26/01/2007

The first days of the 2007 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) were typified by black and white contrasts.

Wednesday, the festival opened with the Argentinean media satire The Aerial from Esteban Sapir, filmed in black and white. Also in dual tones were Ragnar Bragason’s Parents and Peter Schreiner’s Bellavista, which had their world and international premieres, respectively.

Parents is the second part of a diptych on parent-offspring relations from Icelandic director Bragason, who elaborated the characters and loosely connected stories with the actors of the theatre group Vesturport with methods reminiscent of Mike Leigh. Though not as compact and devastating as last year’s Children, Parents nevertheless intrigues and again benefits from excellent cinematography and acting.

Both films are Vesturport and Klikk Productions projects and are sold by the Icelandic Film Centre.

Also in black and white and even more painterly and stately in pace is the Austrian documentary Bellavista, which chronicles the life and thoughts of several women in an Italian village, where they are the last speakers of an East-Tyrol dialect. The portrait of their disappearing lifestyle is accompanied by revelations relating to their family life. It makes for an interesting companion to Parents, showing that life and fiction are not always that far apart. Bellavista was produced and is sold by echt.zeit.film.

Just how black and white things can be became clear with the news that the Dutch government proposes to cut funding to IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund. Set up to co-finance films from developing countries, the fund gets about 50% of its funding from the state. Festival director Sandra den Hamer pleaded for "the films and filmmakers in the developing countries [who] cannot do without [the state’s] support".