IFFR 2015

Mark Rappaport

Rappaport reconstructs how Anita Ekberg became an internationally famous sex goddess as a result of the careful cultivation of her image in successive movies. See also The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk.

Signals: Regained

Becoming Anita Ekberg

Charlie Lyne

A journey into the mind, body and soul of the teen comedy, this cameraless film consists entirely of scenes from a Hollywood genre that flourished particularly in the 1990s. With reference to more than 200 teen classics!

Beyond Clueless

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Naturalistic and nostalgic, the film follows the lives of three teenagers from a fishing village on the Pescadores Islands in western Taiwan. Slowly and clumsily, the boys find their ways into adulthood. The first in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s ‘growing-up trilogy’, establishing him as an auteur. Regained Special: Made in Taiwan

The Boys from Fengkuei

Aura Satz

A mesmerizing study of details in early colour film, using the human eye as a point of reference. With a soundtrack by Scanner.

Chromatic Aberration

Rebecca Baron

Charlatan or psychic marvel? While Ted Serios appears to expose Polaroids solely by the power of his mind, cameramen of a very different type gather around him.

Detour de force

Based on the personal experience of scriptwriter Wu Nian-chen and shot in a picturesque mountain town, this sensitive tale of Wan and his childhood sweetheart is emblematic of Taiwan New Cinema. It also set an aesthetic milestone in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s oeuvre.Regained Special: Made in Taiwan

Dust in the Wind

Mark Hartley

Hartley offers us a hilarious career overview of two bold Israelis who took Hollywood by storm with instant action, horror, musical and sci-fi films, plus a few arthouse titles on the side. Their catalogue not only features the exploits of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Chuck Norris, but Godard and Cassavetes.

Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

Christoph Girardet

Girardet reconstructs a 1950s fashion commercial using only remnants of the original footage, resulting in an intriguing silent pantomime.

Fabric

Anne Charlotte Robertson

Long before selfies, mentally unstable Robertson was attached to her Super-8 camera. Between 1981 and 1997, it was her constant support during a turbulent period of depression, paranoia and schizophrenia. Her 38-hour film archive is now regarded as a highlight of experimental diary film.

Five Year Diary Reels 22, 23 & 80

Chinlin Hsieh

In the early 1980s, a small group of Taiwanese filmmakers reinvented Asian cinema: among them Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang. Travelling across Asia, Europe and Latin America, meeting filmmakers, artists and critics, Flowers of Taipei sets out to assess the global influence of the Taiwan New Cinema movement. Regained Special: Made in Taiwan

Flowers of Taipei - Taiwan New Cinema

Louise Traon

Raised by a mother who edited Manoel de Oliveira’s films for more than twenty years, Traon in the end takes up the camera herself. She allows us a rare glimpse of the master during the creative process, while reconstructing how she taught herself, intuitively, without much explanation.

Les gants blancs

Zoe Beloff

A moving image installation based on Sergei Eisenstein’s notes and drawings for a science-fiction movie he pitched to Paramount in 1930. Its prophetic theme is the architecture of surveillance.

Glass House (Installation)

Beloff attempts to realize a script Eisenstein never succeeded in filming. The result is a merry excursion through the brain of a visionary avant-garde artist.

Glass House

Chen Kun-hou

Written and produced by Hou Hsiao-hsien, Growing Up tells the tale of a recomposed family: a man from the mainland and his native Taiwanese wife. Moving, humorous and superbly performed, the film marked the biggest domestic box-office success for Taiwan New Cinema. Regained Special: Made in Taiwan

Growing Up

Sarah Vanagt

The installation version of a poetic film project that reconstructs in a domestic setting three key moments from the cultural history of the human gaze.

In Waking Hours (1632 - 1852 - 1978)

Manuel Mozos

A delicately painted, loving portrait of one of the essential faces from the Portuguese film world. At the same time, this posthumous homage is an excuse to rekindle the flame of old-school film-love. With particular attention to Nicholas Ray’s Western Johnny Guitar.

