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documentary

'I want to make the perpetrator relive the death of his victim.' Jens van Daele makes dance out of cruelly disturbed art project

by one of our members
14 April 201129 March 2022
4 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

Jens van Daele concludes his series of choreographies on the seven deadly sins with the performance Brides for Peace. The piece is based on the art performance Brides on Tour by Italian artists Pippa Bacca and Silvia Moro. Hitchhiking and dressed in wedding dresses, with a text 'Peace' on their chests, they travelled from Milan to Jerusalem in 2008. The journey went...

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The deeper caverns of an adult film festival. Sven Schlijper on safari during IFFR 2011

by one of our members
5 February 201130 March 2022
8 min read
ACTUAL, Literature House, SPECIALS

The International Film Festival Rotterdam celebrates its fortieth edition with a fitting XL programme. That Roman numeral XL not only indicates respectable age. It also says something about size: this fortieth also bursts with the intiguing programme, with screenings at no less than forty locations throughout the inner city of Rotterdam. Inside the festival walls is...

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IFFR 2011 - Slotted screening of high-profile Egyptian drama 678

by Leo Bankersen
3 February 201130 March 2022
2 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, FILM

With a last-minute added screening of the Egyptian drama 678, which caused quite a stir in Cairo in December, Rotterdam was still able to catch up a little on Egyptian current events. 678 dispenses with the myth that Egyptian women can protect themselves from handsome men by wearing a headscarf. In the loosely fact-based...

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IFFR 2011 - Tiger Eyes is beautiful ode to personal cinema

by Leo Bankersen
31 January 201130 March 2022
3 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, FILM

Those who did not attend the first cinema screening of Tiger Eyes yesterday would do well to tune in to Nederland 2 on Tuesday night. That is the television premiere of this Frank Scheffer-directed anniversary film with which the Rotterdam Film Festival celebrates its fortieth edition. In Tiger Eyes, seven directors who together represent the kind of cinema that Rotterdam strongly...

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Liszt's music is too important to ignore

by one of our members
30 January 201129 March 2022
4 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

Fransz Litszt, born in 1811, explored every nook and cranny of the piano in his work, trying to incorporate every conceivable technique. As this contemporary of Carl Czerny, Niccolo Paganini and Richard Wagner was born 200 years ago this year, so there is a Liszt year. The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra bit the bullet of that on Friday 28 January,...

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IFFR 2011 - Tiger from Sri Lanka kicks off, courtesy of taxpayers

by Leo Bankersen
29 January 20118 July 2016
3 min read
ACTUAL, FILM

The first film from the Tiger competition for new talent that Rotterdam festival audiences got to see on Friday was Flying Fish from Sri Lanka. Director Sanjee Pushpakumara, present at the screening, was clearly overwhelmed. He himself was seeing his film on the big screen for the first time, and in front of a sold-out audience. His acceptance speech was not only touching but...

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Diego del Morao does himself a great disservice at Flamenco Biennale with unprofessional stage presentation

by one of our members
25 January 201130 March 2022
5 min read
ACTUAL, For members only

Between 21 and 30 January 2011, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam will host the Flamenco Biennial, a music and dance fest around that mythical Spanish primal music that leaves no one untouched. A style of music, moreover, that developed in parallel with the history of the Iberian peninsula, where the culture of the Indian Roma gypsies came together with that of the...

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Un Prophète, Toy Story 3 and Twilight best films of 2010

by Leo Bankersen
28 December 20108 July 2016
2 min read
ACTUAL, FILM

According to the Dutch film press, the French prison drama Un Prophète and the Pixar animated film Toy Story 3 were the best films shown in Dutch cinemas this year. Dutch winner is Hanro Smitsman's grim teen drama Schemer, the Kring van Nederlandse Filmjournalisten announced. This result is the result of a survey of 54 film journalists who each...

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IDFA 2010 - State of the Stars double winner

by Leo Bankersen
26 November 201029 March 2022
2 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, FILM

Leonard Retel Helmrich's Stand of the Stars is a two-time winner of the Amsterdam documentary festival IDFA. At the awards ceremony at the Tuschinski theatre, it was announced that this dynamic and poetic portrait of a poor Indonesian family not only won the VPRO IDFA Award for best feature-length documentary, but was also chosen (by another jury) as the best of the...

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IDFA 2010 - Timothy Leary revived in The Terrestrials

by Leo Bankersen
24 November 20108 July 2016
3 min read
FILM

Timothy Leary is not dead. The corpse of this colourful 1960s counterculture guru may have abandoned its occupant on 31 May 1996, but Leary's ash particles are orbiting the earth, his spiritual legacy is preserved on the internet and, if the rumour is true, a tape recording of him travels to...

