IFFR director Rutger Wolfson talks about his ambitions and priorities for 2010. By Edward Lawrenson

An air of purposeful frenzy greets the visitor to the office of Rutger Wolfson, general director of the In-ternational Film Festival Rotterdam. Among the usual signs of frenetic activity that inev-itably are part of the lead-up to IFFR, Wolfson has to contend with a three-man camera crew circling him during his interview with the Daily Tiger. The sound of the phones from the adjoining offices is complemented by the noise of a drill being used by workmen refitting a shop downstairs – nothing to do with the festival, but it all adds to the impression of gathering momentum.

CONFIDENCEWolfson remains calm and focused despite such distractions – only the decision by the camera crew to take some close-up shots of papers on his desk (“There could be confidential stuff there!”) momentarily diverts him. His composure reflects a confidence that has come with Wolfson’s second

full year as director of IFFR: “The newness has worn off, so it feels a lot more comfortable”, he says. “This year, we had a few more ambitions and new ideas we wanted to try out; having the experience of last year, I feel more effective.”

AuDIENCE pArtICIpAtIONForemost among these ambitions is IFFR’s Cinema Reloaded initiative. Inspired by social-networking sites, the online venture will attempt to raise fi-nance for three short films from film fans through issuing virtual coins to the value of five Euros; and then involve these ‘co-producers’ in the develop-ment and progress of their chosen project. The scheme builds on past debates around digital distribution and financing that have taken place in Rotterdam in recent years, but it also relates to IFFR’s broader and more long-standing emphasis on experimentation: “It is very much in the tradi-tion of Rotterdam, because it’s about exploring new forms of film culture. We’ve been theorizing about the digital future, but this is really something prac-tical. If the idea works, what you will see is that it’s a way for audiences to be much more involved in

the filmmaking process; for filmmakers it’s a way to get feedback from your audience. Hopefully the project will create a ready-made audience before the film is finished.”This engagement with potentially new funding schemes also grows out of IFFR’s recognition of the challenges that the cultural cinema it champions faces in finding audiences. Admissions to IFFR re-main robust – pre-sales for 2010 are, Wolfson says, “slightly ahead of target” but “the kind of films we love at IFFR have a harder and harder time reach-ing audiences outside of the festival.”

CENtrAl FOCusArthouse distribution and exhibition sectors have felt the impact of the economic downturn, and IFFR hasn’t escaped the effects either. “We lost two major sponsors and we are feeling the crisis like everyone else”, Wolfson explains. If Cinema Reloaded signals IFFR’s refusal to scale back its am-bitions, there has, inevitably, been a re-ordering of priorities elsewhere. Notably, this year sees fewer tie-in art exhibitions and installation works: “I’m a big supporter of doing these kind of exhibitions.

They’ve always been quite successful in terms of visitor numbers; some last year had around 2,500 admissions over ten days, which is quite a lot. But, at the same time, this figure is relatively small com-pared with the vast numbers coming to the other bits of the festival.”The emphasis is now on installations in the city centre, where guest attendance is most concentrat-ed. “Within the Where is Africa strand – IFFR’s fo-cus on African cinema – we have works by African filmmakers in front of the Schouwburg”, Wolfson says. “We’re also doing something with Sculpture International Rotterdam, an outdoor piece by Yo-hei Taneda, who’s a production designer for Taran-tino, among others. Although we have less, these works are situated closer to the city centre, so a higher percentage of people will see these works.”With only a few final preparations left before IFFR goes public, Wolfson allows himself a moment to think about what he’s most looking forward to: meeting the filmmakers, he says, with a particular mention for Harmony Korine, of whom he is a long-time fan. Then it’s back to his desk, the TV crew fol-lowing closely behind.

ConFIdEntIaL REpoRtphoto: Ruud JonkersIFFR director Rutger Wolfson

DAILYTIGER

39TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM #1 THURSDAY 28 JANUARY 2010

NEDERLANDSEEDITIEZ.O.Z

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a brand new vision for film in the netherlands in a brand new home: this is what is promised by eye, the outfit bringing together the main cultural film bodies in the netherlands. Geoffrey Macnab reports

