As the IFFR launches a special strand celebrating the new work of past Tiger competitors, Geoffrey Macnab assesses the influence of the festival’s flagship competition.

What does winning a Rotterdam Tiger Award do for the career of a young filmmaker? Would Christopher Nolan (director of The Dark Knight and Inception) have reached such heady heights if Rotterdam hadn’t recognised his tiny budget debut feature Following in 1999? These are difficult questions to weigh. Howev-er, as IFFR offers a special one-off award (the Return of the Tiger Award) for previous IFFR contenders with new movies in the festival, it’s a timely moment to look at the continuing lure of Rotterdam’s Tigers.

AdAptAtionBritish director Patrick Keiller won a Tiger Award for Robinson in Space in 1997 – and then didn’t make an-other new feature for over a decade. However, Keiller (whose new feature Robinson in Ruins screens in IFFR this year) argues that this was to do with changes in British political and cultural life after the 1997 elec-tion, which brought Tony Blair to power.“I’ve since come to the conclusion that something strange happened at the point of the May ‘97 elec-tion,” Keiller recently observed. “Certain things that had previously been in the margins gravitated to the centre. And other things which had been in the margins … moved further away!” Keiller won’t be in Rotterdam for the Robinson in Ruins screen-ings. However, he remembers the festival fondly. After all, Rotterdam is a port city – and port cit-ies have always been one of his pet obsessions. The money he won for his Tiger Award enabled him to “turn Robinson in Space into a book. I adapted the

project that had won the prize into something else,” Keiller remembers. The book, in keeping with the film that inspired it, included sidebars, footnotes, digressions and playful observations on the journey made by the fictional Robinson through late 1990s England.

UniversAlBelgian director Alex Stockman was a Tiger con-tender in 2000 with I Know I’ ll See Your Face Again. He, too, has taken a decade to direct a new feature, Pulsar (screening in Return of the Tiger). The Flem-ish filmmaker first came to IFFR in the mid-1990s, when his short The Story of a Hurried Young Man was in the festival. “That was the first time one of my films had been selected for such an international festival,” he recalls. “I immediately experienced Rotterdam as an incredibly open festival with a very adventurous programme.”When I Know I’ ll See Your Face Again screened as a Tiger contender, he was delighted. “It was the first confirmation that I had made something that was possibly universal. It was the start of an interesting and very long festival career.” He adds that he was bowled over by the “incredibly good projection” that the film received. “I’d never seen my movie in such gorgeous screen conditions. I really felt that the filmmaker was the most important at the festi-val.” Thanks to Rotterdam, his film was noticed – and programmed – at festivals from Vancouver to Moscow. As for the long hiatus in his feature film career, this – Stockman says – was nothing to do with IFFR. He went on to produce Tom Barman’s Any Way the Wind Blows, directed another film that screened at IFFR and has attended CineMart. “And, apart from that, I’ve been visiting the festival as a cinephile.”

ContextTwo Tiger winners of more recent years are in no doubt at all about the boost Rotterdam gave their careers. Pia Marais won a Tiger in 2007 with The Unpolished. The IFFR jurors commended the film “for its nuanced portrayal of a young girl trying to find meaning in a society that has lost all sense of direction.” Speaking this week, German-based Marais testifies to the way her Tiger Award trans-formed her career. “For some reason, nobody had such great expectations about my film – and then it won the Tiger!”At the first screening, she was too nervous to watch her own film and remembers being dis-mayed that many of the spectators left immedi-ately the film was over. “I thought – oh, they hated it! I didn’t know that they were rushing to the next screening.”In Germany, she notes, the Tiger Awards don’t have an especially high profile, “maybe because the Rotterdam Festival is so close to the Berlina-le.” However, everywhere else, the Tiger was rec-ognized. “That helped me to make the next film … if you’re trying to do a coproduction, it really helps. People know what the Tiger Award is. Even if they haven’t seen your film, it has a meaning to them and gives them a context to your work.” Marais used her cash prize from Rotterdam for living expenses as she worked on her next project. Her most recent feature, At Ellen’s Age, like her forthcoming feature Layla Fourie, passed through CineMart. At Ellen’s Age (winner of the ARTE Cin-ema Award) was not selected by the IFFR this year. Nonetheless, she hopes to maintain her connec-tion with the festival. “You develop a relationship to a festival,” she notes. “People are there out of interest … I like that about Rotterdam very much.”