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IDFA 2010 - The documentary Utopia in Four Movements as a live experience

by Leo Bankersen
22 November 201030 March 2022
3 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, FILM

The latest in documentary screening has nothing to do with websites or other new media. On the contrary, the presentation of the 'live documentary' Utopia in Four Movements, which IDFA had the European premiere of, in fact harks back to the primal form of cinema, when films were shown with live music and a so-called explicateur. Those...

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IDFA 2010 - George Sluizer wants to give Palestinians dignity with Homeland

by Leo Bankersen
20 November 201030 March 2022
3 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, FILM

After the opening film Stand of the Stars, the second major premiere of a Dutch documentary at IDFA was that of Homeland. The screening at the Tuschinski Theatre, incidentally, was not just about the Palestinian cause, as it was also, of course, a celebration in honour of 78-year-old director George Sluizer (Spoorloos), arguably our most internationally oriented filmmaker....

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23rd IDFA opens with yellow ribbons and documentary State of the Stars

by Leo Bankersen
18 November 20108 July 2016
2 min read
ACTUAL, FILM

If you see someone wearing a yellow ribbon one of these days, it is in protest against the cuts to arts and culture. As might be expected, Ally Derks, director of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, in her speech at the opening of the 23rd edition of the film event, took a hard line against the impending attack on the arts....

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State of the Stars opens IDFA documentary festival

by Leo Bankersen
22 October 201030 March 2022
2 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, FILM

Leonard Retel Helmrich's Dutch documentary Stand of the Stars will open the 23rd edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) on 17 November, it was announced yesterday. The film is also in the competition for best feature-length documentary. State of the Stars is the third part of a triptych in which Retel Helmrich follows the fortunes of...

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Netherlands Film Festival - nominations for Farewell and Bukowski

by Leo Bankersen
28 September 201030 March 2022
2 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, FILM

One of the most fascinating Dutch films to hit cinemas last year was Ditteke Mensink's Farewell. A romance in an airship flying around the world, and then constructed entirely from real archive footage. This miraculous and wonderful tour de force now has a chance of winning a Golden Calf for best feature-length documentary. This and other nominations for Golden Calfs were...

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Netherlands Film Festival: documentaries that make you look with new eyes

by Leo Bankersen
27 September 20108 July 2016
3 min read
FILM

Bloody and hard to burn out of your memory are the police photographs Walter Stokman has incorporated into Scena del crimine about Naples and the mafia. What makes those images so unforgettable is not only the gruesomeness, but also the unreality that clings to them. Razor-sharp, brightly lit, as if it was all staged. As if that girl in that immaculate...

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Dutch Film Festival: the new generation awarded

by Leo Bankersen
24 September 201029 March 2022
2 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, FILM

Where were the producers? On Tomorrow's Maker's Day, the Netherlands Film Festival screened 48 graduation films from the Film Academy and other art schools. So the hall should have been full of film producers to scout all that new talent, but no, exactly today the Film Fund had organised a meeting with those Dutch producers. Not so convenient. What did those...

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'Vous êtes servis' gives household slaves a face, but subject deserved a more powerful film

by Leo Bankersen
24 September 20108 July 2016
3 min read
FILM

At first glance, domestic help is not the most exciting subject for a triptych of film, theatre and performance. That is, of course, because the maid in the old-fashioned sense is virtually extinct with us in the West. But elsewhere, there is plenty of demand for submissive girls who work their asses off seven days a week until they threaten to...

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30th Dutch Film Festival celebrates anniversary with Mirror of Holland

by Leo Bankersen
7 September 201029 March 2022
2 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, FILM

When the 30th edition of the Netherlands Film Festival kicks off on 22 September, the first Golden Calf will be awarded to Rolf Orthel. This was announced by festival director Willemien van Aalst at a press conference today.

Producer and director Orthel receives this award for his special merit for Dutch film culture. In 1975, he made a name for himself with the impressive documentary A semblance of doubt, about the prisoners and guards of Auschwitz and Westerbork. As a producer, he often committed to difficult projects by young makers. The documentary he produced Bastøy, about a Norwegian prison island, will premiere this festival.

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Uncle Boonmee at festival World Cinema Amsterdam

by Leo Bankersen
11 August 201030 March 2022
2 min read
ACTUAL, For members only, FILM

By Leo Bankersen

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, this year's surprise Golden Palm winner, will get its first Dutch screening at the new festival World Cinema Amsterdam next weekend. The Cannes jury had caused some noise with this choice even among critics. After all, was this ghost story by the Thai filmmaker with the unpronounceable name now a dull and obscure film, or rather a cinematic masterpiece?

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