How does the film camera affect an artwork? Condensed, removed, restored: how different is the mediated experience of the time spent in a museum?

Deep Focus

Drawing upon cinematic memories: restored classics, films about film(makers), experimental works and installations.

Regained

Time Restored

IFFR 2020

A unique blend of Bauhaus and Art Deco, the marvelous Villa Empain has had many different lives since it opened in 1934. A story of survival.

Villa Empain

Deep down underneath the Jezuïetenberg in Maastricht, a unique subterranean museum takes the visitor through the entire history of art.

Rocky Tales of Occupation

A journey through the life and work of Jan Švankmajer, last remaining hero of surrealism, who occupies a unique place in the history of cinema.

Over a period of three years, the directors followed the life of Jan Švankmajer, shedding light on his creative principles, as well as his collaboration with old friend and producer Jaromír Kallista. The film is also haunted by the memory of Eva Švankmajerová, his wife and creative partner, muse and inseparable other half.

Athanor – The Alchemical Furnace

An old building in Venice hosts an exhibition. A visitor walks through empty rooms discovering a space that functions like an abandoned theatre set.

The Leaks of Venice

In this video a painting is both traditionally restored and digitally retouched, transforming it into a new and hybrid object.

a minor piece of damage

James Ballard's near-fatal car accident gives rise to extreme desires. Cult film by Cronenberg in which car fetishists go to extremes to satisfy their passion.

Following an almost fatal car accident, James Ballard becomes obsessed by wild, dangerous sex. He soon meets a bunch of like-minded people: car fetishists who re-enact famous fatal crashes, like James Dean's. Controversial, award-winning cult film in which Cronenberg uncompromisingly brings technology crashing into the human psyche.

Crash

Aby Warburg, a German art historian, established an entirely new, purely visual approach by collecting and combining reproductions.

The Memory Atlas

Vermeer's paintings open up a path to love in the capitalist rat race of New York. But its course does not run smoothly.

A stock exchange trader falls in love with a French actress who looks like the Vermeer portraits he so admires. At first, art seems to be a bridge between them; a sole source of purity in capitalist New York. But ultimately this proves to be an ideal that cannot be projected onto reality.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025