edgyThai director Anocha Suwichakornpong won a Tiger last year for Mundane History, a film praised by the IFFR jurors for appealing to both “intelligence and spirituality.” She too acknowledges the role of the IFFR in showcasing her work. “It gave me a lot of op-portunities. After Rotterdam, my film was invited to many festivals,” she observes. “Every time it went to another festival, they always introduced it as a Tiger Award winner from Rotterdam. Having won the Ti-ger was really a big deal and opened a lot of doors.” She adds that the Tiger Award helped her to get the film shown back home in Thailand. Suwichakorn-pong also won last year’s Prince Claus Fund Film Grant (worth €15,000) at CineMart, for her forth-coming project By the Time it Gets Dark. “Rotterdam has a very young vibe,” she reflects. “Audiences here are receptive to all different kinds of films. They are very open-minded. A lot of people are interested in something a little more edgy and experimental. I think that is what Rotterdam is about. It’s a place for people to come and watch all kinds of films.”

Robinson in Ruins – Patrick Keiller Mon 31 Jan 12:00 Cinerama 5Tue 01 Feb 09:45 LV 2 Sat 05 Feb 22:30 Cinerama 2 Pulsar – Alex StockmanFri 28 Jan 16:15 Pathé 6Cinerama 6 Sat 29 Jan 22:30 Pathé 6Thur 03 Feb 19:45 Doelen Jurriaanse ZaalBreakfast, Lunch, Dinner – Wang Jing, Anocha Suwichakornpong, Kaz CaiSat 29 Jan 13:30 Pathé 4Sun 30 Jan 19:15 Pathé 6Fri 04 Feb 12:45 Pathé 5

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A guest at the opening of the Out of Fashion exhibition at Rot(t)erdam gallery (in the ‘cultural supermarket’ at Meent 119-133) last night tries out the ‘Workout Computer’, an installation designed by Paris-based fashion label BLess. “It’s a dream office tool for everyday life,” BLess’ Desiree heiss tells the Daily Tiger of this novel word-processing device, which requires its users to hit punchbags to enter letters into a computer. “It’s a design piece, not an art piece,” heiss says, adding that she loves to use the machine for her own work. photo: Nadine Maas

DAILY TIGER40TH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM #2 FRIDAY 28 JANUARY 2011

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CReATIve CuRATING

heRe TO heLPeYe ANNOuNCesONLINe shOWCAse

This Sunday (30 January), the EYE Film Insti-tute Netherlands will launch a new initiative de-signed to showcase experimental and art films from across the world and make them more accessible to wide audiences. Instant Cinema is the brainchild of LA-based Dutch filmmaker and multimedia expert René Daalder, who will present his concept at the Lantaren Venster dur-ing a seminar moderated by producer Bruno Felix of leading Amsterdam-based production house Submarine. The Instant Cinema concept will feature a selec-tion of classic and contemporary avant-garde and experimental films, both Dutch and inter-national, culled from the EYE archives. The ar-chive of the LA-based Centre for Visual Music is also available to view. After the launch, cinema curators, film institutions and museums will be invited to join in the experiment, upload and manage their own classic and contemporary films and curate their own online exhibitions. “If I’d had the opportunity to see some of these films at a younger age, it might have changed my way of looking at film,” Daalder stresses when asked to explain his reasons for devising the website. In terms of new material, at first only selected filmmakers will be invited to exhibit their work, but Daalder insists that the model will prove robust enough, and flexible enough, to allow as-sessment of submissions from all artists. To gain access to the website, an invitation is required. Every participating filmmaker will receive five invitations for distribution to other filmmakers or artists, who in turn can distrib-ute their own allocation of five invitations, and so on. Further development of the website will be based on user experience within this growth phase. “We do all these things as a labour of love, and the reason is that we want to have an impact on the culture as a whole,” Daalder comments. “We want these things to function in the culture. You have to say that, in the YouTube age, it makes an awful lot of sense that there’s going to be more and more people trying their hand at more artis-tic material. The moment you understand that, you can actually use the same tools, and the same attitude, [and that content] can be elevated fairly easily to something that can be considered art.” Nick Cunningham

