation. We don’t just support films in development but seek to find more and more ways to encourage them during production and especially after they are made. Festivals have been used historically as a big backdrop against which sales agents would promote and sell their films. We’re ensuring that we’re not just a façade, but an integral part of the whole filmmaking process.”

DAiLY tiGEr

38th iNtErNAtioNAL fiLM fEstiVAL rottErDAM #8 thursDAY 29 JANuArY 2009

NEDErLANDsEEDitiEZ.o.Z

LEss is MorE

Claire Denis at the IFFR screening of her film 35 Rhums at the Pathé cinema on Tuesday evening; after the screening, Denis was the focus of IFFR’s ‘Meet the Maestro’ event. The Daily Tiger talks to the director tomorrow.

photo: Ruud Jonkers

AND thE wiNNEr is…Byamba Sakhya’s CineMart project Birdie was last night awarded the €15,000 Prince Claus Fund Film Grant. The €10,000 ARTE France Cinéma Award went to Lance Weiler for Him. Both prizes are awarded to help the winning filmmakers develop their projects further. “We give the Prince Claus Grant to filmmakers from Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean – countries where it is difficult economically, political-ly and socially to realise cultural projects,” says the Fund’s Charlotte van Herwaarden. “We do not di-rectly support film and documentaries – that is cov-ered by the Hubert Bals Fund and IDFA’s Jan Vrijman Fund – but we support the very first phase, the initial idea that the filmmaker can start to develop before he finds other financiers to help make his film.” “CineMart is the mother of all co-production events around the world,” ARTE France general manager Michel Reilhac pointed out. “We are very proud to be a sponsor by giving an award that will contrib-ute towards the development of Him, which was one of the amazing array of projects here, and to help it reach the world market.” The winner of the 2009 Lions Film Award awarded by the Lions Club Rotterdam is Francaise by Souad El-Bouhati. The prize has a cash value of €2,000. NC

Marit van den Elshoutphoto: Ruud Jonkers

338TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAMwww.FILMFESTIVALROTTERDAM.cOM

Music plays a major role in the films of Swiss experimental documentarian Peter Liechti. Subject of a major IFFR retrospective, the filmmaker talks to Paula Ruiz

Peter Liechti is a filmmaker of sound. You might also call him a visual musician as well. The Swiss director makes films specifically about music, but a musical sensibility infuses all his work: a com-plete sensual experience, his films offer viewers an intense sensation that goes cross beyond the boundaries of documentary, fiction, and external and inner landscapes.

INTERNATIONAL REAcHIFFR pays tribute to him this year with an exten-sive retrospective of his films. Liechti, who com-peted for a VPRO Tiger Award in 1997 with his celebrated fiction film Martha’s Garden is also pre-senting his latest work, The Sound of Insects – Record of a Mummy. World premiering in Rotterdam, the film adapts Shimada Masahiko’s well known novel Miira Ni Narumade, about a man who commits suicide by starving himself to death. The film, an emotional trip towards death, flows between three elements: the words of the protagonist – who never explains the reason for his suicide – the beautiful images that evoke his last days and, last but no least, the sound – the noises of the wilderness, a river, rainwater falling, insects chirping – and the music, by musician Norbert Möslang. “My first encounter with the novel was listening to the dramatic musical adaptation Otomo Yoshihide did years ago. When I decided to film it, I was quite insecure, because it was the first time I worked with someone else’s material,” Liechti explains about how he approached the novel. In order to reach more international audiences, he had modified some passages of the original text, especially those dealing with Yukio Mishima and Harakiri Japanese suicide ritual, and this is also narrated in English. Although The Sound of Insects is an unconventional

proposal, Liechti has always thought of it as a fea-ture: “I know the film requires a big effort from the audience. They might find it difficult and challeng-ing, because of this very emotional story of a man who goes beyond the limits and declines life itself. However, I always thought of it as something to be screened in a movie theatre. I don’t think it’s a work for video galleries.”

