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10-16 April 2008 Battling evil cell phones in De bug.
The programme: ten days of fantasy, horror and general mayhem. The plan: if you can’t choose, go for the shorts.
LOOKING OUT FOR THE LITTLE ONES FILM The Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival Until 20 April. Pathé Tuschinksi. www.afff.nl By Luuk van Huet
Fans flocking to the 24th fun-filled edition of the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, which kicks off this week, must select from so many titles, events and festivities that the choice can be as overwhelming as waking up during a zombie infestation.
Whether you’re drooling over Goth god Tim Burton as he drops in 9 April for his Career Achievement Award, or hooting and hollering during the Night of Terror, or taking your kids to play superhero at the Filmmuseum, the sheer number of possible AFFF activities is positively bewildering. There’s one aspect of the festival that might be easy to overlook, but is in fact the most aesthetically effective investment of your precious time: European Fantastic Shorts, featuring 26 films from all over the
continent wrapped into two 90-minute compilations. This cinematic smorgasbord includes four films by old AFFF favourite Professor Nieto, in which the French animator conducts academic experiments on some very unusual fauna, aided by computer-generated trickery. There’s also the Swedish Love and War, a re-creation of Pearl Harbor as a 15-minute opera performed by puppets. The six selected Dutch films provide a strong home-grown contribution. The morbid Mortel was last year’s Dutch candidate for the Best Animated Short Film Oscar. In Popo, Victor Low stars as a depressed clown for hire, while Carry Tefsen has a ‘Zeg eens Aaargh!’ moment when she battles an evil cell phone in De bug. Famous actors and Academy Award nods are all nice and dandy, but how did a little film like De overkant (‘The Other Side’), a student project by the Spanishborn, Amsterdam-based director Iván López Nuñez, get selected (and tipped for a Silver Melies for Best European Short)? We caught up with the film-maker to find out.
An enthused López explains: ‘Normally the Filmacademie doesn’t want films made in your third year to be shown, as it is believed the quality is too low. But I figured it would be okay to send De overkant to Duistere Openbaringen, a small Dutch horror festival [in Helmond], where it was selected and shown. They might have seen it there.’ De overkant deals with a recognisable problem for most Mokumers: an open drawbridge bars the way for a young Asian exchange student trying to get home. When two yuppies appear only to start a game of squash, using the bridge as a wall, a minor hindrance becomes a major problem. López remarks: ‘I wanted it to be similar to an American genre film from the ‘80s, in which the protagonist is put into increasingly shitty situations only to overcome them. And I wanted comedy that crossed over into brutality, to make the viewers uneasy.’ Why López’s more recent final project, the remarkable dark comedy Pijn, wasn’t selected, he doesn’t know: ‘They might not have seen it. Or it might not fit the genre.’ A lover of genre cinema himself, López is currently writing a script with the intriguing working title ‘Kees de Vries Killed President Kennedy’. So make sure you have future bragging rights to one day snootily say: ‘Yes, that was nice, but I preferred his earlier work...’ European Fantastic Shorts #1 (Love and War, Prof. Nieto Show #1&2) screens Thursday 10, Sunday 13 and Tuesday 15 April. European Fantastic Shorts #2 (Prof. Nieto Show #3&4, Mortel, Popo, De Bug, De Overkant) is showing on Friday 11, Wednesday 16 and Friday 18 April. All films at Pathé Tuschinski.
Five-Word Movie Review
FILM
Edited by Julie Phillips.This week’s films reviewed by Massimo Benvegnù (MB),Angela Dress (AD),Don Druker (DD),Andrea Gronvall (AG),Luuk van Huët (LvH),JR Jones (JJ),Dave Kehr (DK),Marie-Claire Melzer (MM),Mike Peek (MP),Julie Phillips (JP),Bart Plantenga (BP), Gusta Reijnders (GR),Jonathan Rosenbaum (JR),Marinus de Ruiter (MdR) and Bregtje Schudel (BS).All films are screened in English with Dutch subtitles unless otherwise noted. Amsterdam Weekly recommends.