LOOKING OuT FORDuTCh FILM

The Netherlands Film Fund is to set aside €300,000 a year to boost the export of Dutch films. The Fund’s CEO Doreen Boonekamp will be revealing full details of the new initia-tive in Rotterdam on Friday. The aim is to help Dutch films with a produc-tion budget up to €2 million, as well as mov-ies selected for leading festivals, secure a bet-ter foothold outside of the Netherlands. The money will not only help foreign distributors with their P&A costs, but also to underwrite dubbing costs. (This should help further raise the profile of Dutch kids’ movies.)“What we have noticed over the years is that Dutch films do travel, but there is still a difficulty because for children’s films, dub-bing is needed and the costs are quite high,” Boonekamp comments. The Film Fund worked closely with Eye Inter-national in devising the new policy. In recent years, a number of Dutch art house movies have screened successfully at major interna-tional festivals, but haven’t gone on to secure foreign sales. The hope now is that foreign dis-tributors, knowing support is in place, will be more eager to acquire these movies. As the Fund becomes ever more outward-looking, it has also now increased the amount of money available for international coproduc-tion (up €300,000, from €1.5 million to €1.8 million for features). To further boost inward investment and at-tract foreign producers, the Fund is lobbying hard for the Netherlands to introduce its own soft money/tax incentive scheme. Boonekamp says the preferred model would be like the Au-diovisual Investment Certificates Programme (CIAV) offered in Luxembourg, rather than the Belgian tax shelter model, as the former doesn’t involve large numbers of ‘middle men’. “With a lot of schemes, you have a lot of financ-ing costs. These are quite low in the Luxem-bourg scheme,” Boonekamp says, add that she has “the general feeling” that the new coalition government “is open to it, and that they see the need.” The Netherlands is currently one of the few Eu-ropean countries without such a scheme of its own. This means that the post-production sec-tor in particular is at a disadvantage, and that few big international movies have been shoot-ing in the Netherlands. Geoffrey Macnab

The London Film school has just started a groundbreaking new course – its new MA in Film Curating – and the first 17 students enrolled are all here in Rotterdam. They’re staying together in a barge on Rotterdam’s Wijnkade and are buzzing round the festival, working behind the scenes.

They’ve written programme notes for Return of the Tiger movies; they’re hosting Q&As and helping out on the CineMart desk. The new course is a joint en-deavour between the Film School and the London Consortium. It is run by film journalist Nick Roddick (former editor of Screen International and regular contributor to Sight & Sound). Roddick has structured a course that combines cul-tural theory and practical, hands-on experience of “what it means to curate a film event” – hence the stu-dents’ presence at the IFFR. ‘Curating’ is a buzz-word in the arts world, but not an especially easy one to define. For Roddick, it means “finding out about and presenting in context some artefact in a particular location. The location, the artefact and the presenta-tion – those are the crucial bits.” The course is self-funding. It’s not especially cheap, costing each student £10,000 a year. However, for that outlay, the students receive not only their tuition in London but also the opportunity for field trips to

both Rotterdam and Cannes. Visiting lecturers at the school have included filmmakers, among them Alan Parker (Evita, Midnight Express), festival direc-tors (Thierry Fremaux from Cannes), tax specialists, publicists, distributors and producers. The students are also instructed in ‘Curating Theory and Practice’ by Teresa Gleadowe, a former head of the Curating Contemporary Art department at the Royal College of Art in London. Roddick is at pains to point out that the course is not vocational, nor is it a business studies course. How-ever, one key requirement for all the students is that they have to curate their own film event. The students come from very varied backgrounds. For example, American student Muffin Hix had worked as a production assistant on The Age of Stupid and has already been involved in film distribution and at film festivals. She discovered the course through Film London. “I am definitely interested in continuing to work at film festivals. I am looking at this course as a way to increase the breadth of my knowledge.” Fel-low student Lucy van de Wiel from the Netherlands studied in Amsterdam and at Berkeley. She learned about the course on the London Consortium website. What do the students think of the boat that will be their home for the next week? “It’s quaint and it’s quirky. It’s a lot of fun,” Hix suggests. “It’s an interest-ing experience, all being together in a small space.”Geoffrey Macnab

The Office will host drinks this evening (January 28) to introduce international guests to staff from CineMart, the Hubert Bals Fund, the Rotterdam Lab, as well as IFFR programmers. Highlights of the next few days include a panel entitled “Dressed for the Job: Getting your film noticed and mak-ing the most of a film festival” with Paolo Moretti (Venice FF), filmmaker Nicolás Pereda and sales agent Sandro Fiorin, (Saturday, January 29), and the potentially explosive “Film festivals: who needs them?” discussion on January 31 with UK journal-ist Nick Roddick, IFFR’s Gerwin Tamsma (IFFR), Marie Pierre Duhamel (Venice FF), Michelle Carey (Melbourne FF) and Hans Hurch (Viennale). Be-tween these events are panels on how to market your film on a tight budget (30 January) and on how best to use the talents of your sales agent (31 January).All events take place at the Sales & Industry Club.