ROck ‘N’ ROLL AVANT-gARDEFrom the start, Liechti has transformed Swiss documentary filmmaking. The retrospective pro-grammed at IFFR is an opportunity to discover his formally adventurous and experimental attitude, specially on the more music-focused films. One of Liechti’s very first works, Kick That Habit (1989) was a study of experimental musicians Andy Guhl and Norbert Mölang (more a powerful stream of images and sounds than a conventional docu-mentary portrait). He filmed more musicians in

the following years: Namibia Crossings (2004) goes through twelve artists from Zimbabwe, Switzer-land, Namibia and Russia, depicting their dreams and the reality of their countries, while Hardcore Chambermusic (2006) follows the Swiss Koch-Schütz-Studer ensemble during a straight month of shows. This thrilling musical marathon aims to convey the intensity of these shows, and it’s remark-able how the musical experience is filmed: music is not only seen as a physical condition, sweaty and rough, but also as an intellectual discipline that requires control and confidence in oneself and the rest of the band. “I was fascinated by the group aspect,” says Liechti. “Working with Koch-Schütz-Studer was great. Sometimes it was rough, but at the end it was a richer experience. It was funny, be-cause all three thought of themselves as a hardrock band, instead of an avant-garde trio. However, for me there is no difference at all, because I consider avant-garde musicians the good ones.”

AVANT-gARDE MELODy MAkER

FILM IN A cOLD cLIMATEHelen de witt, producer of The Times BFI London Film Festival, wraps up well for IFFR’s outdoor screenings

Le Cinema de la Plage in Cannes, sure – the outdoor screen on Grandchester Meadows at the Cambridge Film Festival, OK. But Rot-terdam in January? It’s gruelling enough, wrapped in hats and scarves, shuffling be-tween venues in temperatures close to zero, battling with rain, sleet and snow. Though to be fair the weather in Rotterdam this year has been reasonably mild. Rotterdam is home to the true cinephile and its inclement climate won’t halt the quest for ever more invigorating cinematic ex-periences. That’s why, this year, the part of the festival I have been anticipating most is the Urban Screens project. Rotterdam has neither beach not grassy meadow, but what it does have is a unique cityscape; at once modernist and human in scale. Perfect for film installations by such original talents as Carlos Reygadas, Guy Maddin and Nanouk Leopold. Who can resist the allure of Isabella Rossel-lini’s continual execution and resurrection upon the morbid fetishistic paraphernalia of the electric chair? A heady cross between a female modernist Christ and Metropolis’s Maria. Reygadas’ Mexican women’s football film is intriguingly entitled Serenghetti. On the NL Railway building, its darting figures on the face of a deep canyon evoke ritualised animal movement, but looked at in detail, the film conveys an emotional intensity and mysterious beauty that is highly human. Close-Up also uses its scale to undermine – or to freak-out. Initially looking like a still photograph, when the image moves, you feel looked upon by an awesome other. Like a gi-ant reversal of a Warhol screen test. All these works are about incongruity – of subject, placement and experience. London is another winter festival, and de-spite the ever-present rain, we too have found the value of outdoor screenings. Lon-don Loves was two nights of film screenings from the London archives projected against the backdrop of the iconic Trafalgar Square. To an audience of nearly 6,000, we showed the camp futuristic High Treason – a Brit-ish Metropolis, if you like – and a selection of London films by directors such as Hum-phrey Jennings and John Krish. Despite the wet and the chill, both nights were packed. Maybe true cinema people just like the dark – whether indoors or out.

gUEST cOLUMNPanelists and producers speaks to Nick cunningham ahead of the Rotterdam Lab’s closing session, a Q&A on the sub-jects raised in the DIy distribution and multi-platform story-telling workshops held earlier this week