The Filmmuseum, Holland Film, the Netherlands Institute for Film Education (NIF) and the Film-bank are all joining together to form eye. eye is overseen by former IFFR boss, Sandra den Hamer, in the capacity of director of the new body. eye – the lower-case e is the preferred handle – has been created as part of the Dutch Government’s ongoing drive to reform cultural policy. The idea is that in every area of the arts, there should be a single representative body with which the govern-ment can do business. Dutch Education, Culture and Science Minister Ronald Plasterk had asked for the film sector to form a representative pub-lic body akin to the Netherlands Music Center, the Netherlands Theater Institute (TIN) and the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi). At the end of 2011, eye is to set up home in a spanking new museum building in the Overhoeks area of Amsterdam, on the waterfront behind the city’s Central Station. Its other new premises will be a five-minute bike ride away in Amsterdam North. Den Hamer stresses the importance of the merger and the idea of creating a single platform, a single institute for cinema, which looks set to become an outfit with the same heft and international repu-tation as organisations such as the British Film Institute and the Danish Film Institute.

COOrDINAtION“In the film industry in the Netherlands, there were a lot of smaller and bigger institutions… there was a lack of co-operation and there was a lot of overlap,” Den Hamer suggests. “On the other hand, what was missing was coordination between all the institu-tions and their activities.” The eye director believes that Dutch film culture has been hampered in re-cent years by a lack of innovation and of stimulating public debate, describing these as “weak points in the film industry in the Netherlands.” The aim behind eye is to ensure greater co-opera-tion and coherence. “There is a lot for us to win if we work closely together and if we combine all these areas of expertise”, Den Hamer argues. Another former Rotterdam stalwart, former Cine-Mart boss Ido Abram, has been recruited to head up eye’s communication, marketing and public and industry relations. He will be working alongside Holland Film’s Claudia Landsberger, who becomes Head of International Affairs. The initial budget of eye will be around €8.5 million a year. However, once the new outfit is housed in its two new buildings and working at full throttle, the budget will be around €12 million. This includes an extra €700,000 that the government has provided for the merger and “new activities.” The idea is that some of the new money will be used for “stimulat-ing” national film culture, whether through new research initiatives or provoking debate.

DIstrIbutIONeye opens at a time when distribution of arthouse film is in the doldrums across Europe. The new or-ganisation, which has its own distribution arm, is therefore likely to play a vital part in ensuring thatthe films championed by IFFR have the chance of a cinema life in Holland. eye has already acquired ten of the titles screening at this year’s festival, in-cluding Tsai Ming-liang’s Visage, Corneliu Porum-boiu’s Police, Adjective, Jessica Hausner’s Lourdes and Dorothée van den Berghe’s My Queen Karo. “Our distribution (arm) is meant to stimulate vari-ety in the arthouses. These are the films that other-wise are not picked up,” says Den Hamer. “But it is also a way of building a collection.” eye is receiving around €40 million as its part of the seven-year Images For The Future project to digi-tize Holland’s audio-visual heritage. “This is not only to keep or protect and preserve them, but alsogives us lots of possibilities for new ways of present-ing films”, Den Hamer suggests. Together with other partners, eye is developing a “national film portal” for Dutch films and is exploring the possi-bilities of expanding digital distribution.

COOpErAtIONDen Hamer envisages that eye will work very closely with sister public body, the Nether-lands Film Fund (which has retained its auton-omy.) The Film Fund is the agency responsible for supporting film production and cinema in the Netherlands. Its reach is wide, covering feature films, documentaries, shorts, animation and experimental films. The Fund invests in devel-

opment, production, distribution and marketing. It is also responsible for promoting the national film industry – a task on which eye will make a natural partner. “When we develop new policies, we will also first check and discuss these with the Fund”, Den Hamer insists. The eye boss suggests that there are certain areas in which both bodies can help each other: for example, hatching new marketing initiatives. “There is a need to renew the way films are promoted”, she suggests. No jobs have been lost as a result of bringing to-gether the separate agencies as part of eye. The newinstitute employs 165 people. It is possible that eye may expand even further. For example, the MediaDesk (funded by Brussels) may be brought into the fold. It is unlikely, however, that the Netherlands Institute for Animation Film, which is based in

Tilburg and partially financed by the local govern-ment, will become part of eye. These are tough economic times. Public film bod-ies across Europe are feeling the squeeze. However,Den Hamer is at pains to point out that eye is not a cost-cutting venture in any way. “That is importantto say. In a way, it is a complementary merger”, she states. Why the name eye? “Of course, we have the subtitle ‘Film Institute Netherlands’ but I thought that was too dull”, Den Hamer reflects. After long brainstorming between the partners, the name ‘eye’ was chosen. It’s eye in English – after all, the Institute is international in outlook. Besides, the Dutch word for eye – oog – is a mouthful for inter-national visitors. “And eye is a beautiful word. It’s very simple. It’s about watching and seeing and film culture.”