“If you need someone to talk to about your film, the Film Office is the place to come to,” Film Office chief Jolinde den Haas said yesterday. “Whether your film is an art-house feature or an experimen-tal short, a documentary or a fashion video-clip, we offer filmmakers all the information and advice they need to have a rewarding time in Rotterdam. You can have a one-to-one meeting with one of five film-business pros who will help you to identify the right people at the IFFR and beyond. Here you can discuss where to take your film next or how to get your future projects started. You can also join us for daily chats with guests from the international film world, who will share their experiences, tips, tricks and anecdotes.” Nick Cunningham

For more events and panels, see http://www.filmfestival-rotterdam.com/professionals/film-office/

Film Office staff are on hand again this year to steer attending filmmakers towards key professionals from the international production, sales and finance sectors. Based at the sales and Industry Club on the fourth floor of De Doelen, the Film Office also represents the first point of contact for the Press & Industry screenings and the video Library.

Best foot forward: the Film Office’s Rik vermeulen, Jannie Langbroek, Mary Davies, Dana Duijn, Nikolas Montaldi, hayet Benkara, Marlijn van de Kerkhof, Thomas Crommentuyn and Jolinde den haas. photo: Nadine Maas

Nick Roddick (right) with the students of the London Film school’s new MA in Film Curating course on their converted barge houseboat. photo: Nichon Glerum

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headshots, Lawrence Tooley’s Tiger entry, began as a conversation with Loretta Pflaum, the actress who would star in this compelling, Berlin-set contemporary drama, the director tells edward Lawrenson.

“I knew Loretta from colleagues and I’d seen her in a few films before. I was writing a different script from Headshots and thought about casting her in the main role. So I said, tell me about the character you’d like to play – it’s a game I often play with actresses. And she said: ‘I’d like to play a really complicated woman with the ego of a man.’ I thought that was really in-teresting, and it took me a while to dig out what she was talking about.” The result of this initial conversation is Headshots, an absorbing character study of thirtysomething pho-tographer Marianne (played by Pflaum). Split into chapters, with a chronology that subtly loops back on itself with key events repeated, the film charts the

changes in Marianne’s relationships with her lovers, her friends and her work when she discovers she’s pregnant. “The typical female character is either a woman who is in love with a man but she just doesn’t get him, or she has some kind of problem: she’s diag-nosed with a disease, or she’s the victim and fighting back against something,” explains Tooley. “Women typically have to have a more supporting role, and be lovesick or hysterical. Our starting point was to feature a woman with her life under control, not de-pendent on men.” Tooley collaborated with Pflaum on the character of Marianne, crediting the actress as his co-writer because “if it wasn’t for her advice I’d never have written the script as it is”. He continues: “Marianne is an amalgam of real people that both I and Loretta know,” although diplomatically refuses to reveal more. The movie’s fractured, complex structure was devel-oped at this script stage, although there was scope for filming additional sequences during the produc-

tion. A scene when Marianne picks up a government consultant, played by Michael Klammer, in a bar was expanded from a much shorter moment in the script. “I’d already shot a much smaller scene with Michael; then I thought he’d be perfect to play this egotistical, sardonic dude. I wanted him to have some presence, some weight, and he got it.”As well as portraying the messy romantic and pro-fessional concerns of its thirtysomething characters – who are variously involved with the creative indus-tries – Headshots is also a portrait of contemporary Berlin. It eschews well known landmarks of the city to portray instead what Tooley, a Texan who ar-rived in the German capital some years ago, calls “a magnet for globe-trotting outsiders, young artists, people who came to Berlin after the party was over, people who are doing something interesting”. That said, the film does engage with the city’s trou-bled past, most memorably with droll humour when Marianne bumps into an acquaintance dressed in World War II attire, taking time out from his role

as an extra on a film called Hitler Was My Buddy. “The joke is obviously a reference to these very com-mercial, very sentimental Nazi films coming out of Germany,” explains Tooley. “A film like Downfall is dangerous because it’s not the way it happened, and they tell a very kitschy, sentimental version. Berlin is a great tourist town and you have to ask yourself, what are these tourists actually looking at when they are sight-seeing? They’re looking at monuments of the bloodiest century in modern history, it’s not like it’s a pretty sight. People in Berlin get that joke straight away.”

headshots – Lawrence Tooley Fri 28 18:30 PA7Sat 29 10:15 PA 6Sun 30 22:15 PA 6Tue 01 11:45 DJZ Press & IndustryThu 03 14:00 DJZ Press & IndustrySat 05 19:15 PA6

PLuM JOB

WAR WOuNDs“The main reason I wanted to be a filmmaker was to heal my soul,” sanjeewa Pushpakumara, director of Tiger contender Flying Fish, tells Ben Walters. “Without telling this story to the world, there would be no reason to live in this world for me.”

