IFFR 2009

Andi Niessner

Biographical documentary by and with the Bavarian cult director Herbert Achternbusch provides an insight into the creation, flourishing and creative waning of one of Germany's most idiosyncratic film makers.

Signals: Regained

Achternbusch

Patrick Bokanowski

'A 2001 produced under the same conditions as Eraserhead', The Angel invites for a surrealist ascent into a world of silhouettes and symbols. New adventures in perception in its depiction of the climbing of a giant stairway.

L'ange

Andrei Konchalovsky

A healthy young Russian beauty working on a Soviet collective farm during harvest time becomes pregnant by a handsome rascal. This movie, made with insight and a good deal of humour, was banned for 21 years because of its supposed religious views. Photography by Georgi Rerberg (Stalker, The Mirror).

Asya's Happiness

Walking towards the fire. In a ceaseless stream of light, people, landscapes and objects lead us to mysterious regions.

Battements solaires

Mukai Kan

When rates fall on the Tokyo exchange, Kenzo offers his wife to his landlord to pay his debts. Later his daughter Mariko takes revenge on the world by filming her having sex with rich corrupt men and blackmailing them. Sweltering, dramatic and socially critical pinku eiga from 1969.

Blue Film Woman

Adachi Masao

Several secondary school pupils start experimenting with group sex as a protest against the corrupt world of adults. 15-year-old Yasuko is by her teacher and is contemplating suicide. Shot in beautiful black-and-white CinemaScope, the film is a thematically and stylistically radical statement from 1971.

Gushing Prayer

Kim Ki-young

Is apparently in Martin Scorsese's top 3 of all times, this Korean cinema classic. 30 years before Fatal Attraction, Kim already made the definitive film about the risks of having an affair for the affluent citizen. Now fully restored. A must.

The Housemaid

Gotot Prakosa

Eros Djarot

A kind of Indonesian Woodstock, but then more political. More than 18 years ago, these legendary recordings of a group of rock musicians and poets known as Kantata Takwa were shelved. A new political situation and digital technology makes a screening possible after all. Still filled with fire.

Kantata Takwa

Luc Bourdon

A collage of over 120 films from the National Film Board of Canada centred around Montréal, in which poetry, fiction, documentary and essay are rolled into one. This unique film is a joyous, touching experience; a collective history whose threads dance in one’s mind long after the closing credits.

La mémoire des anges

Mark Hartley

Ultrafast, jampacked, intelligent documentary about Ozploitation, the term for the rise of a series of Australian genre films in the 1970s and 1980s that were often crazy and more radical than their American and British predecessors. With interviews with those involved (including Tarantino) and lots of crazy film fragments.

Not Quite Hollywood

Boris Lehman

After 20 years, the film maker made another portrait of the same painter. They are still friends. They sometimes understand each other better without words.

Un peintre sous surveillance

Film maker visits a friend. The painter hangs round in his studio and the filmmaker films. For the sequel, see Un peintre sous surveillance.

Portrait du peintre dans son atelier

Igor Mayboroda

A unique documentary rediscovering part of the history of Soviet cinema through the life and work of the brightest Russian director of photography, Georgi Rerberg, the man behind the camera of Tarkovsky's films Mirror and Stalker. Full of unknown material, a real gem for film lovers.

Rerberg and Tarkovsky. The Reverse Side of 'Stalker'

Mark Peranson

With this title referring to Beckett, VIFF programmer and director Mark Peranson sketches the evolution of Albert Serra’s masterful El cant dell ocells. Peranson filmed the production process filled with improvisation and minimal acting as a quest to a serene visual language that speaks for itself. Quite funny as well, obviously.

Waiting for Sancho

Stefaan Decostere

A 1985 documentary about the close relation between war and technology. Since then it has only become more intensified. The remake became an installation. (at V2_)

Warum wir Männer die Technik so Lieben

Timothy Carey

If Elvis had ever done a movie where he played a cult leader, it might look like this. An underground classic, with a score from a very young Frank Zappa.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025