Richard James Havis reports

Rotterdam is making its presence felt in New York. IFFR has come to an arrangement with the Brooklyn Academy Of Music – one of the city’s most prestigious arts organisations – for pub-lic screenings of the competitors for the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition. There will also be screenings for industry professionals and festi-val organisers. This Rotterdam@BAM program will take place in Brooklyn’s BAMcinématek from 3 to 9 March. “The Rotterdam festival was interested in es-tablishing a stronger presence in the US”, ex-plains BAMcinématek’s Program Director Flor-ence Almozini. “We met and discussed how we

could collaborate. We felt that by combining our forces and strengths, we could create a strong programme to reach out to a new audience that wouldn’t otherwise have access to the festival.”“We aim to make these great independent films accessible to a larger public”, continues Almozi-ni. “We also want to create a market for industry and press folks who are not able to attend Rotter-dam. Since it takes place between Sundance and Berlin, it is not always easy to fit in a visit to Rot-terdam. We felt that, by bringing the Tiger selec-tion to a great NY venue like BAM, we would be serving a purpose for the industry.”The thematic and geographical range of the VPRO Tiger Awards competitors is something that will attract New Yorkers, Almozini thinks:

“The Tigers have a strong focus on diversity and discovery. They are geographically diverse, and diverse in terms of genre and style. They are alternative, non-commercial films from uncom-promising filmmakers. We have a really great audience for them here in Brooklyn. They are open-minded, ready to discover new horizons in cinema, and happy to take a chance on films they know nothing about. Our audience is extremely supportive, enthusiastic and grateful to have access to more than just the regular Hollywood fare.”The press and industry screenings will showcase every film, says Almozini: “The P&I screenings will display the full breadth of the line-up. We’d love to get significant press coverage in main-

stream New York outlets for a festival of Rotter-dam’s stature, as the general American public is not aware of it. Also, from a distributor’s point of view, it’s very important to see how these films play stateside – it’s a different audience to Eu-rope.” Foreign-language films are a low priority for US distributors in the current economic climate. “Festivals like Rotterdam and arthouse reper-tory venues like BAM are quickly becoming the only places for the general public to have access to independent cinema on the big screen,” says Almozini. “We need to keep fighting the good fight!”

onE EyE opEns

photo: daniëlle van arksandra den Hamer

ROTTERDAM TIGERS GO BAM

police, adjective

Lourdes

Visage

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the personal and political overlap in park Chan-ok’s haunting drama paju, which opens the festival this year. the director talks to Edward Lawrenson

Park Chan-Ok’s most vivid memory of shooting Paju, the haunting drama that opens this year’s IFFR, is of getting lost on the way to the set. Filming in the South Korean city from which her second fea-

ture takes its name, she was en route to her location when a thick fog descended: “The navigation sys-tem kept saying the set was nearby, but I couldn’t see anything outside to tell which street was which. The director of photography was with me at the time, and he even suggested that we just leave the car and walk.”The incident was telling, Park continues, “not be-cause we were anxious about being late, but because it felt mysterious and a bit out of touch with real-ity.” This sense of strangeness and disorientation enriches the atmosphere of Park’s film. Revolving around the relationship between political activist Joong-Shik (Lee Sun Kyun) and his younger sister-in-law Eunmo (Seo Woo), the movie is a subtly tex-tured character study. Using flashbacks to follow her lead couple over a seven-year time span, Park’s style is intricate and elliptic, an approach – she sug-gests – that stimulates her audience’s curiosity.

tENsIONAt the heart of this is the growing tension between Joong-Shik and Eunmo, and the young woman’s suspicion that Joong-Shik was responsible for the death of her sister in a gas explosion. The couple are stalked by events from their past in other ways too: Joong-Shik is on the run from police after the young son of a former lover was injured while in his care, and Eunmo is still struggling to come to terms with her sister’s death.Talking about the couple at the centre of her film, Park comments: “I think people in general are rather mysterious. There’s always something about them that you can’t quite grasp. Paju weaves in the death of Eunmo’s sister, which basically creates something to chase after, something that’s palpa-ble. When I look back on it, I think I was inspired by some of the novels I had read by Raymond Chan-dler, Haruki Murakami or Karel Capek. Their char-acters chase after a particular question, but some-how, the results become distorted, and the whole chase becomes meaningless.”

