Leo Bankersen has been writing about film since Chinatown and Night of the Living Dead. Reviewed as a freelance film journalist for the GPD for a long time. Is now, among other things, one of the regular contributors to De Filmkrant. Likes to break a lance for children's films, documentaries and films from non-Western countries. Other specialities: digital issues and film education.
Everything from the 2023 film year in the new edition of the Film Yearbook. Dates alongside articles with depth. Including the vision of Nafiss Nia, who sees how new filmmakers are making Dutch film culture flourish.
5 April kicks off the Kaboom Animation Festival. It shows that the animation filmmaker has a kaleidoscopic palette of possibilities.
We already knew that IDFA is more than a festival. Now there is also the Documentary Pavilion, its own place where all IDFA's activities, both for audiences and makers, can flourish throughout the year. 16 March starts the official opening week.
The tenth and final Critic's Choice programme at IFFR: anything that provokes conversation.
Dutch cinemas and film theatres sold a total of almost 32 million cinema tickets in 2023. Not bad by far. Barbie attracted the most visitors, The Tattas was the biggest Dutch draw. The Dutch film press had already chosen Aftersun by Charlotte Wells as the best film at the end of December, while Sweet Dreams by Ena Sendijarević, also a convincing Golden Calf winner, emerged as the best Dutch title. Meanwhile, in America, the strike of screenwriters and actors gave the film industry there a tough year.
It may sound a bit dramatic, but fans of Dutch youth film may feel that this is the end of an era. I just read the mail with the sad press release that writer, radio producer and film and television producer Burny Bos (1944) died on 1 December. It was not entirely unexpected. Last year (and not before...
Does something get better when it is sanded? Art as the grindstone of the mind? The age-old concept of dialectics, the clash of opposites from which something new emerges? This 17th edition of IDFA's DocLab, the programme full of digital art, interactive work and virtual worlds, is themed 'Phenomenal Friction'. Technology is mostly focused on efficiency and convenience, but DocLab invites us to...
Much graduation work from the Film Academy is inspired by personal experiences. Many students from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy film department, who also present their final work, look for it in personal freedom of expression.
On 26 April 2023, Cilia van Dijk, independent animation producer and heavily involved in the revival of Dutch animation film from the late 1970s, passed away. In 1986, she was awarded the Oscar for Børge Ring's Anna & Bella, which she produced.
The Kaboom Animation Festival 2023 opened with an audiovisual walk. With two hundred fans past animation films on walls around the city.
The original and committed Iranian drama No Bears has its Dutch premiere, while the director has just been released again. Jafar Panahi continues to film against the odds.
IFFR 2023 is not only a platform for filmmakers with their own voice, but also makes cross-connections with other arts. What else can cinema be?
The 52nd edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam kicks off on 25 January. Four questions to the artistic director on the course set.
At the New Year reception, the Dutch cinema industry announced its 2022 results. Solid recovery, but we are not quite back yet. Top Gun: Maverick is the best-attended title, Soof 3 scores highest among Dutch films.
Following the screening of her Venice Golden Lion-winning All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, committed and critical documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras had a good chat with IDFA's artistic director Orwa Nyrabia at Carré. About her discovery of the documentary world, her outrage at American politics and how she also learned to see hope.
The 35th edition of the IDFA documentary festival will kick off on 9 November. About the film selection, he remarked that it is "not only a judgement, but also a statement". In this interview, he talks about the choice of filmmaker-activist Laura Poitras as guest of honour, and much more.
Mountains and Molehills is the name of the exhibition EYE has dedicated to Fiona Tan. A video artist who often works with archive footage. From EYE's image bank came the raw material for Footsteps: a personal document and also a look back at the Netherlands as we rarely see it.
The Netherlands Film Festival Conference also addressed the theme of diversity. How do we really make Dutch film for everyone? There is no ready-made answer. But there is the incentive to keep raising it. Speak out!
Rare re-screening of Olow Seunke's highly acclaimed debut 'The Taste of Water' on the occasion of 40 years of Kring van Nederlandse Filmjournalisten. Gerard Thoolen and Dorijn Curvers are breathtaking as the cynical civil servant and the girl in the closet. As if Seunke had foreseen the problems in youth care.
Seven new, very different animated films coming to cinemas this summer showcase the richness and power of this genre.
It attracted widespread media attention in late 2020. Putin opponent Alexei Navalny survived an assassination attempt with nerve poison, revealed the suspected perpetrators and ventured back to Moscow despite everything. In this documentary, we witness it up close.
Ari Folman's (Walz With Bashir) new animated film Where is Anne Frank is the opening film of the Kaboom animation festival. Folman explains how it definitely had to be a film for young audiences, why it features an escaped girl from Africa, and why the concentration camp resembles the underworld from Greek mythology.
Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa's absurd tragedy Donbass returns to film theatres. Proceeds will benefit refugees from Ukraine.
Under the title Shochiku 100, Eye presents a magnificent programme in February that covers a century of films from one of Japan's most important studios. Here, previously unknown work, alongside titles by celebrated directors such as Masaki Kobayashi, Nagisa Oshima, Takeshi Kitano and especially Yasujiro Ozu. Four Ozu films, including Tokyo Story, go out simultaneously in movie theatres.
International Film Festival Rotterdam, online this year, screens films from all over the world. Four years ago, for the first time there was also a programme block featuring Rotterdam films: RTM. Until now, somewhat underexposed, so time for an update. Programmer Ronny Theeuwes tells something. Plus an impression of RTM 2022.
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