Flower in the Pocket

It is known that the 37^th International Film Festival Rotterdam (or IFFR 08) has a humorous official commercial in which a filmmaker always feels he is too “huge” anywhere he goes…in Rotterdam, and “it’s good feeling”, he adds in a wink.

In fact when the city of Rotterdam enters its “Tiger Time” in the gloomy winter, under its aloof modernist disguise she oozes confidence, passion and sexiness with lots of film-related events, celebrations and other visual entertainments going on. “Filmmaker”, so to speak, is also broadly defined by Rotterdam to include the adventurous, original-minded visual artists. Under the leadership of the newly appointed and arguably the “interim” president Rutger Wolfson, this edition’s IFFR underscores the spirit of “Free Radicals”, a chemistry term used to describe the “special molecules or atoms that occasionally provoke fierce reactions”. The programme curated by Wolfson has encompassed three American visual artists’ works (Cameron Jamie, Robert Breer, Paul Sharits) which he believes have been closer to the essence of art in its rebellion from the mainstream visual industry. If the founder of IFFR, the cultural pioneer Hubert Bals were alive today, he couldn’t agree more that the 37-year-old festival from the very beginning has also positioned itself as the “Free Radical” in world visual industry with its selection, showcasing and financing of the most audacious and edgy independent films.

When I was there inside De Doelen Complex, a place I visited 3 years ago as a first-time festival-goer and this time an “angry young” Film Critic Trainee, it’s impressive that even the opening ceremony seems rather low-profile and unpretentious: no red carpet, of course; no limos but only lines of bicycles, the most frequently used transportation means by the Dutch; no fashion competitions among guests, obviously; no lengthy, tedious talks by officials but the touching moment to award the mayor of Rotterdam City for his contribution to the festival after his brief speech, and a golden medal saying “Tiger is a girl’s best friend” to the festival’s former president Sandra Den Hamer...I do have the strong sense that filmmakers are made “important” and “different” here in Rotterdam, particularly the young talents, because IFFR has been highly regarded globally for its persistent promotion and support of independent films from developing countries in the “South”—namely Asia, South America and Africa for last 36 years. As IndieWIRE’s Mark Rabinowitz argues, “no festival in the world does more for young and emerging filmmakers from around the world than the IFFR”. Actually its VPRO Tiger Award Competition is made up of 15 first-time or second-time features by independent filmmakers, five of which are from Asia this year, and the festival itself is opened with a debut work. It is also rare when major film festivals would usually compete for premieres from established directors.

The opening film Cordero de Dios (Lamb of God) by Argentinean filmmaker Lucia Cedrón (b.1974) set against the turbulent era of late 70’s Buenos Aires when lots of dissidents mysteriously “disappeared” under the military dictatorship. As Cedrón’s first feature film, Lamb of God is biographical in that the filmmaker went to France with her mother after her father Jorge Cedrón, also a filmmaker, died in the 1970’s whose death is never clarified officially.

I have to say the festival’s promoting trailer about how “big” a filmmaker could be at Rotterdam gets testified when Liew Seng-tat, a 29-year-old Malaysian New Wave filmmaker won the Tiger Award with his first feature Flower in the Pocket centering on two brothers’ after-school adventure in Kuala Lumpur. At the Award Ceremony, Seng-tat had a difficult time juggling with the poster-like 15,000 Euro bank note (cash award of Tiger) with in one hand and the IFFR diploma in the other when he had to at the same time make a short award acceptance speech in waves of laughter and cheers with his towering Dutch hosts (the festival president Rutger Wolfson must be over 1.90 meters!) at back.

Actually Seng-tat’s “hugeness” was already felt when this babyface filmmaker shares with me—in Mandarin—how he and his friends at Dahuang Pictures, the base of Malaysian New Wave filmmakers keep making films in collaboration and finally get their films released in their home country, in “foreign language” cinema lines though—a truth enough to debunk the belief that these Malaysian filmmakers are trapped and will be perpetuated within the festival circuit by making “festival films”. The second Tiger Award that Malaysian New Wave filmmakers garnered, following Tan Chuimui’s Love Conquers All in 2007 both in Pusan and Rotterdam, a victory repeated by Liew Seng-tat, enforces the fact that in its eighth year the New Wave as well as Dahuang Pictures are not just “flower in the pocket” with petals scattered in the film festival world, but have their season of blossom in vision with continuing global attention and its own growing domestic audience.

This is Rotterdam: always dares to embrace something new and different. When talking to one of Rotterdam’s six programmers Gerwin Tamsma, who is basically responsible for programming Asian indies, about what kind of films will attract him most (and thus to be selected), Gerwin says that “let me put it this way”, he smiles, “Rotterdam and I myself always would like to see films that are always a little bit different from our expectation”, he continues, “films that could bring surprises—this is what we want”.

In Rotterdam I met Li Ruijun (b. 1983), a Beijing-based Chinese independent filmmaker who brought to Rotterdam his first feature Summer Solstice (Sturm and Strung) which was made with a shoestring budget. With its sometimes obviously affected lines, the segmented narrative in the second half and technical problems, one would also be amazed by the controversial subject Li has focused on (same-sex love), the stylized abrupt editing between scenes, the graphical texture of the setting and his sharp perspective in alternative story telling among his peers. Basically having no connection with the prestigious Beijing Film Academy, Li just sent in his film as thousands of other applicants and got an instant response from the programmer. They love it. And Li Ruijun with his all-in-all first film flew to Rotterdam to meet his hundreds of audience in Pathé Theater.

Therefore despite that when looking back I indeed regard this IFFR an event of “missing chances & encounters”, which includes but not limit to the bankruptcy of my ambitious film-watching plan and the unavoidable absence from several themed parties with live music plus film screening (due to my “professional” pressure as the Chinese press representative), Rotterdam film festival still strikes me most as the annual celebration of world independent, alternative film culture, the platform to meet both European or American arthouse maestros (and to ask for their autographs) and emerging film talents (so you hold a quite optimistic view towards the generation born in late 70’s and early 80’s), and the embodiment of this very familiar slogan “Impossible is Nothing”, or vice versa. IFFR’s magnetic field radiates for every newcomer like me and its practical outlook, idealistic vision (thanks to the founder Hubert Bals) and the warm, friendly atmosphere would even make you believe every great film festival should be and would be as wonderful as this one.

This IFFR is also an occasion for serendipitous discoveries. To get to know the programmer ofRediscovering the Fourth Generation Cinema Shelly Kraicer prematurally as an interpreter for two Chinese directors—Huang Shuqin (Woman, Demon, Human) and Xie Fei (Black Snow) is the most exciting part of my first day at IFFR; and yeah I collected some of those filmmakers' autographs...not in order to show off, but that I never imagined that one day the directors of "old" films that I watched when I was quite a little girl would sit next to me and shared with me the Chinese fried rice with its warmth. Later on when talking with Shelly, I learnt that to obtain any single one of the 12 film prints at IFFR, he made great efforts to negotiate with and convince people of the film studios (the now film group companies).

On the final day of the festival, I also went to watch My Old Memories of Beijing (Chengnan Jiushi, 1982) by Wu Yigong. After the film, I heard a middle-aged Dutch woman singing the ballad recurrent in this film when she walked out (Songbie or Farewell Pavilion, lyric by Chinese intellectual Li Shutong, the melody is originally from an American composer John Pond Ordway). Moment as such is just touching and wonderful but my feeling is just mixed, not just because of the film itself, but the fact that I am in Rotterdam with a full house of audience who are willing to appreciate the old and the past when we ourselves are reluctant to remember and too ready to ignore.