DYNAMICAs well as being an evocative portrait of these two troubled individuals (beautifully played by Lee and Seo), the film also provides a lively and atmospher-ic picture of its eponymous setting. Fleeing from Seoul, Joong-Shik ends up in Paju, a city near the border with North Korea, and becomes involved in the attempts by a group of squatters to resist the commercial development of a downtown neigh-bourhood. Depicting the violent struggle between Joong-Shik’s band of activists and construction workers, the film reflects some of the political ten-sions to have erupted recently around the pace and scale of property development in Park’s homeland.“Korean society is quite dynamic”, she explains. “There’s always construction going on, things be-ing built, torn-down, built again. In the past, devel-opment in Paju was postponed due to the possibil-

ity of war, but ever since relations between North and South have become quite amiable, develop-ment is in progress throughout the city. Recently, there’s been a lot of press about the serious conflict over the demolition in Yongsan, a particular dis-trict in Seoul. It was a serious incident that ulti-mately led to the deaths of six people. These kinds of tragedies should hopefully stop occurring, but it doesn’t seem like there will be a solution to the cycle any time soon.”

rEAssurANCEHonoured to be opening the IFFR – “It’s amazing” she tells the Tiger – Park is in fact a Rotterdam regular. Paju is a former CineMart project: “We were able to confirm the international potential of the f ilm”, she recalls. And in 2003, Park won a Tiger for her debut Jealousy is My Middle Name. “Despite receiving the award, it still took a

while for me to get funding for my second film”, she says. “Who knows? It might not have even worked out if I hadn’t received the Tiger Award.”Above all the Tiger Award was welcomed by Park as “a sort of reassurance for me not to give up my own ideology or philosophy, if you will, when it comes to f ilm-making. It gave me the courage that I needed to continue making movies. To have your f ilm appreciated by audiences in your own country feels different from having foreign audiences appreciating your f ilm. It’s sort of like having your parents tell you you’re pretty and then hearing the same compliment from others. That’s what it felt like for me when I received the Tiger Award.”

paju – Park Chan-OkWed 27 21:00 PA 1, Fri 29 10:15 PA 4, Sat 30 14:15 GSC, Tue 02 Feb 15:45 PA1

dutCH CouRaGE

By Nick Cunningham

A fortnight on from the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, Hubert Bals Fund manager Iwana Chronis confirmed yesterday that the fund remains com-mitted to its pledge of €10,000 to Haiti’s Cine Insti-tute, originally given to support a narrative master-class. The HBF has sent notice that fund monies can now be used in whichever way the institute man-agement sees fit as they look to rebuild the school, which was destroyed in the disaster.“We were shocked to hear that the Cine Institute, the only film school on Haiti, was destroyed by the recent earthquake”, comments Chronis. “Luckily, we quickly learned that all its students and tutors had survived. The Hubert Bals Fund immediately

decided to contribute to the reconstruction of the film school, so that its students could continue their training. We find it very important to sup-port the Cine Institute in these difficult times and wish its students and tutors all the very best in the coming months.”In an email posted on January 14, the institute’s development director Leslie Norville wrote, “Our damages are extensive … [it] seems we’ve lost eve-rything at the film school – the studio and our theatre ... Students and staff are digging surviving equipment out of the rubble and will begin to shoot footage.” Some of this footage can be viewed at the Cine Institute’s Facebook page www.cineinstitut.com/news and www.facebook.com/pages/Cine-Institute/75003662386.

HBF suppoRts HaItI

park Chan-ok photo: Ruud Jonkers

Filmmakers arriving at IFFR today include Jessica Hausner, Tsai Ming-liang, Richard Max Lowenstein, Ciro Guerra, Hsu Ronin

MO BETTER BLUES

In the first of our regular columns from festival guests, sight & sound editor nick James looks forward to some Rotterdam heat

