IFFR 2021: a 50th anniversary film feast for both the eyes and the ears — Film Friday
The IFFR has become one of the largest audience and industry-driven film festivals in the world, and is always at the cutting edge in terms of its output.
Bournbrook’s film columnist Matthew Bruce attended this year’s IFFR with press accreditation, and will be posting reviews of short films which featured at the festival over the coming weeks, to start our new series ‘Film Friday’.
The International Film Festival Rotterdam, like countless other cultural institutions, had to adjust its modus operandi in view of the current COVID-19 restrictions that have, by necessity, encumbered us all.
Operating exclusively online this year, it has unveiled what it terms ‘an expanded multi-part hybrid structure’ which began in February (1-7) and ends in June of this year. The latter part will, all being well, include a festival celebration which includes outdoor presentations and country-wide screenings in cinemas. Admirably, it says though the outline of the festival has changed, its commitment to supporting independent cinema remains as strong as ever.
After failing to gain a place on the IFFR’s highly competitive Film Journalism internship this year, the organisation kindly gave, as a consolation prize, if you will, press accreditation to me. In agreement with Michael, our Editor, I confirmed that I would write reviews for Bournbrook which will be accessible in both the printed magazine and online on the website, as well as Bournbrook’s YouTube channel.
At the IFFR, I reviewed a selection of short films which were entries to the festival’s Ammodo Tiger Short competition. They were all experimental in design and played with a range of cinematic forms and ideas.
Flowers Blooming In Our Throats (Eva Giolo, 2021) and Sunsets, Everyday (Basir Mahmood, 2021) were two films that dealt with the highly contemporary theme of domestic abuse, particularly that which is male-perpetrated, and directed at women. In a not dissimilar vein, The Women’s Revenge (Su Hui-Yu, 2021) and Plant (879 Pages, 33 Days) (Ruth Höflich, 2020) are two films which celebrate female emancipation. Furthermore, There Is A Ghost Of Me (Mateo Vega, 2021) and Happy Valley (Simon Lui, 2020) were films which dealt with national identity and spectres of the past.
What impressed me greatly was that even with the filmic preoccupation of always trying to do something new and innovative, these films did not hold back in paying tribute to their cinematic forebears.
Flowers Blooming In Our Throats called attention to the surrealist experimentation of Dalí and Buñuel of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the Nouvelle Vague or French New Wave experimentation of Jean-Luc Godard, and the avant-garde methods employed by Alfred Hitchcock, in the 1960s. There Is A Ghost Of Me recalled German Expressionist cinema of the 1920s, most notably F.W. Murnau’s famous vampire film, Nosferatu. Furthermore, Plant (879 Pages, 33 Days) recalled the faux documentary horrors of Eduardo Sánchez and Daniel Myrock’s 1999 seminal chiller, The Blair Witch Project.
But what of the IFFR’s 50-year past? According to their website, the opening night of the first Film International Rotterdam (subsequently International Film Festival Rotterdam) on 28th June 1972 had a mere seventeen attendees. The film festival initially showed releases that were to be distributed to the newly established circuit of art house cinemas in the Netherlands. The late Hubert Bals (died 1988) is credited for solidifying the festival’s reputation of supporting independent cinema as well as making the festival circuit a meeting place for film personalities and followers alike.
Under the directorship of numerous subsequent directors, the IFFR has become one of the largest audience and industry-driven film festivals in the world, and is always at the cutting edge in terms of its output. Hacking away at the vines that the pandemic situation has put in the path of its physical presence, IFFR’s newly fashioned virtual blade appears sharper than ever.