Filmmaker and DIY advocate Brian Chirls remarks that, while everybody agreed that the distribution system was in need of a hose-down, he is encoun-tering resistance among Rotterdam attendees to aggressive wholesale change. “Outside the United States, I am seeing widespread fear of upsetting the entrenched bureaucracy or taking on any risks,” he points out. “If film commissions, festivals and other influential parties fail to take a leadership role in guiding filmmakers and distributors towards a new set of assumptions, there is a greater risk that many major components of the film industry will atrophy in the next few years”, going on to tell the session au-dience to “Extend you creativity beyond what goes into your lens, into the whole business model.” Aus-tralian filmmaker Della Churchill, whose project Melt was give the DIY treatment by Chirls, observed that “given the Australian funding models that my films are utilizing, we are unable to DIY as we need international sales and domestic distribution at-tachments to shake the soft money tree.”

ENgAgINg AUDIENcES“My strategy is more designed towards engaging au-diences prior to the film’s release, raising awareness of screenings and getting consumers to drive more traffic to the site via web-play, blogs, music down-loads and twitter engagement,” she continued. “As producers, I think we are best placed to help distri-bution by creating relevant audience engagement strategies and collecting content for marketing in all stages of the physical production.”Silvia Wong, producer of the Rotterdam Lab

project Forever, was impressed by the suggestions that coming out of the workshop. “Our project has a wedding and stalking theme,” she explained. “The ideas for DIY distribution thrown up by the participating producers and Brian were amazing. I will have lots of brilliant ideas to work on after returning to Singapore.”

EVOLUTIONLance Weiler, who gave the multi-platform work-shops and opened yesterday’s panel debate, was complimentary about the high level of response to his ideas in Rotterdam. “I came with a CineMart project (Him) that is different in that it is a little bit more forward-looking,” he explained. “The re-sponse I got from the industry has been very posi-tive. What’s interesting about that is you see an evo-lution of CineMart. You can see it in identifying new market trends or the new ways people collaborate

with Europe. What we’ve seen in the US is a very vibrant DIY culture where there has been a democ-ratization of the tools and a quick commoditisation of distribution. And in-between, there are people trying to find what these new models are and how they work. I think that collaboration and the ability for people to share is key to everything, because the more people share those types of experiences, the more we can move the form forward.” “For most of our Rotterdam Lab participants, this is a brand new experience,” CineMart’s Jacobine van der Vloed explains of the decision to tackle these topics this year. “Of course, they have heard about these issues, but now they have key-note speakers like Brian and Lance from the US com-ing here and explaining what they did and how they did it. It’s very important for our upcoming producers and directors to work out how to do these things themselves.”

SHAkINg THE MONEy TREEBrian Chirls and Della Churchill photo: Bram Belloni

Peter Liechti photo: Ruud Jonkers

Helen de Witt photo: Bram Belloni

538TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAMwww.FILMFESTIVALROTTERDAM.cOM

Philippe Bober’s Coproduction Office has brought onboard an unusual new partner for Ruben Ostlund’s CineMart project, Play – namely itself. Coproduction Office was al-ready confirmed as the sales agent. Here in Rotterdam, Bober has now confirmed that he will act as co-producer for France, Ger-many and Denmark. The €1,550,000-feature marks Ostlund’s fol-low-up to festival hit Involuntary. The film is being produced by Swedish outfit, Platform Produktion, founded in 2002 by Ostlund and Erik Hemmendorff. Billed as “a tragic and humorous behavioural study,” Play is about a gang of young robbers who make their victims race for their belongings. This isn’t the first time Coproduction Office and Platform have collaborated. They are also coproduction partners on Ilya Khrzh-anovsky’s Dau (which passed through Cine-Mart in 2006). Here at CineMart, Copro-duction Office has also been representing Bertrand Mandico’s The Man Who Hides the Forest – the first French title it has represent-ed. Mandico is renowned for his macabre and often outrageous animation. This is his first stab at a feature-length film. Bober was striking an upbeat note about this year’s CineMart. “It is always the same. It depends what you have,” Bober reflected on the health of the art house sector as re-flected in Rotterdam. “If you have one film and it is good, there is no financial crisis. If you have twenty films that are bad, there is a financial crisis.” Coproduction Office has three films likely to be ready for Cannes: Lourdes by Jessica Hausner, A Town Called Panic by Stephane Aubier and Vincent Patar and Summer 1953 by Shirin Neshat. The company has also been doing brisk trade in recent months on Ostlund’s 2008 feature Involuntary (screen-ing in IFFR’s Bright Future). Deals have been confirmed with (among others) the UK (At-lantic), the US (Sundance Channel), France (KMBO) and Belgium (Lumière). GM cELADOR pIckS pIcTS pIc