Last year in Sight & Sound, I complained that I didn’t enjoy Rotterdam because I’d lost my festival mojo (as in bluesman Muddy Waters’ I’ve Got My Mojo Working But It Just Won’t Work On You). Not the festival’s fault, you understand, nor the programme; just a problem of my own mood not meshing. Per-haps it was just SADness, what we in England call Seasonally Affected Disorder, otherwise known as lack of sunshine and vitamin D. So, do I have some anxiety about a repeat loss of mojo? I do not. Because this year Rotter-dam has Africa, a huge amount of material from that cinematically obscured continent, all the transference heat a critical person could want ought to be there. Even if I end up feeling like swinging the Tigers by the tail, even if the bright futures are really blight fu-tures, even if my friend and colleague Tony Rayns proves to be too enthusiastic about Sai Yoichi’s work – all of them big ifs – I can’t imagine Gertjan Zuilhof ’s compendious Where Is Africa season not having at least something to ward off those January blues. And in any case, I already have a different fever at work this year: the Interesting Times bug. Rotterdam is going to be a first taste of the new austerity rules in cinema. I predict polarisation and arguments: look at the way the awards season is voting with the money and the dumbness. Those are symptoms of a filmmaking community that’s scared of how things are going. Avatar won’t save all the US studios. Some of them will go down. Change is moving on melting ice and it’s time to shrug off the usual whinges and complaints and learn how to swim from the cold to the heat. Time for those who love the moving image art form to kick out of the chrysalis. As for Rot-terdam itself: yes, the festival probably is still too big, but not as big as Africa – and no, I don’t want to hear anyone say it was better in the old days. As the old bluesman said: that was then, but this is now.

paju

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Ben Walters samples the surprising wares on offer at IFFR’s groundbreaking new venture, the Break Even store

At IFFR 2009, Ken Jacobs approached the festival DVD stand to ask if they would stock his latest release. Filmmaker and longtime Rotterdam pro-grammer Edwin Carels witnessed the exchange. “He shouldn’t be asking us”, Carels remembers thinking. “We should be asking him.” And not just him. Head around the corner of De Doelen this year and you’ll find the Break Even Store, a pop-up venture Carels has established on the fault lines between commercial, artistic and social space. As well as offering a place for artists and niche distributors to present products, it will be a platform to view work and discuss ideas. “It’s a store as a space to exhibit, to project, to present, to sell and – most of all – as a meeting point”, Carels says.

ZEAlAs its name suggests, the project’s main impe-tus was less profit than curatorial zeal. “Instead of compiling programmes,” Carels thought, “I’ll compile shelves.” So he has arranged selections of DVDs and other material on such subjects as geography, futurology, animism, economy and Afrology – “broad themes,” as he calls them, “a backbone to bring stuff together.” Non-main-stream DVD labels are also invited to showcase their catalogues.Other items on sale range from limited-edition sculptures at €5,000 to a large-format publication with illustrations by the likes of Chantal Aker-man and Apitchatpong Weerasethakul for free.

Spanish artist Dora Garcia will be presenting her new collection Steal This Book and has designed T-shirts, branded ‘Last Days’, for the store’s staff, who are under instructions not to allow her book to be stolen.

DAs KApItAlFrom 5pm to 6pm, the ‘Free Trade’ slot will make the venue available to any artists with material to offer, while every day a different invitee vendor will open up a suitcase of their wares. Expect items from the likes of Chris Marker, Bruce McClure and New York retro-electronica duo LoVid, who

offer their own pop-up supermarket once a year. There will also be coffee from Tsai Ming-liang’s export enterprise and wine for tasting from one of the festival projectionists’ French vineyards.The store’s working day will be punctuated with regular exhibition slots. Opening time, at noon, brings a looped video piece showing under the tag ‘Making Ends Meet’, such as Harun Farocki’s up-date of the Lumières’ Workers Leaving the Factory or Alexander Kluge’s take on Eisenstein’s plan to film Das Kapital. ‘Talking Shop’ at 3pm will fea-ture such pieces as Vincent Meessen’s look at the intersection of Paris-Match and the Congo’s colo-

nial past and Lene Berg’s take on Picasso and Sta-lin. And ‘Foreclosure’ at 7.30pm offers the likes of a pickpocketing masterclass filmed by Sven Augustijnen, and Zoe Beloff ’s inquiry into Freud and Coney Island.Cottage-industry-style models of digital distri-bution, with their ability to connect artists and consumers without commercial middlemen, were one of several areas of economic and social change to nudge Carels towards the Break Even idea. Oth-ers included the popularity at IFFR of various fan-zines; the inability of niche specialist stores such as Le Bonheur in Brussels and Kim’s Video in New York to survive in the internet age; and the wide-spread implications of the credit crunch. (“I had these visions of empty stores in the square outside the festival”, Carels says.)

