Editor

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) adds two programs to Signals, its section of thematic and topical programs. The festival honours Kira Muratova  with a full retrospective of her features and short films. The second addition to Signals is ‘Changing Channels’, a program about episodic storytelling featuring new television work and web-based series directed by filmmakers. The full program of IFFR 2013 will be available on www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com by Thursday 17 January; the festival opens Wednesday 23 January.

Signals: Kira Muratova

The IFFR is honoured to welcome Kira Muratova in Rotterdam and to present the first full retrospective of her work outside Russia and Ukraine, ranging from her first work, the short feature On the Steep Cliff (1961), till her latest feature film The Eternal Homecoming (2012). Ukrainian based Kira Muratova is one of the most phenomenal artists that emerged in Eastern Europe in the past fifty years. What makes her so unique is that she does not fit with any institutionalised film tradition or film context except her own ones. On the contrary: she has always been opposing and breaking every niche she has been put into. This is one of the reasons why she is not fully recognised in the festival world and among cinephiles. As a completely independent artist Muratova creates and recreates her own ideas (and ideals) of perfection and imperfection, sublimity and decadence while at the same time questions the blurring boundaries between them. Her paradoxical vision combines exquisite humour and deep sadness and plays with the distinctions and similarities between poetry and cruelty, tenderness and harshness. The way she approaches things is totally inimitable and at the same time it is irresistibly “contagious”. The retrospective is compiled by IFFR programmer Evgeny Gusyatinskiy. (See supplement for more information)

Signals: Changing Channels
Changing Channels brings together recent examples of episodic storytelling for television and the web by independent art-house filmmakers. Audiences can indulge in marathon viewings of the newest television series while comfortably sitting in the cinema. Highlights are Going My Home, Kore-eda Hirokazu’s first venture into television and Burning Bush, Agnieszka Holland’s new mini-series and first original HBO Czech Republic production. The special ‘TV Nights’-programs feature the best comedic talents amongst the independent filmmakers with television work by Kitao Sakurai and web series by Ry Russo-Young (both USA) and Sebastián Hofmann (Mexico), who also presents his directorial feature film debut Halley in the Festival’s Hivos Tiger Awards Competition.

A dedicated web lounge with today’s best web series by emerging (and established) filmmakers will be operational in screening venue Cinerama during the festival.  A special talk show revealing everything there is to know about web series will be organized together with the Dutch Media Fund on Sunday January 27^th at 21.00h in the Doelen. Changing Channels is compiled by IFFR Programmer Inge de Leeuw. (See supplement for more information)

About Signals 2013

This edition, IFFR’s Signals section presents six thematic and retrospective programs. Next to Changing Channels and the Kira Muratova retrospective, Signals includes Inside Iran (a program featuring recent Iranian films and video art), Sound Stages (a program about the acoustic experience of cinema), Regained (presenting works that reflect on cinema) and a retrospective of German film and television director Dominik Graf.