I spent the last seven days at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. I’m writing this from a Vapiano next to the hotel where I stayed. Coincidentally I spotted Mark Cousins in this same Vapiano (it’s kind of reassuring to know that even Mark Cousins goes to Vapiano) sitting with a glass of wine looking like he was enjoying the time old art of people-watching, shortly before he was about to literally take an axe to his own creation following its penultimate screening. Here’s the script for his performance:
I could have said hi to Mark at Vapiano, but I had already had a very enjoyable encounter with him the previous evening, and frankly I’m exhausted from my stay here, so I’m hiding in a remote corner of the restaurant with my ratatouille penne and my laptop. In the past week at the festival I watched 14 features and 28 short and mid-length films. I’m not sure how to feel about this activity, because all this time spent watching films is time I could have spent working on my own projects. So it begs the question of why, given my own free choice, I spent so much time watching films.
The short answer is, this is what I’ve always done in each of the six years I’ve been to Rotterdam. It’s why one goes to film festivals in the first place. It’s a special opportunity to see films one may not get to see otherwise, by a host of remarkable filmmakers and artists of our times. And looking at this list of films I’ve seen, there are quite a number of remarkable creators listed. So why do I feel so empty at this moment? I guess because I now realize that I was giving a lot of time, attention and energy to these films, treating them as the extensions of friends and people I respect and admire, and seeking a connection through them with this work. And for the most part I did get stimulation and interesting connections from much of these works.
But there still remains this wish to be genuinely inspired and energized by a work, in such a way that it truly connects with oneself and one’s own work. One can’t expect that to happen too often, and its rareness is what makes it special. Still the search for such experiences can be exhausting. Of the 42 titles I watched (all listed below), there are perhaps a dozen or so that really struck me as extraordinary on a personally affecting level (these are marked with a * in the list at the end of this entry). 12 out of 42 is actually above the 80/20 principle, so one can say I came out ahead.
On the other hand, it’s quite possible that I may be going about this wrong simply because I’ve seen so much, that it lessens the potential for me to really engage with each film. I had a conversation with Thomas Elsaesser on this very topic. An absolute highlight of this year’s IFFR was finally hearing Elsaesser live, he’s such a compelling presenter. His talk on the Cinema of Abjection (in advance of a forthcoming book on the topic) was riveting and provocative, and if time allows I’ll share notes from the talk later.
For now I’ll report that I was fortunate enough to share beers with him afterwards and talk at length, and I’ve rarely ever met anyone so attentive to the ethics of participating in moving images. I learned that he never walks out of a movie because to commit to a film to its end is about upholding a social contract, not just with the creative work but with the meaning of human creation itself. This puts more emphasis on one’s choice of whether to see a film and give oneself to it as a human (instead of taking from it like a consumer). He even once struggled with the ethics of using a remote control to switch off a program if he didn’t like it instead of staying engaged with it (imagine applying this ethics to today’s social media).
I’ve rarely felt so provoked to think about the underlying social implications of the everyday behaviors I take for granted. And I think this has everything to do with what it may take to carve out a more substantive human experience amidst the mindless minefields of contemporary culture.
With that, here’s the list of films I watched at IFFR this year. I’ll spend the next few days thinking about how I’ll go about things differently with Berlinale a week away, and what kind of relationship I want to have with the act of viewing moving images.
Friday
Answer Print, Monica Saviron, 5′
A Quiet Dream, Zhang Lu, 98′
025 Sunset Red, Laida Lertxundi, 14′
Children of Lir, Katherin McInnis, 6′
Commodity City, Jessica Kingdon, 11′
Delete Beach, Phil Collins, 7′
Fish Story, Charlie Lyne, 13′
Meridian Plain, Laura Kraining, 18′
Jackie, Pablo Larrain, 91′
Sergei: Sir Gay, Mark Rappaport, 36′
See a Dog, Hear a Dog, Jesse Maclean, 18′
* Three, Johnnie To, 88′
Lunar Girl, Gao Yuan, 15′
Saturday
* Yourself and Yours, Hong Sang-soo, 86′
Welcome to David Wojnarowicz Week, Steve Reinke, 14′
* Voyage to Terengganu, Amir Muhammad, Badrul Hisham Ismail, 62′
* What Happened To Her, Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, 15′
Conseil d’Etat, Fanny Zaman, 6′
Ghost Children, Joao Veira Torres, 16′
Porto, Gabe Klinger, 71′
Sunday
Knife in the Clear Water, Wang Xuebo, 93′
What Happens to the Mountain, Christin Turner, 12′
The Donkey, Chinlin Hsieh, 21′
Information Skies, Metahaven, 27′
Joanne, Simon Fujiwara, 12′
As Without So Within, Manuel de Laborde, 25′
The Sea Is History, Louis Henderson, 28′
* Toutes direction, Billy Rosz, Dieter Kovacic, 13′
Há terra!, Ana Vaz, 13′
* Blue Sky from Pain, Stéphanos Mangriotis, Hyacinthe Pavlides, 15′
Fajr, Lois Patiño, 12′
What the Heart Wants, Cecile B. Evans, 41′
* Fuddy Duddy, Siegfried A. Fruhauf, 5′
August, Omer Fast, 15′
Columbus, kogonada, 106′
Monday
* Marjorie Prime, Michael Almereyda, 98′
The Donor, Zang Qiwu, 105′
* Children Are Not Afraid of Death, Children Are Afraid of Ghosts, Rong Guang Rong, 85′
Tuesday
* Manifesto, Julian Rosefeldt, 94′
Lemon, Janicza Bravo, 87′
* The Death of Louis XIV, Albert Serra, 115′
Gimme Danger, Jim Jarmusch, 108′
Wednesday
Exquisite Corpse, Kerry Tribe, 51′
* Drifting Towards the Crescent, Laura Stewart, 85′