Presentation

Rotterdam is one of the best indie-spirited festivals on the circuit. But don't take our word for it. As Adam Langer explains in The Ultimate Film Festival Guide, "the Rotterdam festival is one of the biggest, one of the best, and one of the most creatively programmed. Over the course of the festival, the city becomes host not only to a slew of world and Dutch premieres and great focus programs, but also intriguing lectures, showings of avant garde films with live music accompaniment, a children's film festival and related exhibits in area museums."

This year's 30th International Film Festival Rotterdam will feature twelve days of this largest cultural event of the Netherlands. Over 300,000 visitors will make their way in 18 venues through a programme consisting of over 300 feature films, shorts, videos, CD ROM's, expositions, theatre and other performances and festive dance parties.

The 30th International Film Festival Rotterdam is divided into these section:

- VPRO Tiger Award Competition
- Hubert Bals Fund Harvest
- Main programme feature films
- Main programme short movies
- Special programmes:
On the Waterfront
Ex Voto: Mapping the Heart
Filmmaker in Focus
In Praise of Folly
Critics' Choice
Exploding Cinema (Cinema Live, Cinema Online, Cinema without Walls)
- Cinemart

In the VPRO Tiger Award Competition, new talent in the world of film compete for the prestigious VPRO Tiger Award, The year 2000 winner Suzhou River, went on to win prizes all the way through December on the festival circuit. Films selected to enter this competition are first or second feature films from new filmmakers. The three main awards include 10,000 Euros in cash each, as well as a guaranteed offer for both theatrical distribution and TV airing of the winning films in The Netherlands.

The Hubert Bals Fund Harvest is a particularly rich harvest of about 25 new feature films from developing countries, including at least eight world premieres, and has been realized with the support of the Hubert Bals Fund. The International Film Festival supports the film industry in southern and/or developing countries in two ways: through direct financial support and by participation in the organization of seminars and workshops at film festivals in the countries concerned. For this purpose, the Hubert Bals Fund was founded in 1988. This year' edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam presents a harvest of twenty-five new feature films including Telegram (Slamet Rahardjo Djarot, Indonesia), and Dark Night (Oleg Kovalov, Russia).

According to Rotterdam tradition, the Asian cinema is well-represented in the main programme feature films. Films from Iran, Thailand, South Korea, China and of course Japan occupy a prominent place, in addition to a considerable share of European films and a scrupulously picked selection of independent productions from North America. Rotterdam is showing for instance In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai's new feature film that lends a higher meaning to the concept of elegance. There will also be a selection of short films in the main programme.

There are several Special programmes, which fall under the title "On the waterfront." A special item in On the Waterfront is a commission granted by the International Film Festival Rotterdam to ten filmmakers from the vanguard of the rapidly growing digital cinema to make a video diary in or from a harbour city of their choice. Another section, "Filmmakers in Focus" has chosen this year to honor the Swedish director Roy Andersson and the Franco-Swiss director/author Anne-Marie Miéville.

The Internet is a hatchery for new initiatives in the field of visual and narrative techniques, hence cinema online. Therefore, the International Film Festival presents recent developments in the film on Internet in Cinema Online, compiled by Femke Wolting. The programme is a search for artists, filmmakers, film studios and Internet start-ups that explore the future of online entertainment. Their endeavours are as divers as the possibilities offered by the Internet. There will be animation, documentaries, linear and non-linear film and interactive cinematographic projects that were designed especially for the Internet.

The Cinema Live programme highlights the comeback of film as a 'live event'. Film appears in an ever-growing number of crossover events; in theatre, projections are made part of the mis-en-scene, traditional films are being remixed and cinematographic works are placed in a club environment. Cinema Live presents the merging of different forms of art in which the direction is largely determined by the performance itself.

The Future of the Small Screen of internationally renowned experts such as Greg Roach (director of the X-files game) and Michael Backes (designer of the new Michael Crichton game), the programme makers spent a week examining how the internet and television could jointly form a platform for the development of new programme concepts, both for fiction and documentaries. The results of this master class will be presented during the film festival to a selected audience.

Last but not least, behind the screens of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the new festival location of the congress and concert hall de Doelen will house the eighteenth edition of CineMart, co-production market for film professionals. From Sunday, 28 January through Wednesday, 1 February many thousands of meetings will take place with the objective of securing funds for forty selected film projects such as Halcyon (Karim Traïdia), Hush (Hashiguchi Ryosuke), and Magdalene (Peter Mullan).