04/02/2013

International Film Festival Rotterdam 2013

This year was my 4th volunteering as a doorman at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Concequently, I got to see a lot of movies in the past 11 days, approximately 45 including shorts. Here is my list of recommendations in no particular order.

Features:

  • Sightseers
    • A black comedy about the caravan trip of Tina and Chris and their murder of people that cause a nucance. 
  • Towheads
    • Penelope tries to make her life as a stay at home mom more fulfilling by trying different strategies. The slap stick humor is remeniscent of Charlie Chaplin, loved it.
  • Reality
    • Luciano audiciens for Big Brother, but loses track of reality when he thinks he is being watched by the shows producers in his daily life to assert his worthyness to enter the show. Ignoring all reality checks of his wife, he starts giving away their posessions to show his charitableness.
  • Our Nixon
    • A documentary cut largely from the Super8 footage shot by Richard Nixon’s chief of staff  H.R. Haldeman, advisor John Ehrlichman and assistant Dwight Chapin. A intrieging insight into the inner center of the Nixon administration. I’ve had the 1972 campaign song used in the trailer in my head for days, Nixon Now!
  • Wavemakers
    • A documentary on the Ondes Martenot, an instrument that  produces sound by varying the frequency of oscillation in vacuum tubes. Features Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood.
  • 5 Jahre Leben
    • During the Volkskrantdag, multiple visitors skipped this film in their program because they didn’t wanted to see the torture that goes on in the Guantanamo bay prison. I think we should look away from the horrors that took place in a prison that is still in operation today. The film follows the story of Murat Kurnaz, who was incarcerated following the 9/11 attack. He would be eventually be held 5 years later without charge.
  • De ontmaagding van Eva van End
    • An exchange student from Germany arrives at the family Van End resident, disturbing their peace and quiet substatially by his unrelentless perfectness.
  • Matterhorn
    • A touching and funny story of how Fred, an orthodox protestant widower,   develops a bond with Theo, a mentally impaired wanderer. This movies title is somewhat irrelevant to the story and confusing. Just take on the challenge of Googling for it and make sure to watch it.

Shorts:

The worst thing I watched was the Bouncing off the Walls program during one of my shifts.  I and my college ended up taking turns standing guard at the screening room, for the eventuality somebody without a ticket would actually want to watch that crap. I talked to a few people that had tried to watch it but left. One woman remarked that she had thought the art work had moved passed calling anything that is simply out of focus “art”. A director that had made it through 80% of the screening said the producer had made a name for himself with previous work, but that this was the first to be published of him in a long time because nobody would work with somebody that was so self absorbed. Hopefully that means no one else will soon have to suffer through the nonsensical ugliness he makes any time soon.

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