ART-PRESENTATION: International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020

Since its founding in 1972, International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has maintained its focus on independent and experimental filmmaking by showcasing emerging talents and established auteurs. The festival also places a focus on presenting cutting edge media art and artist’s film, with most of the participants in the short film program identified as artists or experimental filmmakers. IFFR also hosts CineMart, for film producers to seek funding.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: IFFR Archive

At the 49th edition in 2020, artists’ moving image once again occupies a central position in the festival programming. The 2020 edition presents 21 films in the Ammodo Tiger Short Competition, including new works by Ismaïl Bahri, Laure Prouvost, Ben Rivers, Wong Ping, Cécile B. Evans, Rosa Barba, Bani Abidi, Ana Vaz, Michael Portnoy, Erik van Lieshout, Onyeka Igwe, Thao Nguyen Phan, Maïder Fortuné & Annie MacDonell and Diane Severin Nguyen. IFFR Short Film is a unique showcase of Artists’ moving image and experimental film for works under 65 minutes.The screenings take place during the first weekend of the festival, 23-27 January. Other artists presenting work in the section include: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Basim Magdy, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Cyprien Gaillard, Hsu Che-yu, Maryam Jafri, Jaakko Pallasvuo, Aura Satz, Petna Ndaliko Katondolo, Imran Perretta, Riar Rizaldi, Andrew Norman Wilson, Yu Araki, Luke Fowler, Suneil Sanzgiri, Adrián Melis, Nicolas Provost, Iván Argote, Tulapop Saenjaroen and Musquiqui Chihying. The ‘politics of listening’ is the specialist subject of Lawrence Abu Hamdan. The Beirut-based artist and audio investigator creates films, installations, graphic design, sculptures, photography and performances which explore the intersection between sound and politics. His film Once Removed (2019) will be screened at IFFR 2020 as part of Bright Future Short. In the film, considering himself a reincarnation of a dead soldier, historian Bassel Abi Chahine has the remarkable ability to recall details from the Lebanese civil war, which mostly took place before his lifetime. Standing in front of the projected photographs from his personal collection, Abi Chahine embodies the suppressed trauma hidden to his generation. Basim Magdy studied Fine Arts at Helwan University, Cairo from 1996 to 2000. He says himself that his environment has shaped him more than his education did. In his work, he combines various forms of art, such as paintings, installations, animation and sculptures and explores the space between reality and fiction. In Basim Magdy’s imagined future“M.A.G.N.E.T”, the increasing force of gravity has significantly changed life on earth, making it nearly uninhabitable for humans. Markings on the underside of standing stones allude to past catastrophes. Past, present and future merge in this poetic rumination on the impact of an irreversibly changed Earth. Cyprien Gaillard’s wide-reaching art practice includes sculpture, painting, photography, video, performance and large-scale public interventions. In “Ocean II Ocean” subway cars are tossed in the ocean, destined to become an artificial coral reef while fossilised remains of submarine creatures are found within the marble interiors of subway stations in the former Soviet Union. Together, they evoke persistence and petrification, and speak to the radical transformations that occur over time. Artist film and video of all lengths are represented throughout many festival sections including new feature-length films by 2018 Eye on Art award recipient Francis Alÿs, Lawrence Lek, James Benning, Pedro Costa, Lav Diaz, Phil Collins, John Clang, Eitan Efrat & Daniel Mann, Carlos Casas, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, Eric Baudelaire, Janis Rafa (in IFFR’s Tiger Competition), Ben Rivers and 2019 Prince Claus Laureate Anocha Suwichakornpong. Francis Alÿs relocated to Mexico City where he has lived and worked for the past 15 years. His practice embraces multiple media, from painting and drawing to video and photography. Although based in Mexico City, he has done numerous projects over the last 20 years in collaboration with local communities around the world, from South America to North Africa and the Middle East. He has been working on several projects in Iraq since 2016, including the feature film “Sandlines” (2019), filmed in collaboration with the children of a small mountain village in the Nineveh province. The children of this mountain village near Mosul re-enact a century of Iraqi history, from the secret agreement of Sykes/Picot signed in 1916 to the realm of terror established by Islamic State in 2016. To make the children understand their present by revisiting their past, Alÿs invites them to perform a role play, evoking a whole world with the most modest props. It has the simplicity of puppet theatre, and is very close to the artist’s ongoing project ‘Children’s Games’, a project that is exhibited at Eye Filmmuseum in the period of the festival. Rosa Barba will present the sound-film performance “Voice Engine”, a voice modulated film that will be activated by the singing voices of a Rotterdam choir. The Quay Brothers will present a prelude to their third feature in the works in the form of an installation at TENT Rotterdam. The Quay Brothers and Rosa Barba have been invited to take part in IFFR’s initiative Frameworks, supported by Stichting Stokroos, where the festival annually invites two renowned visual artists to propose emerging talents for a completion grant to finnish a single-screen audio-visual work. Patricia Allio and The Karrabing Film Collective have been selected and will present their latest work at the festival. In Kevin B. Lee’s “Harun Farocki: Lexicon”, five decades of Harun Farocki’s film and video material are transformed into an audiovisual vocabulary, teaching key Farockian concepts from A to Z. This video essay takes inspiration from Farocki’s lifelong fascination with the teaching functions of film and media. IFFR’s newly launched Young Curators initiative offers Thai curator Darunee Terdtoontaveedej an opportunity to explore pre-colonial gender fluidity with a film programme, a panel discussion and an exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut. At WORM, an exhibition will present polaroids by the late Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller, in celebration of the newly launched Robby Müller Award. Collectivity is a theme running throughout the festival, consolidated in the thematic programme Synergetic. The Ummah Chroma present their installation “G/D THYSELF: Spirit Strategy On Raising Free Black Children” at Het Nieuwe Instituut. In collaboration with Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, the first edition of IFFR Sessions, a discursive programme of screenings and seminars in closed sessions, will take place centred around the theme of collectivity. Participating speakers include Karrabing Film Collective, Rojava Film Commune with Jonas Staal, Hafiz Ranjacale (co-founder of Indonesian artist collective ruangrupa), Eric Baudelaire and The NEST Collective.

Info: International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), Various locations, Rotterdam, Duration: 22/1-2/2/20, https://iffr.com