DOkU.ARTS FEST IN FILMMUSEUM

Berlin’s European Film Market is the next stop for many IFFR titles. By Geoffrey Macnab Dutch box-office hit Winter in Wartime (Oorlogs-winter), a late addition to IFFR’s Dutch Treats, is spearheading a mini Dutch invasion of Berlin’s European Film Market next week. London-based High Point Films, which has just taken on interna-tional sales, is planning two market screenings of the film. High Point is looking to capitalize on the buzz the film has generated in the domestic mar-ket, where it racked up close to 700,000 admissions since its release in November. The film, about a teenager who helps a British pilot hide during the last winter of the Second World War, is written and directed by Martin Koolhoven and produced by Isabella Films (Els Vandervorst) and Fu Works (San Fu Maltha), in association with the Netherlands Film Fund, In-spire Pictures, CoBo Fund, VTM, VAF and Eurim-ages in co-production with Prime Time (Antonino Lombardo) and Broadcast Company MAX. The

screenplay was written by Mieke de Jong, Paul Jan Nelissen and Martin Koolhoven. In Berlin’s EFM, another notable Dutch box-office success, Bride Flight, will also be making its market debut. Beta Cinema is handling world sales on the project, about the journey of Dutch immigrants to New Zealand in 1953 – including young women travelling to marry – as part of a KLM-organised air race. A handful of other Dutch titles will also screen in Berlin, among them Esther Rots’ Forum entry Can Go Through Skin (Kan door huid heen), sold by Films Boutique; Mijke De Jong’s Katia’s Sister (Het zusje van Katia), sold by Media Luna; Eugenie Jansen’s Calimucho; Sonya Wyss’s Winter Silence and Radu Jude’s The Happiest Girl in the World. Several IFFR titles are also travelling on to Ber-lin’s EFM for market premieres: among them Nick Moran’s Telstar (handled by Fortissimo); Simon Ellis’ Dogging: A Love Story and Alexis Dos San-tos’ Unmade Beds (both handled by Protagonist) and Alexei Balabanaov’s Morphia (handled by Intercinema).

wINTER IN BERLINOFFIcE TO cO-pRODUcE pLAy

Celador, the production outfit behind runaway international hit Slumdog Millionaire (screening in IFFR’s Spectrum), is swapping present-day Mumbai for ancient Rome. The company is part-nering with Pathé on Centurion, the new project from British horror meister Neil Marshall. Ready to don the togas and sandals are three prominent actors from very different back-grounds. Leading the cast is Michael Fass-bender (who earned plaudits for his searing performance as Bobby Sands in Hunger and is shortly to be seen in Quentin Tarantino’s In-glorious Basterds). Also appearing is Dominic West (the lead in HBO’s The Wire). The third name just announced is Olga Kurylenko (last seen in Bond movie The Quantum of Solace). Centurion, which begins shooting next month in Scotland, was scripted by Marshall. It is set

in AD 117. The Roman Empire stretches from Egypt to Spain, and East as far as the Black Sea. But in northern Britain, the relentless onslaught of conquest has ground to a halt in face of the guerilla tactics of an elusive enemy: the savage and terrifying Picts. Quintus Dias, sole survivor of a Pictish raid on a Roman frontier fort, marches north with General Virilus’ legendary Ninth Le-gion, under orders to wipe the Picts from the face of the earth and destroy their leader, Gorlacon. Centurion is being produced by Christian Colson (Slumdog Millionaire). International sales are han-dled by Pathé. GM

