Program of events at Fribourg International Film Festival
23rd edition of the Fribourg International Film Festival
With a new award, an additional half day of screenings, eighty movies from around 30 countries and numerous guests, the 23d edition of the FIFF foreshadows an intense week of cinematographic activity from March 14-21. For his second year as artistic director Edouard Waintrop resolved to “emphasise the ‘discoveries and trends’ aspect” of the Festival. Following the success of its first edition, the professional platform “Forum at FIFF” will once again take place.
This year, the public will enjoy an additional afternoon of film-watching: both the Rex cinemas and the Cap’Ciné multiplex will begin screenings on Saturday midday instead of in the evening. These screenings kick off eight days of discoveries, since most of the eighty feature films and sixteen short films featured in the program have never been screened in Switzerland or in Europe (for the most part).
Fourteen films in competition
The international competition is made up of twelve feature films and two documentaries from thirteen countries scattered between Latin America, Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. Directed by fresh talents and a few well-established directors from the field of world cinema, these films will be assessed first and foremost by an International Jury featuring Adoor Gopalakrishnan (India), Martina Gusman (Argentina), Nicolas Philibert (France), Oliver Paulus (Switzerland) and Norma Rivera Valdivia (Peru).
This year, the Jury will award a new prize: the “Talent Tape” Award, sponsored by Egli Film AG and Kodak SA. Worth 27.000 CHF, this prize consists of a 90 minute video-to-film transfer. The transfer from video to Kodak film in cinema standard will be completed by the Egli Film AG laboratory in Zurich.
Grand Prize of the Fribourg International Film Festival is the «Regard d’Or». The award consists of an amount of CHF 30,000. The total value of all awards amounts to CHF 77,000.
Please find the full list of the competition entries at the bottom of this message. On www.fiff.ch you can find the complete festival program. High res images and the festival catalogue are ready for download via «press» and «login press»:
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Opening - closing - special events
On Saturday, March 14, at 7:30 PM, the Festival will present its opening film with the Swiss premiere of Leonera by Pablo Trapero at the Cinéma Rex. The Argentinean filmmaker will be present, as will Martina Gusman, the lead actress and co-producer of the film (as well as member of the International Jury). Alain Berset, the president of the Council of States, will officially open the festival.
The award ceremony will take place on Saturday, March 21 at 5 PM at Cap’Ciné, and will be followed by the screening of Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas’ latest film, Linha de passe.
Amongst the Festival’s special events, a not-to-be missed evening on Tuesday, March 17, will feature a carte blanche given by the FIFF to Federal Councillor Pascal Couchepin, who will present Satyajit Ray’s Aparajito (1956) a classic of Indian cinema. This carte blanche marks the first anniversary of the Swiss ratification of the UNESCO conventions for cultural diversity.
A special edition of Total Recall, the International festival of the renarrated film, will bring together Swiss film professionals who will take the stage in an attempt to win the trophy.
Panorama: Out of Bollywood
Introducing the new trends of Indian cinema to the Swiss public, the FIFF has concocted a programme featuring thirteen films produced in 2007 and 2008. This panorama reflects the cultural, social, linguistic and political diversity of the huge sub-continent and features spectacular work from the prolific Bollywood studios, of course, but also more intimate films and comedies. To quote Hubert Niogret, the author of the three documentaries of this programme, «a Bengali film can be as different from a Keralese film as a Swedish film from an Italian film» (cf. pages 19-31 of this document).
Parallel to this panorama, the Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire of Fribourg presents an exhibition of the photographer Sabine Weiss, from Rapho Agency in Paris: India 1986-1999, as well as a selection of her Artists’ Portraits.
Panorama: Fábulas da favela
Brazilian film critic José Carlos Avella hatched the idea of this programme, which brings together twelve films shot between 1950 and 2008, and questions a major social phenomenon of his country: the favela. A dramatic location par excellence, the shantytown has inspired a wide spate of cinematographic genres (documentaries, thrillers and musicals), thus mirroring the vitality and modernity of Brazil, on a both cultural and human level. The programme features Tropa de Elite by José Padilha, winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2008, which divided the critics and will be at the core of a debate organised by the FIFF (cf. pages 33 to 48 of this document).
Tribute to Francisco Lombardi
«For a long time, I have dreamt of introducing a non-Spanish-speaking public to the work of Peruvian director Francisco Lombardi, who despite his notoriety in Latin America is unknown in Europe,» explains Edouard Waintrop. In collaboration with the Lima Film Archive and the Cinémathèque suisse, the FIFF therefore presents ten films directed by Francisco Lombardi (born in 1949) between 1983 and 2006. The films offer a critical vision of Peru with screenplays that were notably adapted from novels by Mario Vargas Llosa, starting with La ciudad y los perros, which revealed the director’s talent in 1985. Francisco Lombardi will be present at the FIFF, where he will introduce his films personally from March 17 to March 21 (cf. pages 49 to 62 of this document).
Panorama: Women’s Revenge
This programme was inspired by a cinematographic genre that appeared in the United States in the Seventies. For the FIFF, it triggers off a reflection regarding gender representation in cinema: «rape and revenge movies» revolve around women who seek a highly violent vengeance following the humiliations inflicted on them by men. The genre finds an echo in Indian films of the Nineties with the true story of the “Bandit Queen” Phoolan Dhevi, or Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi’s demonic Baise-moi in 2000. However, American films of the Thirties and the Forties also have their share of heroines fighting machismo (cf. pages 63 to 71 of this document).
Panorama Noir Total: The Godfather in Asia
Launched last year, the «Noir Total» section will examine the theme of the mafia godfather in Asian cinema, as treated by Francis Ford Coppola in the Seventies. Edouard Waintrop, the artistic director of the FIFF, has chosen five films of the years 2000-2008 that bear the Coppola seal. They are signed Johnnie To (Hong-Kong), Shimit Amin (India) and Ram Gopal Varma, the «godfather» of a brand new genre, the “Mumbai Noir”. The programme also invites the spectators to explore the universe of the spiritual father of Asian film, Akira Kurosawa, with The Bad sleep well, inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet and shot in 1960 (cf. pages 73 to 83 of this document).
Made in Nollywood
Lagos, Nigeria’s economic capital, is home to an astonishing cultural phenomenon called «Nollywood», which turns out more than 2.000 films each year. These films are distributed via video clubs due to the lack of local movie theatres. Thanks to German filmmaker Dorothee Wenner, the FIFF opens its doors to this surprising and very foreign cinematographic production. Besides her own documentary, Wenner, a Nollywood specialist, has selected five very recent fiction films. The Nollywood films will be screened at an alternative video location set up in front of the Ancienne Gare (cf. pages 85 to 92 of this document).
Planète Cinéma
Our programme for schoolchildren and teenagers presents ten films, seven of which are featured in the official selection for high-school students. No less than 8.500 participants aged between five and twenty have signed up for 55 screenings in Fribourg, Bulle, Guin and Payerne. 1.200 of these movie-goers will enjoy the opportunity of meeting some of the directors of these films.
Forum at FIFF
The professional platform created in 2008 has put on bulk: this year, six film projects will bring together filmmakers and producers. In addition to this, the FIFF will launch a professional workshop on the situation and the perspectives of film production in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa
(cf. page 9 of this document).
