RIFF’s 2011 Emerging Master is Adrian Sitaru.
Sitaru graduated from the “I.L. Caragiale” Theatre and Cinema University in Bucharest with a BA in film and TV directing. In 2001 he was Costa Gavras’ assistant director for Amen. He has since directed several acclaimed short films such as Waves, Lord and The Cage – recipients of nearly 100 international awards in total, a winning streak that continued with his first feature Hooked.
RIFF will keep a close eye on Sitaru and it is our hope that by putting him in the spotlight for this year’s festival edition the festival guests will do the same. Two full-length films by Sitaru will be screened at the festival plus three shorts, and we of course encourage everyone to check out this emerging master.
Béla Tarr:
Lifetime Achievement Award
Susan Sontag said she would want to see Béla Tarr's magnum opus Satantango – all seven hours of it – once a year, and counts his films among those “heroic violations of the norms” on which cinema's future may depend. Almost a mythical figure to begin with, admired by cineastes but unknown to everyone else, his reputation has grown steadily in the 21st century. Gus van Sant was deeply influenced by his work and Tarr is now seen to be part of a trajectory reaching back to, among others, Tarkovsky.
Tarr made his first film at the age of 22. In his early work he focused on the lives of underpriviliged Hungarians in a near documentary-style. His visual style has evolved and is now hard to imitate: painstakingly choreographed camera movements in beautiful black and white shots that will often run minutes on end, creating first a new sense of cinematic time and then a sort of existential crisis. Although often interpreted politically, Tarr maintains that his films have a more “cosmic” dimension and are not to be seen as allegories, but simply cinema about a time, a place, and characters' presence.
Reykjavík International Film Festival is proud to welcome Béla Tarr to the 2011 festival edition for our lifetime achievement award. Three of his films will then be screened at the festival.
James Marsh in Retrospective
James Marsh knows that reality is stranger than fiction and that you can only get away with telling certain stories if they are true. Marsh has made a name for himself telling these stories in groundbreaking documentaries that adopt methods from fiction filmmaking to create extremely tightly structured real-life narratives. His gift for storytelling is also apparent in his fiction films and his versatility has occasionally prompted comparison with Werner Herzog.
Marsh was born in Truro (Cornwall, England) in 1963 and grew up there and in London. He began making documentaries for television in the early nineties. Wisconsin Death Trip earned him a BAFTA for best documentary. The King, his first dramatic feature, was a 2005 Cannes entry. Man on Wire sealed Marsh’s fame when it won the Oscar for best documentary in 2009. Red Riding 1980 is his latest fiction film, based on a novel by David Peace. These days, documentary Project Nim is gathering awards all over after its breakthrough run at Sundance.
Marsh is one of RIFF’s guests this year. Three of his films will be screened at the festival; Wisconsin Death Trip, Man on Wire and Project Nim.
Creative Excellence Award – Women in Cinema
Lone Scherfig has mastered the art of subtle characterization. She repeatedly gets under characters' skins to reveal the impulses of good and evil, while the plot evolves without strain. Though a light humor prevails, there is a pervasive sense of the tragic in her characterization. Scherfig's films are concerned with the lot of ordinary, rather eccentric people.
Born in Denmark in 1959, Lone Scherfig graduated from the Danish Film School in 1984 and had her debut as a film director with Kaj's fødselsdag (1990) (The Birthday Trip). The film was selected for Panorama in Berlin and New Directors, Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2000, Scherfig got her international breakthrough with the romantic Dogme 95 comedy, Italiensk for begyndere (2000) (Italian for Beginners), for which she received the Silver Berlin Bear and huge box-office returns. Scherfig followed up with her first English-language film, Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself (2002). She has since made two films in English, An Education, based on Nick Hornby's screenplay, and One Day, adapted from David Nicholl's popular novel.
RIFF proudly welcomes Lone Scherfig to the 2011 festival edition, where she will be awarded the Creative Excellence Award for Women in Cinema. Furthermore, three of Scerfig’s films will be screened at the festival; Italiensk for begyndere, Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself and One Day.