Festivals Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival Films from George A Romero’s Diary of the Dead to Japanese animation and Thai Westerns, not to mention the traditional Night of Terror on Saturday. Special guest Tim Burton will do a signing session on Thursday, 15.00-15.30, in Tuschinski Arthouse. See article, above. Pathé Tuschinski AFFF Kids Special children’s programming, including films, classic series (Flipper, Batman) and a course in How to Be a Superhero. Filmmuseum CinemAsia Continues through Sunday, with Friday and Saturday nights devoted to new Japanese cult films. English subtitles. Rialto Film IsReal A new festival of Israel features a lively, mixed programme, including opening film Jellyfish and Silver Bear winner Beaufort. See Special Screenings and Short List. Het Ketelhuis
LOVING FAMILY ACCEPTS PLASTIC GIRLFRIEND Lars and the Real Girl Kriterion, The Movies
Shine a Light
New this week Le Ballon Rouge & Crin-Blanc These classic shorts by French director Albert Lamorisse are so pure in their emotion and elemental in their drama that parents may be as moved as their kids. In Le Ballon Rouge (1956, 34 min.) a little boy’s blue-grey existence is brightened by the arrival of a dramatically red balloon. In the lesser-known Crin-Blanc (‘White Mane’, 1953, 40 min.) a boy forges a bond with a proud wild stallion. Both films tell the same story—the balloon is coveted by neighbourhood bullies, the stallion by mercenary horse wranglers—and both end with a moment of transcendence, as the boy and his prized ‘friend’ escape the cruel world of grown-ups for the limitless unknown. (JJ) De Uitkijk
It’s a Free World... In this ironically titled movie, director of the lower class par excellence Ken Loach collaborates again with his long-time screenwriter, Paul Laverty. Angie, a bike-riding beauty and single mom, gets the sack from an employment agency and decides to start up one of her own. Although Loach’s
anti-heroine means well—she’s only trying to make a better life for herself and her 11-year-old—she gradually turns from exploited to exploiter as she starts to use illegal workers from Eastern Europe. The film traces Angie’s progression but never passes moral judgement. In her gritty, Loachy world no solutions are given, but viewers can’t help questioning the political system in which Angie flourishes. (GR) 93 min. Kriterion
by American soldiers in Vietnam, this film goes much further in its rejection of American justifications for war, but it’s also a good deal coarser in much of its overall conception as well as its style. (JR) 90 min. Studio K
Shine a Light Martin Scorsese brings his superb eye (and ear) to a Rolling Stones concert experience. Closer to The Last Waltz than No Direction Home in its structure, Shine a Light intercuts live performances of the band at the Beacon Theatre aingeNYC with some p facing clips of its members’ TVe appearances over the course th cks on lo b 0 0 It’s Hard to Be Nice Tragicomedy by Srdjan Vuletic ouof their 1 40-odd-year career. A funny prologue of the t h g b ademie about a taxi driver in Sarajevo who hasebeen band’s interaction with Scorsese adds extra cinematic ld Achanging Rietotvbetter out with petty criminals but decides his ways. flair. If you’re not embarrassed to see grandpas JagIn Serbo-Croatian with Dutch subtitles. 102 min. Rialto ger and Richards sweat it out for two hours—with a little young blood, including Christina Aguilera and Redacted Brian De Palma’s low-budget effort about Jack White of the White Stripes—you’ll be highly the Iraq occupation, based on the real-life story of a satisfied. It’s only a rock ’n’ roll concert movie, but we 14-year-old Iraqi girl who was raped and killed by like it. (MB) 121 min. Pathé ArenA American soldiers. It shows rare courage in protesting the widespread abuse of innocent Iraqis, but its pseuVantage Point At a historic summit in Spain against dodocumentary form is full of awkward misfires (such global terrorism, the US president (William Hurt) is shot, as a protracted use of theme music from Barry Lyna bomb explodes, and two federal agents (Dennis Quaid don) and its acting is often terrible. In some respects a and Matthew Fox) rush to find the culprits. This gripping remake of De Palma’s Casualties of War (1989), if ridiculous thriller repeatedly backtracks to present the which was derived from a real-life atrocity committed same events from different viewpoints, though ironically