Repositorium für die Medienwissenschaft Marijke de Valck Drowning in Popcorn at the International Film Festival Rotterdam? The Festival as a Multiplex of Cinephilia 2005 https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/11994 Veröffentlichungsversion / published version Sammelbandbeitrag / collection article Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Valck, Marijke de: Drowning in Popcorn at the International Film Festival Rotterdam? The Festival as a Multiplex of Cinephilia. In: Marijke de Valck, Malte Hagener (Hg.): Cinephilia. Movies, Love and Memory. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2005, S. 97–109. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/11994. Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer Creative Commons - This document is made available under a creative commons - Namensnennung - Nicht kommerziell 3.0 Lizenz zur Verfügung Attribution - Non Commercial 3.0 License. For more information gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu dieser Lizenz finden Sie hier: see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0 Drowning in Popcorn at the International Film Festival Rotterdam? The Festival as a Multiplex of Cinephilia Marijke de Valck Rotterdam was the first international film festival I attended, and those first few years remain precious in my mind as a time of nascent cinephilia, opening my eyes to filmmakers that I never would have discovered staying at home even in such a film savvy city as Toronto, who [sic] has its own excellent festival; anyone con- cerned that Rotterdam has grown unwieldy in recent years should come to Toronto and try to find anything like a familial environment or an unheralded discovery. Mark Peranson, editor-in-chief of Cinema Scope On the night of Wednesday, June , seventeen spectators attended the opening screening of the new film festival “Film International Rotterdam.” The sight of an all but empty cinema theatre prompted the Councillor of Arts to return without performing the official opening ceremony for the film week that had been described as “super-experimental.” This label was the consequence of the outspoken – and controversial – taste preferences of the founder of the festi- val, Huub Bals, who was also the co-founder of the Féderation Internationale des Festivals Indépendents that included the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Cannes) and the Internationales Forum des Jungen Films (Berlin). Though the festival’s consistent focus has been on art cinema, experimental works, and southern (Asian) developing film countries, ever since its foundation, the popu- larity of the festival has increased dramatically. Today, the International Film Festival Rotterdam is the second largest audience film festival in the world, with an attendance of , during the festival. This number also posi- tions the IFFR as the largest multiple-day cultural event in the Netherlands. The IFFR pleases its visitors by offering the best films of the festivals of the preced- ing year before their release in theatres, national and international premiers that haven’t (yet) found distribution, a first feature competition program, thematic programs, and highly popular Q&A sessions with filmmakers themselves, after the screenings of their films. But we must also remain a bit wary of the attendance figure of , be- cause, as IFFR’s Cinemart director Ido Abram un-euphemistically puts it, “the number is a lie.” What we should bear in mind when we read this figure is that 98 Cinephilia it does not represent the number of actual visitors to the festival. Festivals work hard to present a positive image in the global competitive context, and so atten- dance figures are an important measure of success that are artificially boosted – in the case of Rotterdam, the published figure also includes potential admissions through tickets sold at the festival box office to people visiting exhibitions at associated cultural institutions – to reach the impressive ,. This data is used to support the impression of the IFFR as an important national and inter- national event when it applies for funding on which the festival organization is dependent. However, because all film festivals use similar methods to calculate attendance, the lie rules and so these figures retain their usefulness for compar- ing festivals. In general, they point to an explosive increase in attendance in Rotterdam since the mid-s. The flattering attendance figures aside, the fact is that the IFFR is very popular with a diverse and devoted audience. As Mark Peranson suggests, not everyone has welcomed the growth of the festival with equal en- thusiasm. Film critic and Filmkrant editor-in-chief Dana Linssen is among the skeptics, putting a satirical photo of the festival icon – the tiger – drowning in a sea of popcorn on the cover of the festival daily paper no. Linssen expresses her concerns directly to festival director Sandra den Hamer, who will soon be the sole captain on the festival ship, as co-director Simon Field finished his Rotterdam career with