burNINg lOvEMeanwhile, IFFR 2010’s Cinema Reloaded project (see interview with Rutger Wolfson, p. 1) was underway, exploring new ways of producing and presenting films online, while complementary RE: Reloaded strands engage with the industry’s economic shifts and challenges. The store idea seemed to fit. “We want to raise the concerns of generosity versus calculation, which are intrinsic to film”, Carels says. “As an industry we’re over-producing films to an absurd degree, but it’s won-derful that this desire to share work is there.”Perhaps the most efficient way of sharing work at the Break Even Store goes under the name Burn-ing Love: a station where customers can burn DVDs filled with new content, from features to avant-garde shorts to children’s animation, made by more than 20 filmmakers. Ken Jacobs is, of course, among them.

oFF tHE sHELF

By Geoffrey Macnab

Tine Klint’s new sales outfit, LevelK, arrives in Rot-terdam – the first major festival it has attended –having already picked up international rights for Estonian Tiger contender The Temptation Of St. Tony, the second feature from much-feted Veiko Õunpuu. Klint’s company has also taken international rights to Õunpuu’s debut feature, Autumn Ball. Here at the festival, she will be offering international distribu-tors the chance to acquire both. “If someone isinterested in releasing The Temptation of St. Tony, they can bag it up with Autumn Ball or releaseAutumn Ball on the same DVD”, the LevelK boss de-clares. Klint pounced on The Temptation of St. Tony, billed as “the most stupendous and bone-chilling tragedyabout the agony and decline of one middle-level manager” after attending the Black Nights Film Festival in Talinn before Christmas and meeting the film’s producer, Katrin Kissa.“The Temptation Of St. Tony is original. It’s freaky. It

plays with your mind. Everything is not given away. It is a film you can see again and you will still wonder and think about it. Every time you see a new scene, you are blown away”, Klint declares of the film, which is already shaping up as one of the early fes-tival favourites of 2010. Alongside its screenings in Sundance and Rotterdam, it has also beenchosen as the closing film at Gothenburg. It will then surface in the market at Berlin. “New talent, noir film – and family entertainment”, Klint declares of the films she is after. Here at thefestival, she will be on the acquisitions prowl. Hav-ing spent several years at Scandinavian sales power-houses such as Nordisk and Trust, Klint is gradually becoming accustomed to running her own, much smaller boutique operation. “It’s very strange and it’s also a little lonely”, she reflects on the experience of going it alone. “I am used to having so many col-leagues around and being able to discuss everything. In this situation, you are doing everything yourself – but I think it’s a good thing to be alone and to see the market from a different point of view!”

This year, for the first time, all IFFR delegates will be able to access the videotheque library on their own laptops, using their badge numbers to log on and view titles via De Doelen’s festival wifi server, Ben Walters reports

This will be the fourth year during which vide-otheque users can access films from a server, rath-er than relying on DVD screeners. About half the festival programme has been uploaded – amount-ing to more than 700 features and shorts, with 70 to 80 additional titles for CineMart consideration. (Last year, CineMart delegates had limited wifi ac-cess to the videotheque library.)The videotheque’s Rob Duyser estimates that some 60 delegates will be able to stream content from the server at a time, with access for 40 more avail-able via the viewing stations at the videotheque site on the fourth floor of De Doelen. Video quality should be improved this year too, with the calibre

of source material maintained thanks to faster server and network speeds, and faster processors at the stations. “A film taken from a HD DVD will be played back in HD”, says Duyser. Representatives of a small number of this year’s titles, including some Tiger nominees, have de-clined permission to have films added to the server. But growing numbers of producers, agents and distributors are comfortable with virtual platforms, even making titles available to the vid-eotheque virtually, rather than on disc. “At the moment, about five per cent are sending us a link from which we can download the film,” Duyser says, “but I see a time when we’ll get everything off a network.”DVDs have long brought frustration to vid-eotheque users thanks to limited availability. Videotheque administrators, it seems, have even less affection for them. “Discs get lost, discs get scratched, there’s a total disregard for standardisa-tion”, Duyser says. “It’s purely a consumer format. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.”

