Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/463339
II This Week maltatoday, Sunday, 15 February 2015 A healthy distaste No doubt, this film festival knows its special place in the circuit. Rotterdam opened the first matchmaker market for world cinema, the Cinemart, and also adopts runaway film- makers with the Hubert Bals Fund (HBF). Its pet projects are all sought for in both Venice and Cannes. As of late, celebrated names include Apichatpong 'Joe' Weerasethakul, and titles like Court by Chaitanya Tamhane, or The Tribe by Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy. True, each name is somewhat obscure, but they all found success on the sunnier side of Europe with the help of HBF. So why doesn't the IFFR have the press buzzing around for 2015? Is it just just bad timing? Or simply a reluctance to sell-out and go full-on 'corpo- rate'? In contrast to its strange bedfellow, the Berlinale, it does not have any bright lights, big cars, or an ego, with a red and barricaded carpet, to stroke. Instead, the Dutch city feels like a new media fair with sky-high buildings, projectile street lights, and screens buzzing back 'live' via Twitter before every movie. The critics blame the city and the director for having an astute dedication to art and art-cinema. With this being his last year as festival director, Rutger Wolfson still does not necessarily refer to himself as a cinephile but after Hubert Bals, no one really can, or even should. Hubert Bals founded the festival in the heyday of cinephilia, 1972. He is known for bringing home Latin American film and run- ning amuck with the so called idea of a "sus- tainable choice", in the form of a Hollywood production or otherwise. What Bals looked for was the other side of cinema, and as such, the festival followed suit. Worldly tributes for 2015 include Flowers of Taipei by Chinlin Hsieh, a host of Turkish bootleg in Remake Remix Rip-Off by Cem Kaya, and a Jing-Jang (pronounce the 'J' as in 'Jenga' the game, now say it again: Jing Jang) retrospective. All in all, it is a healthy distaste of the norm, includ- ing a film essay about every highschool movie from the 1990s, aptly titled, Beyond Clueless by Charlie Lyne. Evidently, Rutger Wolfson pushes for a cin- ema with heart as much as an intoxication for art and technology. Alongside programmers like Peter Taylor (recently made director of Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival), the IFFR has become known for its selection of shorts and experimental nights in downtown Rotterdam at Witte de With. Every night, Bruce McClure stood next to a fleet of 16mm projectors curled up and ready to ricochet through an audience. In fact, each projector was placed in the middle of a room, so you can easily flip between looking at its bright light, the translucent projection on a screen or simply let your own afterimage take over. Listed in a solo program that varies from 10 or 12, to 240 mins, McClure promised that he doesn't really know when the show will end. Anything can just break down at this rate; the film, the frame, the glass plate, but first things first, it was the audience that actually did. By the end, at least half of us skipped out, or were left somewhat mesmerised for the night. Think of it as an essential palate cleanser to set your priorities straight for a week's worth of cinema to come. Nonethe- less, his performance definitely has a place next to projection, so why not as part of a film festival as well? Yet the IFFR has always been about one thing really, finding that white diamond, and its precious Tiger. For this year, the Hivos Ti- ger Awards went to a younger breed: La obra del siglo by Carlos M. Quintela; Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) by Juan Daniel F. Molero, and "Vanishing Point" by Jakrawal Nilthamrong. All of them have a personal history with the festival, and as a 'Nisimasa' network alumni, Juan Daniel F. Molero, thanks Rotterdam for his initiation as a fan who came back as a filmmaker. Devoted to anything viral, Molero's film developed from years of obsessive blogging. It has a makeshift frame with dead pixels that only adds to the sex, drugs, and no holds barred performance by Muki Sabogal. It's definitely digital, it's got spunk (literally, the Lars Von Trier type), and nothing comes close to it in the safe haven of consensus that our democracy reigns by. As such, a 'softer' title like Britni West's portrait of her hometown in Tired Moonlight, still feels good but falls rather flat by the end. Despite that Britni received a warm welcome in Sundance, how many barebacked poets in an ephemeral long-shot of a mountain range, and then a lake, does a cinephile need? Haven't we had enough titles that blur the line between fact and fiction at the IFFR? Apparently, no we have not. The director, Benjamin Crotty, puts a camp twist on an old theme and adapts reality TV for his debut film, Fort Buchanan. The story takes place at an LGBT military station that is run by a group of army spouses, former wives, lovers, aIdan CeLeSTe visits the The 44th International Film Festival of rotterdam, and plunges into its quest for the ever-elusive cinematic 'white diamond' Turkish bootleg: Remake Remix Ripoff by Cem Kaya British offering: The Duke of Burgundy by Peter Strickland