Slumdog millionairedanny Boyle

Cinerama 6 Fri 30 Jan 12:00

Gavin Smith, editor of Film Comment, looks forward to Jerzy Skolimowski’s Brit-ish-set horror The Shout (1978). “The Shout is possibly Skolimowski’s best film. I’ve wanted to see this film on the big screen for 30 years now, and it’s being shown in a beautiful pristine print. Set in Devon, the film is more British than a British filmmak-er would have made it; it’s full of completely unexpected, throwaway details that give it a lot of texture. It’s also one of few films I can think of that offers a decent depiction of a cricket match.”

The ShouTJerzy Skolimowski

Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal Thu 29 Jan 22:30

I’LL BE wATcHING…

Winter in Wartime

Slumdog millionaire

andreas lewin photo: daniëlle van ark

Andreas Lewin, director of the Amster-dam-based DOkU.ARTS film festival, is in Rotterdam to bang the drum for the event’s 4th edition in June. Nick cun-ningham reports

Originally based in Berlin, the festival reacted fa-vourably in 2008 to Sandra den Hamer’s invitation to re-locate to the Dutch Filmmuseum. With its focus trained on documentaries about artists and art, this year’s central architecture programme will include Tomas Koolhaas’ Outside Looking In, a film-in-progress about his father, the visionary Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. The film is co-directed with Rene Daalder. Other features at the festival include a focus on Agnès Varda, centred around her 2008 autobiographical doc Les Plages d’ Agnès, and including a number of her films about art. “DOKU.ARTS is unique in Europe,” claims Lewin. “It specifically concentrates on films that are either ignored or given limited attention at the major inter-national documentary film festivals, and on cultural productions that are gradually disappearing from public broadcasting and foreign networks.” The festival receives a financial boost this year, with additional funds sourced from EUNIC, a partnership of national institutions for culture that includes the likes of the British Council and the Goethe Institut. Other monies are received from the Filmmuseum and the Dutch Cultural Broadcasting Fund.

LOOkING FOR NEw MEDIA OFFSHOOTS

By Nicole Santé

Joe Odagiri’s surrealist Japanese road movie Look-ing for Cherry Blossoms should be brought out in Japan before the summer flowers bloom; at least, that is production company and distributor Style-jam’s intention. The company has already released several films featuring Odagiri, a popular actor in Japan. According to Stylejam’s vice-president Yuko Shiomaki, the film offers an excellent opportunity to expand their product into new media. “Oragiri is extremely popular in Japan, but mainly on tele-vision and in more conventional films. It would be a shame to release this film, which is original and edgy, in the regular cinemas. Looking for Cherry Blossoms is highly suitable for other media, such as the computer, mobile telephone, or as a vodcast on the iPod. This is what young people in Japan are interested in now.”

The Shout

738TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAMwww.FILMFESTIVALROTTERDAM.cOM

When he was seventeen, Ivo M. Ferreira had what he calls “a stupid teenage idea” to leave his comfort-able home in Portugal to go around the world doing manual labour “so I would think about and experi-ence life.” He recalls: “So I came to Rotterdam for a month to work on a glasshouse,” he says. “But I was working so hard I couldn’t think about anything, I was too tired. I was getting up at 4.45 every morn-ing to work, so intellectually it was a poor experi-ence.” He left after a month to continue his trip to China. This visit to Rotterdam, with the world premiere of April Showers, has proven a bit more stimulating. His debut film is about a young theatre director, Pedro, who revisits the 1974 Portuguese Carnation Revolution to try to understand his father’s disap-pearance decades ago. “I realised my generation had no role in politics, so that was the first conception of this film,” Ferreira says. “But I’m not only inspired by political ideas, sometimes it’s a wind or a landscape that can in-spire me. It’s a way for me to reflect about my own country.” Looking at the events of 1974 through a present-day lens was very important to him. “I definitely wanted to speak about the past in the present tense; I’m not into historical films,” he says. “I’m always about the present tense in my life and my work.” The film looks even bigger than its €1.2m budget, thanks in part to shooting on 35mm, careful edit-ing and some stunning shots of Pedro and his fam-ily’s road trip through Portugal and Spain as they search for clues to the past. And the titular rain – created artificially for the film when natural forces didn’t fit the shooting schedule – adds drama: “There is some sensuality in the rain,” the director says. “I’m not into the symbolism that rain stands

