From the "On The Scene" Archives:

by Mark Rabinowitz

(indieWIRE/2.4.2000) -- Each year, there are Amer-indies that float around the festival circuit garnering awards and critical praise, but get completely ignored by distributors. While Rotterdam is primarily known as a showcase for new European films, there are some small and noteworthy U.S. movies screening in various sections of the fest, including many without distribution such as Ed Radke's "The Dream Catcher," Robert J. Siegel's "Swimming" and Christopher Wilcha's Slamdance winner "The Target Shoots First," which are all garnering positive buzz around the fest.

Another North American film gaining momentum is Clay Eide's "Dead Dogs." Described as a "stylish noir thriller," the film is really a relationship study, with everyone getting screwed at the end. (By the way, I didn't give anything away; with films like this, what happens at the end is far less important than how it happens.)

An impressively acted piece, "Dead Dogs" unfolds like a novel, with deliberate pacing, that slowly builds to a point where the audience thinks, "Uh, oh. This isn't going to turn out well." The film was shot in North Dakota (home state of producer Regge Bulman and his brother writer Todd Bulman), but could easily take place in small town Texas, Kansas or Louisiana a universality that makes it accessible to all audiences. The film was actually shot in the same motel that screenwriter Bulman worked at. The team had a five-day rehearsal period, and shot the film in only 13 days.

"Dead Dogs" follows Tom (Joe Reynolds), a night security guard at a motel, and since the pool is closed, there are few guests and not much to do, except have the occasional tryst with a married chambermaid in unoccupied rooms. He spends most of his nights playing chess with the desk clerk, Gordon (John Durbin). One morning, however, he returns home to discover on his answering machine that old friends Clay and Carmen are planning to visit their old hometown. We soon learn that Carmen was Tom's girlfriend, and that Clay (well played by Jay Underwood) moved in on her and skipped town. There's much more to this tale of friendship and betrayal, however; suffice it to say that Clay and Carmen's return is not going to make Tom's life more stable.

Are you interested? Maybe thinking, "if the performances are good, and the story bears out, this could be released. . . ." Well, what if I told you that it's shot in black and white. (Pause, as the distributors run screaming from the theater.) According to Eide, the reaction from distributors has been universal: "Well, we liked it, but it's in black and white. Sorry." Hopefully, in aesthetics-conscious Rotterdam, someone out here will be able to appreciate a great story that is also shot in concise black and white.

As far as other buzz in the festival goes, folks are talking about the Fukasaku Kinji retrospective as being a once-in-a-lifetime experience, with most of the films rarely exhibited and only one available on video in the States. The only one I've managed to see so far is "Black Lizard," in which Fukasaku departs from his usual gangster/action milieu (in films such as "Cops Vs. Thugs," "Yakuza Graveyard," and "The Wolf, The Pig and The Man") and opts instead for a stylishly camp, noir-detective thriller, featuring a transvestite playing a woman in one of the lead roles.

Another interesting little item about the IFFR is that the standings for the Audience Award (to be handed out on February 5th) are posted in theater lobbies. As of a few days ago, Lukas Moodysson's "Fucking Amal" ("Show Me Love" in the US) was leading the competition, which includes all of the feature-length films in the fest, counting such relative heavyweights as "The Insider," "Holy Smoke" and "Dogma." "Fucking Amal" is a story about the blossoming love between two teenage girls in the small town of Amal in Sweden. 

Read indieWIRE's interview with Moodysson.

Over at CineMart, Rotterdam's exclusive market, the lobby of the Hilton hotel continues with activity, with folks sitting at every available table, taking advantage of the chicken and cheese tostis (basically grilled white bread sandwiches) that the lobby cafe sells, and trying to work out deals. The IFFR really reaches fever pitch during the CineMart days, with the video library, Internet access, and lobby tables all with waiting lines. However, it is also much more civilized than New York's Independent Feature Film Market, with far fewer projects, and no blatant lobbying. Of course, CineMart projects are not finished films, so the only representative is usually the producer.

Incidentally, there is something I noticed about the Rotterdam fest, long before I got here, which is the fact that it's a technologically advanced festival: well-conceived website, complete with press releases, screening times, and various news articles and pix from the fest.

Check it out here.

On Thursday, it included stories on Bingham Ray discussing his proposed, new "production venture" and the Chinese premiere of long-banned filmmaker Zhang Yuan's "Seventeen Years" in Beijing.

At one of IFFR Liaison Lucius Barres' Director's Drinks sessions, I also learned of the existence of D:on digital broadcasting, a company providing more than an hour of scripted streaming video from the festival on a daily basis. Shot both remotely and in the studio, the segments are edited and digitized at a large production space on the lower level of the main Pathe cinemas in Rotterdam. I visited the space and was given a tour by Marcel Brouns, the managing director of D:on.

The space contains about 5 computer workstations including an AVID, a sound mixing board, a studio space for interviews, and 10 ISDN lines for the uploading of video to the main server in Amsterdam. They also have encoded streams for various connection speeds from 28.8 bps to more than 500 bps. It's clearly the only place to go for online video coverage of the festival.

As for coffeeshops, the locals seem pretty indifferent to the fascination that visitors have with de-criminalized marijuana. As far as the festival guests are concerned, however, coffeeshops are a wonderful way to wind down and relax after the stress of trying to sell, buy or even get tickets for, movies. Unfortunately the two that I have visited have turned out to be rather loud (heavy metal music in one) and not at all conducive to relaxing. You're probably more likely to spy filmmakers, journalists, and distributors sharing a joint at one of the hotel bars or parties late at night, than a posse of folks visiting a coffeeshop. I think that deals might be worked out more quickly and with much less animosity if they were done in Rotterdam over a joint, than in Sundance over cigarettes and coffee at 4 in the morning. Just a thought.