the festival. Her “Dear Sandra” editorial appeared at a time when the director was probably considering some significant changes to the festival that bear her personal imprint. Linssen’s cry can be read as a sub- text to the drowning tiger collage, as she notes: “I am for example very con- cerned about the size of the festival, both as a journalist and a film lover…. The real highlights from the ‘best of the fests’ are sure to be released in Dutch cine- ma theaters. No matter how proud you may be of this festival with all those sweet, crazy cinephiles who take a week off to watch films here, I can ima- gine that you also agree with me that it would be better for the culture of way- ward, pronounced and artistic films in general if these same people would once in a while go to the cinema during the rest of the year as well.… The IFFR should be smaller, more explicit and more accessible.” Linssen is not alone in her concern about the size of the festival. The logistical handling of Rotterdam’s , visitors is a continuous source of concern for the organization and frustration for the audience. A couple of days before the festival kicks off, the reservation line and ticket sales center are opened. Within hours the most popular screenings are sold out. Tickets are hard to get, espe- cially for the evenings and the weekends. This is frustrating for those not experi- enced enough to know that you have to either arrive early and physically line up at one of the ticket counters in Rotterdam or persistently redialing on your (mobile) phone(s) until you get through to one of the volunteer operators. In Drowning in Popcorn at the International Film Festival Rotterdam? 99 this respect, it is telling that the attempts to launch an online reservation system remain unsuccessful because the early peak in traffic again and again have pro- ven to create a bottleneck that effectively crashes the program. Before the festival opened, , tickets were reserved and , had already been sold. The idea at stake here, however, is not merely the discussion of attendance figures but, more interestingly, the normative evaluation of festi- val cinephilia. Both Peranson and Linssen belong to the proponents of tradi- tional cinephilia. They appreciate Rotterdam for its “commitment to young filmmakers, to experimental filmmaking and installations – and less of a com- mitment to sales agents.” They want the festival to be programmed at the cut- ting edge with an eye for discoveries and remain dedicated to informal and inspiring encounters between the elite communities of film professionals. Linssen, however, mourns the overwhelming presence of an audience not as totally devoted to the Tiger Awards Competition Award (which is awarded for a first or second feature film) and thus her image of the tiger drowning in pop- corn, the ultimate low culture symbol for cinema consumption. Peranson deval- uates popular taste with the statement that he learned “[a]nother lesson from Rotterdam: the films at the bottom of the audience polls are generally the best.” But do the old high culture versus low culture or art versus commerce oppo- sitions really do justice to the rapidly transforming festival world? Can the cri- teria of s cinephilia survive throughout the s into the millennium with- out some transformation? In this regard, I plead for an understanding of festival cinephilia as a process of translation within the changing festival environment and consequently argue that contemporary cinephilia appears in many forms at today’s International Film Festival Rotterdam. The Cinephilia Debates Initially, festival cinephilia seemed to be marginalized in the late s debates, initiated by Susan Sontag and her article “The Decay of Cinema.” As we have shown in the introduction, a lot of the discussions around the alleged death of cinephilia concentrated on the impact of new technologies such as video and the internet. In their anthology Movie Mutations, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Adrian Martin present a new (inter)face for world cinephilia that includes new transna- tional communication modes, such as the internet and film festivals. In the in- troduction, we also argued that their embrace of technological development has not led to a revised conception of cinephilia: “Movie Mutations presents a lineup of the usual suspects of contemporary world cinema (art/avant-garde) favorites – Abbas Kiarostami, Tsai Ming-liang, John Cassavetes et al. Like Sontag, Rosen- 100 Cinephilia baum and Martin are not primarily interested in describing the universal phe- nomenon of cinematic pleasures in its rich variety of relations to the screen, but pursue the specific agenda of positioning “certain tendencies” in the globalized movie world as the new norm for cinephilia.” Writing about the film festival in Rotterdam, Rosenbaum presents his position with full confidence: “So for me, a particular pleasure of attending the Rotterdam Film Festival year after year… is the pleasure of seeing the received wisdom of American commerce repeatedly confounded.