Flying Fish comprises three interwoven stories set against the backdrop of contemporary Sri Lanka. The conflict with the Tamil Tigers, or LTTE, looms large: in one tale, a 13-year-old girl is caught up in the LTTE’s demands of support from her father; in another, a middle-aged man is distressed at his daughter’s relationship with a soldier and in the third, a teenager resents his mother’s affair with a local man. Violence, humiliation and despair are shot in stately compositions, often against stunning natural beauty. “These are true stories,” says Pushpakumara, who was born in 1977 in war-stricken eastern Sri Lanka. “These are experiences from my home town, which is far away from Colombo. This film tells how we grow up as human beings in Sri Lanka, what kind of problems we have had to overcome and how our people’s dignity has been lost. I always wanted to tell this story to the world, but how could I do it without money?” Having studied filmmaking in Sri Lanka and South Korea, Pushpakumara eventually secured $25,000 in production funding and a further €25,000 com-pletion money from IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund. “With-out that, the project would still be on its way,” he says. Production was kept simple. “I shot in my home town, all the people stayed in my home, my mother made food for up to 70 people. I worked mostly with amateurs. My DoP hadn’t made a feature before, nor had the production designer and most of the cast.” Pushpakumara’s cinematic heroes include Sri Lankans Ashoka Handagama and Prasana Vith-anage, as well as Panahi, Kiarostami, Reygadas, Apichatpong and Kim Ki-Duk, about whom he has

written a book. And he describes Tarkovsky and Bergman as “the gods in my life. I don’t believe in religion but I believe in these gods”. The Sri Lankan government last year crushed the LTTE. Pushpakumara sympathised with their objec-tive, but not their tactics. “There should be a state for the Tamil people,” he says, “but I couldn’t accept the way the LTTE’s demands were made. They conscript-ed so many kids my age who lost their lives. Both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan army victimised people. My father was beaten by the army. I was beaten sev-eral times as a kid.”The war might be over but its effects remain – ef-fects some would rather not engage with, because of personal discomfort or national pride. “Most people don’t want to hear this story in Sri Lanka but, for me, people’s dignity is more important than the coun-try’s,” Pushpakumara says. “Materially, the war is over, but the ideological war is still there. The fear that was in people’s minds is still there. And people are still thinking of the dignity they lost.”

Flying Fish – Sanjeewa PushpakumaraFri 28 15:30 PA7 Sat 29 22:15 PA6Sun 30 10:30 PA4 Tue 01 17:30 DJZ Press & IndustryThu 03 16:45 DJZ Press & IndustrySat 05 16:15 PA6

Made in an improvised – almost guerilla – way, the film centres on a group of boy ‘hosts’, whose twilight existence is defined and confused by their work, shifting between personas in engineered re-lationships with wealthy women who come to find (and pay for) love in a Shanghai club. Working with producers Raymond van der Kaaij from Revolver Media Productions and Natacha Devillers at Les Petites Lumières on a budget of around €150,000, the film quickly developed from a short into a fea-ture, during an intense ten-day shoot. Verbeek spent about a year working on edit-ing the film before coming together with editor Sander Vos. “I was able to tap into unused foot-age from Shanghai Trance,” he explains, “creating a new branch of narrative in the editing. I created sidelines and voiceovers”. When you’re editing, he continues, “you’re going to get into a swamp, an emotional rollercoaster,” so working with long

time collaborator Vos was essential in finding the focus to “create a finished product, create order. He can see things, feel things” and will “keep puzzling, keep trying” until it is right. Returning to Rotterdam is a kind of homecoming for the 30-year-old director, who always hopes his films will be selected for the festival, which he likes to return to for its global focus and warm, welcom-ing feel. He comments that the spirit of the festival as a place to discover new, international filmmak-ers makes it a “great place to share and to meet”. He explains: “The adrenaline rush of Rotterdam – in that windy city – is a chance to explore what is new, and keep exploring”. Muffin Hix

Club Zeus – David VerbeekFri 28 19:30 PA4Tue 01 16:15 PA6 Sat 05 11:45 CI1

Dutch director David verbeek has a long history with the IFFR: starting with the selection of his feature Beat (IFFR 2004) while he was still a student at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy; continuing with his participation at CineMart, with the project that would become shanghai Trance (Tiger competitor 2008), and now continuing with the world premiere of his latest feature, Club Zeus, screening tonight as part of the Return of the Tiger strand.