for tears, but sometimes you do need a very good rain to wash things away.” In perhaps a nod to his own teenage trip around the world, Ferreira’s next film will be a documentary Go With Wind, about a Chinese person emigrating to Europe. And for his next fiction project, he says, “Instead of working on the present and considering the past, I think next I will work the same way and look at the present with an idea of the future.”

April ShowerSivo M. Ferreira

Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal Thu 29 Jan 16:15 *Cinerama 1 Fri 30 Jan 12:30 Cinerama 5 Sat 31 Jan 14:30

* Press and Industry screening

THE wIND AND THE RAIN

ART OF NOISE Wang Liren talks to Phil Dy about Tattoo, his quietly assured feature about life in small-town China

Ivo M. Ferriera recalls the turbulent events of his native Portugal’s re-cent past in his debut feature April Showers. By Wendy Mitchell

VPRO Tiger Awards Competition

Wang Liren speaks in very reserved tones, a qual-ity that carries over in his filmmaking. His second feature, Tattoo (Ci qing), moves with a studied grace that arrives like the slightest whisper, intricate to the point of fragility. But his film speaks louder than his soft tones would suggest, presenting a picture of China that is too potent to ignore. Like many Chinese films, an atmosphere of poli-tics permeates Tattoo, which world premieres in IFFR’s Bright Future section. The film follows the lives of a group of petty criminals in a small town in China, struggling to find some meaning in an inherently corrupt world. But Wang doesn’t let the social issues steal the spotlight from the emotions of his characters. “What I wanted to express has more to do with the inner struggles of the main characters,” says Wang. “I think this relates to the inner struggles we all go through.” But the external struggles that the film itself en-countered were hard to ignore. There were budget shortfalls, and the film had to switch locations in mid-production after a town’s local government proved uncooperative. That the film was com-pleted at all could probably be considered a minor

miracle, but Wang goes further than that. The film employs a series of long, intricate takes that make use of every single inch of the film’s varied locations. Wang himself was in two minds while shooting Tattoo. “It is difficult to narrate a story in this way,” he says. But Wang did push through with it, and the effect is tremendous. It’s easy enough to marvel at the sheer logistics involved in the crea-tion of such shots, but the real draw here is how Wang uses the formal device to provoke a sense of alienation in the picture; a sense that all the depravity and amorality in the film is something that cannot be accepted. The tragedy is that the story is all too real. Through Tattoo, Wang is relating the story of an old class-mate of his who ran through the same ordeals in the changing face of China. Wang is ready to tell those stories, softly, perhaps, but with an honesty you simply can’t turn away from.

