FILM
Moving image. To be seen on TV, in a museum, in a cinema. On an iphone.
Wry-poetic Alzheimer's doc First Cousin Once Removed best of IDFA
Two opposites had emerged. Would the VPRO IDFA Award for best feature-length documentary go to a personally coloured auteur's film, or to a thoughtful account of a major issue? To Alan Berliner's remarkable portrait of Alzheimer's-affected poet Edwin Honig, or to Dror Moreh's fascinating insight into the Israeli secret service?
Wrong Time Wrong Place opens IDFA - documentary as dance with chance
In John Appel's new documentary Wrong Time Wrong Place features survivors of the shooting on the Norwegian island of Utoya and the preceding bombing, which killed 77 people.
Subtle and playful Ernest et Célestine big winner of Cinekid
It is rare for the same film to receive both jury and (children's) audience awards at the Cinekid festival. But about the subtle and sparkling French animated film Ernest et Célestine everyone agreed this time. This story based on picture books by Belgian illustrator Gabrielle Vincent, who died in 2000, won a double award, making it this year's big winner. Ernest and Célestine are a bear and a mouse who have to find that their friendship is poorly understood in the bear and mouse world.
NFF 2012 - All student awards go to the Film Academy
The Film Academy can be satisfied. The two juries that handed out the three student awards at the Netherlands Film Festival on Monday night had also looked at graduation work from other Dutch academies with a film section. But in the end, all the lucky ones were students of the Netherlands Film and Television Academy, as the Amsterdam programme is called in full. Katja Römer Schuurman in The Club of Ugly Children (photo......
NFF 2012 - Robert Oey impresses again with Negotiated
Every night at the Netherlands Film Festival there is an important premiere, and on Sunday it was Robert Oey's new documentary, about messengers and survivors. Killed shows a side of our military mission in Afghanistan that has received little coverage. 25 Dutch soldiers died there. The film is in a way a tribute to them, but...
NFF 2012: premiere of George Sluizer's unfinished Dark Blood
Perhaps expectations were simply too high at the premiere of George Sluizer's 19-year-old, and now completed Dark Blood. Because, of course, it is entirely appropriate that the Netherlands Film Festival has taken the opportunity for a fine retrospective of Sluizer, one of the Netherlands' most distinguished filmmakers with the world as its purview. Maker of the blood-curdling...
#NFF Opening film Nono sings away from dull realism
What a festive opening film it was! The Dutch Film Festival's choice of Nono, the zigzag child had of course to do with the fact that Dutch family films will be specially put in the festival spotlight this year. But even apart from that theme, it was an unmissable kick-off. Because we may like to grumble that the weather was not...
Magnesium by Sam de Jong best graduation film Film Academy (according to Dutch film press)
It is now official. Magnesium, with which Sam de Jong graduated as director from the Film Academy, was already praised in several publications earlier this year. So it did not come as a complete surprise that yesterday afternoon, during the drinks on the roof terrace of the Film Academy, the Kring van Nederlandse Filmjournalisten announced that Magnesium declared itself winner of the KNF Prize for best...
Do we still like Facebook?
As the internet becomes increasingly synonymous with big companies like Facebook for many people, the old ideal of an open and free world net is starting to fade.
The Promise main theme at 32nd Netherlands Film Festival - audience recruitment stepped up
Next year, the Netherlands Film Festival will have to face extensive budget cuts. So let's enjoy ourselves extra this year, was the recommendation with which festival director Willemien van Aalst closed the press conference presenting the programme of the 32nd Netherlands Film Festival this afternoon. Isabella Rossellini in Nono, the zigzag child Especially in these times of economic headwind, the...
Awards for experimental docu and absurdist fiction
EYE is pulling out all the stops. This year, the final exam papers of the students of the Netherlands Film and Television Academy will get an ideal presentation in the largest auditorium of this new film centre. What is also new is that yesterday, immediately following the screening for press and relations, awards were handed out for best commercial (The End, Soon), best documentary (A Twist in...
2001 is a film you should see again every 10 years. The sf epic even stands up to live orchestra
Does live accompaniment with choir and orchestra make Kubrick's 2001 a different or better film? Not necessarily, but as an homage and event, it is a wonderful gesture. Even on the hard bucket seats in the Gashouder, it is once again a breathtaking experience. Last night, at the Gashouder on Amsterdam's Westergasfabriek grounds, finally revisiting Kubrick's science fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. This...
Those who are not already become fans of Kubrick now. Exhibition and all films at EYE, kicking off on #HF12 with 2001 plus orchestra
Hear Vera Lynn sing as the atomic bombs explode in Dr Strangelove. Stanley Kubrick did wondrous things with the music in his films. Rightly so, the Holland Festival is making space for a special screening of 2001 with orchestra. Space ships to Strauss' waltzes, prelude to a Kubrick summer. Much has been written and speculated about the films of Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999),...
EYE on the IJ - a spaceship with allure
Tonight the queen may officially open the new home of the EYE Film Institute Netherlands, last night director Sandra den Hamer did it herself in advance at an opening party for relations. In doing so, she spoke of a historic moment for film culture in the Netherlands. Seen from a distance, the building, conveniently referred to as "the new film museum", is most reminiscent of a...
Wednesdays winner of Dutch competition Go Short
Last night the awards for best short films were presented at festival Go Short in Nijmegen. Winner of the Dutch competition is Woensdagen by Aaron Rookus, a small feature film that approaches the heavily charged subject of sexual abuse in the most subtle way. Wednesdays - photo: Robbie van Brussel What begins as an emotionally stunningly well-struck impression of the...
CineCrowd shows at short film festival Go Short that crowdfunding works
In the short Dutch film Ceci n'est pas un rêve, which premiered at the festival Go Short (Nijmegen, 14-18 March), the cityscape of Paris slowly transforms into a dreamscape. You could call it a surrealist documentary, in which filmmaker Amos Mulder has incorporated influences from early German film pioneer Walter Ruttmann as well as modern computer animation. With further...
Originality rewarded at Oscars 2012
You can hardly claim it was a surprise result, because for weeks - what shall I say, months - The Artist had been mentioned as a surefire Oscar favourite. Still, the crowning of this largely silent French black-and-white film that pays tribute to the end of the silent film era in Hollywood is proof that originality still counts in...
Awards for Dutch Chewboy
Towards the end of this Berlinale, it could be heard in the corridors that the Danish costume piece A Royal Affair about a nipped-in-the-nippled revolution was surely going to win the Golden Bear. The jury did not care about that, however, and designated Caesar Must Die by the Taviani brothers as the best film. Caesar Must Die (photo:...
Berlin 2012 - Dutch debut Hemel wins Critics Award
Dutch film Hemel was chosen as best film in the Forum section for young cinema by the jury of international critics at the Berlin festival. This is a fine success for director Sacha Polak who delivers her first feature-length film with this drama about a young woman who has lost her way in search of love. Hannah Hoekstra in...
Berlin 2012 - Shakespeare knew it all
Would today's revolution makers even study Shakespeare? In Cesare deve morire (Caesar Must Die), the competition entry by the Italian Taviani brothers, we witness the preparation and performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Anyone watching this with the world's noise in mind will often feel a shock of recognition. The tragedy about a coup in ancient Rome shows...
Berlin 2012: Christian Petzold scores high marks with haunting GDR drama Barbara
Can a filmmaker born and raised in West Germany strike just the right tone in a film set in the former East Germany? I hadn't given this question much thought, but the Berliner Zeitung raised it in response to Christian Petzold's Barbara, about a Berlin paediatrician who, after requesting to go to the West,...
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