João Bénard da Costa - Others Will Love the Things I Loved

Sunada Mami

Studio Ghibli has enchanted audiences young and old worldwide with instant classics such as Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro. The film pays homage to central figure Hayao Miyazaki, at work on his final project The Wind Rises. Attention is also devoted to the many other behind-the-scenes talents at this famous company.

The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness

Chang Yi

After escaping from Communist China, Kuei-mei marries an alcoholic widower with kids. ‘Such is my life’ in its original title, this moving saga spanning 30 years about a woman with quiet strength in a rapidly changing post-war Taipei is beautifully interpreted by Yang Hui-shan.Regained Special: Made in Taiwan

Kuei-mei, a Woman

Martin Reinhart

Thomas Tode

Manu Luksch

Breath-taking avant-garde experiments and films referring to visionary technologies are interwoven in this media archaeological essay that holds up a mirror to our contemporary media frenzy. Social utopias from 1880 onward supply the thrust of this cinematic time trip. Tilda Swinton supplies the voice-over.

Mobilisierung der Träume

Manoel de Oliveira

A survey of some of the career highlights of the oldest active filmmaker in the world, in the imaginary company of some literary greats.

The Old Man of Belém

Saw Tiong Guan

A contemplative trip down memory lane with one of the leading voices of the Second New Wave of Taiwanese Cinema. Saw Tiong Guan clearly established a very personal bond with his subject, and also found many of Tsai Ming-liang’s colleagues prepared to complete this portrait of a quiet yet outspoken artist.

Past Present

François Miron

Long after his premature death, the impact of Paul Sharits lingers on. The prominent iconoclast and innovator provoked with fast-flickering, pulsating, colourful mosaics. The many interviews and testimonies are also a portrait of a generation of leading voices in experimental filmmaking.

Paul Sharits

Cem Kaya

In an industry where Turkish actors could easily play in several hundred films, every trick of the trade was fully exploited: genre clichés, borrowed soundtracks, even plagiarism. Messy rush jobs or self-conscious B-movies? Appropriating visual motifs can be either a way of establishing a dialogue with the other or holding up a fairground mirror to them.

Remake, Remix, Rip-Off

Maria Kourkouta

Kourkouta lyrically evokes the Greek soul through fragments of popular films from the 1950s and ’60s. A melancholy piano sets the tone.

Return to Aeolus Street

Wang Tung

Kidnapped by a group of bandits and raped by their chief, Dan Zhu slowly develops feelings for the perpetrator. Echoing the social realism of Taiwanese new wave filmmaking, director Wang Tung revisits the wuxia genre, with the emphasis on psychology rather than action. Regained Special: Made in Taiwan

Run Away

Abigail Child

Child reanimates old film versions of the mythical character Salomé by adding a stimulating klezmer soundtrack and poetic intertitles.

Salomé

Wan Jen

Zeng Zhuang Xiang

Three poignant shorts reflecting on post-colonial Taiwanese society. Adapted by the great scriptwriter Wu Nian-chen from popular nativist literature of the 1970s, this anthology was instrumental in launching Taiwan New Cinema and some of its most important directors, including Hou Hsiao-hsien. Regained Special: Made in Taiwan

The Sandwich Man

Andrew Leavold

A B-film fanatic, driven by his obsessive curiosity about the fate of a miniature 007-imitator, ends up in the Philippines on a trip through film history, and even visiting Imelda Marcos. Weng Weng’s grotesque biography illustrates how relative certain cultural norms and categories can be.

The Search for Weng Weng

Pablo Alvarez-Mesa

Long before digitization, radio hams communicated with friends all over the world. In a basement, an old Canadian stubbornly keeps trying to make contact.

Speaking into the Air

Edward Yang

Unrelated stories unfold simultaneously in an unfriendly Taipei, involving a photographer, a writer, a doctor and the mysterious 'White Chick'. Edward Yang’s postmodernist film affords the viewer the pleasure of making connections with his own imagination, until everything finally converges in a double ending.Regained Special: Made in Taiwan

The Terrorizers

In this video essay, Rappaport zooms in on the dressing table and the special place it occupies in the universe of Sirk, master of the melodrama. See also Becoming Anita Ekberg.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025