VIDEOTHEqUE GOES VIRTUALTEMpTATION OF TINE

Rob duyserthe temptation of st. tony photo: Ruud Jonkers

photo: Ramon Mangold Edwin Carels in IFFR’s Break Even store

“The speculation was that America was very swampy on the East Coast. There was a pos-sibility that a Viking ship had travelled inland and maybe had gotten lost. They had then writ-ten a warning – which is what the rune-stone was – to other Vikings”, Refn recalls of how the programme-makers tried to explain just why a Viking artefact had been discovered quite so far from home.

gruEllINg The film was made in Scotland on a budget of $3.5 million. It was a gruelling production. Refn and his crew spent several weeks in a nature re-serve in the Highlands. “You couldn’t drive! You had to carry the equipment up the mountain. Each morning, you had to take your equipment to the foot of the mountain and then walk into the wilderness.” Cast and crew were eaten alive by midges. “I would say the midges were like chemi-cal warfare! If you had imported those creatures to Afghanistan, Britain would have been done a long time ago.” Valhalla Rising is very violent – a bloodcurdling tale with plenty of scenes of necks being broken and limbs being lopped off. One-Eye (played by regular Refn collaborator and former James Bond villain Mads Mikkelsen), the mute warrior hero of the film, doesn’t just kill his antagonists – he mutilates them. However, action sequences sit side by side with contemplative, introspective scenes in which the characters venture deep into misty, faraway lands. “There is physical move-ment and there is metaphysical movement”, the director explains. “They [the Vikings] travel into space through their

minds. They were living in such harsh conditions that it was difficult for them to move around.”

bEAutY AND thE bEAst By his own admission, Refn has had a colourful and uneven career. “In my first cycle of f ilmmak-ing, starting with Pusher through Fear X, I was young and nihilistic”, the Dane declares. “I was self-destructive in that art had to be a destructive medium. It was punk rock at its core.” Landing in severe financial trouble after Fear X (which left him owing $1 million after an investor pulled out and the film failed at the box office), Refn made

Pusher 2 and Pusher 3 to pay off his debts. He feels a close affinity with British prisoner Charles Bronson, the troubled anti-hero of his recent prison movie biopic Bronson. And, no, he isn’t ashamed that in 2007, he took a job as a hired hand, directing an Agatha Christie TV thriller, Marple: Nemesis. “It’s very Gothic”, he boasts of his unlikely foray into Miss Marple territory. “It’s a lesbian nun story and has probably the bloodi-est death in a Marple ever. When I had actress Amanda Burton spear herself, blood spurted out like in a Hammer movie.” Refn has plenty of intriguing new projects in the

pipeline. He is attached to a remake of Jekyll and Hyde at Universal and he hopes to make a film called The Dying Of The Light from a screenplay by Paul Schrader. If possible, he would like to work with Mikkelsen again. “It’s the face, energy and attitude he has. There’s a beauty-and-the-beast quality. There is aggressiveness and yet also ex-treme vulnerability. That’s what all great movie stars have: a mix of bestiality and vulnerability.”

Valhalla Rising – Nicolas Winding RefnFri 29 22:30 LUX, Sat 30 10:15 PA4, Sun 31 20:00 DJZ, Thu 4 11:45 CI3

When maverick danish filmmaker nicolas Winding Refn was 17 years old, he heard a radio programme about a rune-stone that had been found in delaware in the 1930s. this germinated, many years later, into the idea for his movie Valhalla Rising. Geoffrey Macnab reports

RunE to MoVE

Valhalla Rising

Stichting Dioraphte steunt kwalitatieve projecten op het gebied van kunst en cultuur met

een landelijk of internationaal bereik.

Ook het Hubert Bals Fonds van het IFFR mag rekenen op onze steun om filmmakers uit ontwikkelingslanden te steunen en hun films bereikbaar te maken voor een breed publiek

Niet straks maar nu. Omdat cultuur rijkdom is die je met elkaar deelt.

Steun ook het Hubert Bals Fonds en het IFFR. Als bezoeker, als vriend, als mecenas.

Stichting Dioraphte steunt kwalitatieve projecten op het gebied van kunst en cultuur met

een landelijk of internationaal bereik.

Ook het Hubert Bals Fonds van het IFFR mag rekenen op onze steun om filmmakers uit ontwikkelingslanden te steunen en hun films bereikbaar te maken voor een breed publiek

Niet straks maar nu. Omdat cultuur rijkdom is die je met elkaar deelt.

Steun ook het Hubert Bals Fonds en het IFFR. Als bezoeker, als vriend, als mecenas.

Dioraphtestich t ing

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