TaTToo / CI QINGWang Liren

Cinerama 7 Fri 30 Jan 17:15

SPEAK SOFTLY…

Alicia Scherson photo: Felix Kalkman

Tattoo

April Showers

chilean director Alicia Scherson made an excursion into the countryside for her second feature Turistas. By camila Moraes Latin American film people already refer to IFFR as a big Latin family. Some of them have been participating with their films in different sec-tions of the festival, like the Chilean director Alicia Scherson, who first came to Rotterdam in 2003 with one of her shorts, Crying Under Water, and a project for her first feature Play, which got support from the Hubert Bals Fund. This year, she is back in town with Turistas, competing in the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition. The film revolves around the time Carla – a thir-ty-something woman from Santiago – spends at a remote nature reserve after her husband drives off following an argument. Carla’s change of scene echoes Scherson’s: from Santiago herself, she de-cided to leave her home town to go shoot in the woods. “My previous film is about the city, so this time I wanted to shoot nature. But I felt I had to do it from an urban point of view”, she said. “I dealt with this thing that happens to tourists, who are used to experiencing nature from a distance. In Turistas, the resort isn’t a purely wild and natu-ral environment: there are tracks and signs and so on for the visitors.” Actually, loud waterfalls and birds are present in the most interesting mo-ments of the film, showing noises have as much to do with nature as with cities. “We think that go-

ing on vacation means running from noise. I first thought about El ruido (The Noise) as a title for the film, but then I changed my mind,” she says. To Scherson, a screenplay is where filmmaking starts. “I really enjoy the writing process, as well as editing; that’s why I pretty much stick to my screenplays when I shoot.” Although shooting is a more complicated process for her (“For me, shooting is a time of practical solutions and, of course, many problems that you have to solve quickly”), she thinks making her second feature was much easier than her experience of f irst con-tact with the industry. “I felt much more comfort-able. I actually enjoyed it, and I think that shows in the result. I think Turistas is a more precise and tidier movie”. This enthusiasm seems to indicate Scherson is not going to stop any time soon. “I have many projects right now. My next film, called El futuro (The Future), is an adaptation of a novel by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, called Una Novel-ita Lumpen. This has been part of the CineMart selection twice, and I’ll finally start shooting it at the end of this year.” So we’ll hopefully be seeing a lot more of Scherson’s work in Rotterdam.

TuriSTASAlicia Scherson

Pathé 5 Thu 29 Jan 19:15 Pathé 5 Fri 30 Jan 10:30 Pathé 1 Sat 31 Jan 18:30

938 TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAMWWW.FILMFESTIVALROTTERDAM.COM

Geoffrey Macnab profi les Czech produc-ers Negativ, attending CineMart with an ambitious animation

Adventurous Czech production outfi t Negativ is embarking on its most unusual project yet. Ventur-ing into feature length animation, the Prague-based production company is planning a fi lm version of cult graphic novel Alois Nebel, by Jaroslaw Rudis and Jaromir 99. Alois Nebel will be directed by To-mas Lunak. The €2.5m project (one of the buzz projects in Cin-eMart this week) combines live action and anima-tion. It’s about a lonely worker at a small railway sta-tion on the Czech-Polish border, who hallucinates and sees trains from the past 100 years pass through the station. These trains evoke memories of the Nazi occupation and the Jewish transports. Unable to get rid of his nightmares, the worker ends up in a sana-torium. The graphic novel, a huge success in the Czech Re-public, was drawn in a sharp, black and white style partly inspired by American comics of the 1950s. The fi lmmakers describe the project as “a fi lm about wandering about, fi nding one’s way and repeatedly getting lost in the fog of history, about looking for peace and love no matter how late in one’s life one

may be.” The name ‘Nebel’ is a German word mean-ing fog. If spelled backwards, it reads as ‘Leben’ or ‘Life’. “It is a life hidden in a fog of feelings and mem-ories, which is exactly what makes up the trilogy of graphic novels the fi lm is based upon,” the director has stated. The fi lm is set in the Sudetenland, the part of Czechoslovakia annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938. After the war, the entire German popula-tion of the region was expelled by government de-cree – still a source of trauma today. Alois Nebel, which will be made using rotoscoping techniques, is being put together as a Czech/Ger-man/Slovak co-production. Distributors have been clamouring round the project in Rotterdam this week. “I’ve been surprised by the enthusiasm shown for the project,” Negativ’s Pavel Strnad commented. “It’s going fantastic.” The producers are currently waiting for a response from Eurimages and from German and Slovak funds. A large proportion of the budget for the fi lm – due to begin shooting in the spring – is already in place. Negativ’s partners on the project are German company Pallas Film and animation and design house Tobogang. Negativ has two other fi lms in post-production, both due to be released later this year: Marek Na-jbrt’s Protektor, about a collaborator in Nazi-occu-pied Czechoslovakia, and Losers, by fi rst-time direc-tor Jitka Ruudolfova. Meanwhile, showing its eclectic tastes, Negativ has some documentaries in the works, among them Pe-ter Kerekes’ Cooking History and Vit Janecek’s Ivetca and the Mountain. Negativ is also preparing a chil-dren’s fi lm, Blue Tiger, which will combine live ac-tion and animation. Screening here in IFFR’s Spectrum is Bohdan Slá-ma’s A Country Teacher. Negativ presented the fi lm in CineMart in 2007. International sales are han-dled by Wild Bunch.

