International Film Festival Rotterdam has always celebrated the ways in which art and film intersect. Every year, the festival incorporates exhibitions, performances and screenings of artist film and video on the big screen. At the 48th edition in 2019, artists’ moving image occupies a more central position in the festival programming than ever before.
Ammodo Tiger Short Competition
The 2019 edition presents 24 films in the Ammodo Tiger Short Competition, including new works by Sara Cwynar, Wong Ping, Meriem Bennani, Vincent Meessen, Luke Fowler, Cauleen Smith, Su Hui-yu, Kevin Jerome Everson & Claudrena N. Harold, Madiha Aijaz, Jean-Jacques Martinod, Malena Szlam, Daniel Jacoby, Zeno van den Broek, Simon Liu, Taiki Sakpisit, Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Maria Molina Peiró and Reetu Sattar. Three winners will be selected by a three-headed jury made up of Vietnamese artist Nguyen Trinh Thi, John Canciani, festival director of Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur, and Lawrence Abu Hamdan, who will also be presenting his film Walled Unwalled and his performance After SFX, presented in collaboration with Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (who are hosting his solo exhibition).
Artists’ moving image
Now in its 14th year, the Ammodo Tiger Short Competition is a central pillar of IFFR Short Film, a unique showcase of artists’ moving image and experimental film for works under 65 minutes, taking place during the first weekend of the festival, January 24-28. Other artists presenting work in the section include Korakrit Arunanondchai, Heather Phillipson, Raqs Media Collective, Jane & Louise Wilson, Johann Lurf, James N. Kienitz Wilkins, Pilvi Takala, Mary Helena Clark, Onyeka Igwe, Sirah Foighel Brutmann & Eitan Efrat, Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács, Beatrice Gibson, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Donna Verheijden, Sebastian Buerkner, belit sağ, Minia Biabiany and Tris Vonna-Michell.
Artist film and video of all lengths will be represented throughout many festival sections, including new works by Koki Tanaka, Miko Revereza, Phil Collins, Leslie Thornton, Rachel Maclean, Catherine Opie, Takashi Makino and Tsai Ming-liang.
California-based artist Charlotte Pryce will be the subject of a complete retrospective of her poetic 16mm cinema and brings two of her magic lantern performances outside of the USA for the first time. Between January 24-27, late-night audiovisual performance series sound//vision will take place at WORM alternative cultural centre, featuring performances by Raha Raissnia, Joost Rekveld, Luis Macías, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos and others.
Art Directions
IFFR takes pride in complementing its film programme with Art Directions: an extensive series of art installations, performances and exhibitions in collaboration with Rotterdam-based art institutions Kunsthal Rotterdam, Het Nieuwe Instituut and PrintRoom, among others.
Philippe Parreno will present a new work entitled No More Reality (1988-2018), a feature-length film combining 20 years of new, existing and re-edited footage to create a “film of films.” It’s within this diegetic space of the film that a retrospective takes place. Screened in the commercial Pathé multiplex in the centre of Rotterdam, Parreno proposes a “seance of cinema” reintroducing back in this traditional setting the magic and live rituals that lie at the basis of cinema. Jean-Luc Godard will present his latest film, Le livre d’image, in the way he originally intended: in a semi-improvised, intimate setting that reflects his home studio.
Parreno and Godard have been invited to take part in our initiative Frameworks, supported by Stichting Stokroos, where the festival annually invites two renowned visual artists to propose emerging talents for a completion grant to finish a single-screen audio-visual artwork. Asad Raza and Fabrice Aragno are selected this year and will present their newest work at the festival.
Blackout, an exhibition of contemporary works using a carousel slide projector, will be presented at Kunsthal Rotterdam featuring installation works by Tamar Guimarães, Nguyen Trinh Thi, Prapat Jiwarangsan, Aura Satz, Floris Vanhoof, Kristina Benjocki, Praneet Soi, Hannah Dawn Henderson and Ahmad Fuad Osman. Cauleen Smith, who will perform her slide-based performance Black Utopia LP, will also be presenting her newly restored debut feature as well as a programme of her short films.
In the exhibition Temple of Cinema #1: Sayat Nova Outtakes, IFFR revisits The Colour of Pomegranates (1969) by Georgian-Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov with never-before-seen outtakes from the classic film. In the context of the theme, programme Say No More, a largely “speechless” film programme, Finnish artist Mika Taanilapresents the exhibition Works on Paper. The theme programme Rabbit Hole, on internet memes, will involve an installation by David OReilly and works by Ja’Tovia Gary and others. In collaboration with Art Rotterdam, a special film booth will be installed in Rotterdam Central Station to present a work by Sebastián Diaz Morales.
Artist talks
Andrew Norman Wilson and Diana Vidrascu, both of whom have their latest films in the Ammodo Tiger Short Competition, will present Artist Talks on their body of work. Nederlands Fotomuseum will co-host a talk by Alfredo Jaar, whose installation Shadows can be seen at the museum. Talks by Philippe Parreno and other artists will also contextualise the Frameworks programme.
For more info on the IFFR 2019 programme visit our website.