Club Zeus

headshots

Flying Fish

GODLY Rush

The Jurriaanse Zaal on the first floor of De Doelen isn’t usually associated with bar-room brawls. This is something IFFR 2011 is determined to change though, as part of this area is transformed into the Water Tiger Inn, an ancient Chinese tavern whose patrons – that is, IFFR guests – can expect their ‘quiet drink’ to be interrupted by storytelling, singing and choreographed fights between mythical figures.

‘Why not offer an experience that is fun and im-mersive, as well as a way to learn about wuxia in cinema and in other forms?’ says Chinlin Hsieh, programmer of the Water Tiger Inn strand, part of IFFR Signals. Wuxia, or martial arts heroism, is the most enduring genre in Chinese cinema – the coun-

try’s first moving pictures were filmed Peking Op-era fight scenes – but the form long predates film. The first such tales date from the Han dynasty (sec-ond century BC) and their broad heritage includes storytelling, music, puppetry and theatre. It’s this heritage that will be reflected in the instal-lation. The Inn will offer themed food and drinks and a relaxing setting, punctuated at least once an hour by an immersive performance by one of five artists – or even all five, at each other’s throats – who will develop a treasure-hunting story over the course of the IFFR. (A different take on the tale will also be available in the form of online silent-movie-pastiche videos.) For now, though, a 10-foot-long roll of fibrous matting lies outside the bamboo-barred, black wood-framed space, alongside a stack of small tables and three six-foot pot plants. Inside, a carpenter continues work on the bespoke bar and

balcony – an essential tavern attribute akin to that found in its Western counterpart, the saloon. The Water Tiger Inn programme also includes screenings of 20 films, ranging from early Shang-hai studio titles like Red Heroine to the post-war pe-riod, when production relocated to Hong Kong and Taiwan; then from the innovative Shaw Bros pro-ductions of the 1960s and 70s to the post-millen-nium renaissance kick-started by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Also screening is Yip Man (Wilson Yip, 2008), a film whose success sparked the latest resurgence of the genre, which includes John Woo and Su Chao-pin’s Reign of Assassins (also playing) and forthcoming projects from Hou Hsiao Hsien, Tsui Hark and Wong Kar Wai. Ben Walters

Water Tiger Inn is open from 2pm until 10pm, Fri-day 28 – Friday 4 (not Monday).

DRINKING YARNs

Water Tiger Inn photo: Ruud Jonkers

REMEMbERING ROTTERDAM

As part of our commemorative coverage of the IFFR’s fortieth anniversary, producer Keith Griffiths shares his most vivid memories of the event.

Often, the most lasting memories of f ilm festivals past are f irmly rooted at the pe-rimeter fence and not necessarily in the central f ilm programme. I particularly re-member when Chris Dircon, a long-time friend of the festival and director of the Boijmans Museum at the time, jangled a heavy spool of keys to give myself and Al-exander Sokurov’s entourage a private mid-night tour of the collection. We were plan-ning a series of f ilms with him about ‘the Museum at Night’. My own project with the Brothers Quay limped off, regretfully never to be made, but Sokurov’s resulted in the mesmerizing Elegy of a Voyage. I will never forget him standing for what seemed an eternity, quietly absorbed by the very still but beautiful Dutch landscape paint-ings. Then, at the festival’s 30th anniver-sary celebrations in 2001, we presented the new fantastical fairytale and comic night-mare feature Otesanek by Czech maestro Jan Svankmajer. However, the star of the festival that year was his thrilling exhibi-tion – Anima, Animus, Animation – over three f loors at the Chabot Museum. Here, one could be lost for hours in the amazing surrealist etchings, collages and ceram-ics from both Jan Svankmajer and his now late wife Eva Svankmajerova. The exhibi-tion also offered visitors to the IFFR a fully functioning masturbation machine from his f ilm Conspirators of Pleasure – though I confess I never tested it.