RTM 2024: Meet our curators
During the RTM Day at the festival on Friday 26 January 2024, LantarenVenster will be filled with the latest short and feature films, Rotterdam classics, events, talks, audiovisual art, video clips and installations. Following a successful first year of collaborating with curators for RTM, three new local creatives have been given the freedom to curate the programme for the upcoming edition of the festival.
Sam Koopman
“With the team, I am eager to build a programme that asks questions instead of assuming answers; opening conversation surrounding our local but also global realities. Focusing on inclusivity of thought, processes and narratives stands paramount for me in representing the talented artistic makeup of this city. RTM provides a platform where the grassroots connection between the makers, organisations and residents of Rotterdam becomes uniquely visible.”
“I am eager to build a programme that asks questions instead of assuming answers.”
Sam KOOPMAN is a Dutch-Canadian filmmaker and artist based in Rotterdam. His practice inquires upon the border of documentary and fiction, exploring encounters with peoples and places – their humanities, histories, absurdities and vulnerabilities. Central to his work is a focus on participatory processes and collaborative meaning making, often questioning the role of the lens. His short film Dear Moritz won awards at the Eye Filmmuseum Research Labs and Rotterdams Open Doek. He organises Expat Cinema Rotterdam and is passionate about sharing visual arts to create communal conversation within the city.
Tarona
“As a guest curator for RTM at IFFR, my focus is on the concept of hybridity. Myself being a person moving in between multiple backgrounds, multiple languages and cultures, I find it important to place emphasis during this process in showcasing multiple worlds where the beauties of learning, and curiosity, unfold. It is only through an open mind that we are able to learn new ways of thinking and seeing. My aim is to present a complete programme that showcases themes of multiperspectivity and dignity which also displays the hope for – and the trust in – the film industry of Rotterdam.”
“Showcasing multiple worlds where the beauties of learning, and curiosity, unfold.”
TARONA (1985, Curaçao) is an artist and director, currently based in Rotterdam. She has dedicated her career to exploring the complexities of identity and creating a space for the Black Diaspora to cultivate a new way of knowing and being. In 2021, she was granted a four year Mondriaan Fund for Established Artists to further expand her work, research and artistic practices after having received Mondriaan Fund Emerging Talent a year prior. An alumnus of the Willem de Kooning Academy (Rotterdam) with a BA in photography, she additionally studied Colour Correction for Film at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She went on to train in New York & Belgium as a film producer and 2nd/3rd AD. Subsequently, she directed her first film in 2020, titled Pivot; a film about Black performances in white spaces, which saw its first light on the 4:3 film platform (by Boiler Room) and went on to be exhibited and screened across multiple institutes and festivals across Europe and the US.
Robert-Jonathan Koeyers
“As a filmmaker living and working in Rotterdam, I know how many unheard stories and how much underrepresented talent is contained within this city. My focus is primarily on uplifting and celebrating these bold, distinct, fresh and eclectic voices that show what Rotterdam was, what it is, and what it can be. I’d like to programme intimate, heartfelt, experimental, poetic and challenging films that all have something different to say, but where the spirit, resilience and multivocality of this city is not only seen, but also undeniably felt.”
“Uplifting and celebrating these bold, distinct, fresh and eclectic voices that show what Rotterdam was, what it is, and what it can be.”
Robert-Jonathan KOEYERS (Curaçao, 1992) is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker. After receiving a Wildcard grant from the Netherlands Film Fund for his graduation film, he set out to write and direct his animated debut short film It’s Nice Here, which would go on to have a world premiere during the Semaine de La Critique in Cannes and get shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Throughout the years Robert-Jonathan has been using film, photography, animation, music and other mediums to help turn his stories into deeply personal projects that aim to unpack how his Blackness has shaped and moulded him into the person he is, and aim to explore how the lived experiences of Black people can be told in an authentic and vulnerable way.