FOG OF HISTORY

LOOKING FOR ROBEY AND CLARKProducers of Unmade Beds and Better Things (both IFFR titles), Rachel Robey and Alastair Clark tell Wendy Mitchell about their busy CineMart

Rachel Robey and Alastair Clark of UK production company Wellington Films have been coming to Rotterdam since 2004, yet this year is even more notable than usual as they worked on two fi lms screening in the IFFR programme: Duane Hop-kins’s Better Things and Alexis Dos Santos’s Unmade Beds. “We’ve had a long history with the festival and with CineMart, but it’s the fi rst time we’ve had a fi lm screening so it’s very special,” Robey says. Robey is one of the lead producers, with Samm Hail-lay, of Cannes Critics’ Week selection Better Things. “I met up with the Better Things guys at a cocktail here in 2004 when I was in the Lab and they were in CineMart,” she says. Robey and Clark both served as co-producers on Unmade Beds. The fi lm will now go from Rotterdam to open the Berlinale’s Generation section. “It’s just starting its festival run and people are responding really well, hopefully it will fi nd a young audience,” Clark says. Clark was also in the Lab (in 2006) and they’ve both attended CineMart in the years since. Clark says that IFFR “is very accessible. There aren’t the bar-riers you can have at other festivals and markets.” Robey adds: “Some of the best relationships I have in the business I’ve made here.” This year, they’ve been meeting with select Cine-Mart projects and do see some potential to get in-volved. “There are some very interesting projects at CineMart that we’ll pursue when we’re back in the UK,” Robey says. Clark adds that being a UK-based company with an interesting, internation-ally known history of projects helps to open doors. “It helps that the fi lms we’ve made have a Euro-pean bent,” he says. (They also produced London to

Brighton and Robey has worked as production coor-dinator on fi lms such as Control and Irina Palm.)Nottingham-based Wellington is currently in the editing phase on its next feature, Justin Molot-nikov’s Crying With Laughter, a revenge thriller set in Edinburgh. That fi lm is being made with Claire Mundell of Glasgow-based Synchronicity Films and backing from BBC Scotland and UK regional agencies EM Media and Scottish Screen. “We hope to deliver the fi lm in spring for summer festivals,” Robey says of the €538,000 project. The fi lm was developed by Molotnikov and lead actors Stephen McCole and Malcolm Shields and during a month-long workshop. They are also producing a feature documentary on Ghana-born London-based fashion designer Ozwald Boateng. The UK Film Council has given the project development funding so far. Director Varon Bonicos has been fi lming Boateng for a decade. “It’s not a fashion doc, it’s ten years with a man people can relate to; with his relation-ship diffi culties and his career,” Clark reveals. They are also keen to fi nd and develop new talent by continuing to produce shorts. The next one will be fi lm noir A Nice Touch, to star Dougray Scott as a 1950s Hollywood actor. Richard Jones will direct the short and also has a feature in development with Wellington.

Alastair Clark and Rachel Robey photo: Ruud Jonkers

CineMart profi le

CineMart profi le

A Country Teacher

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