The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) has revealed the first 50 titles for this year’s edition, running Nov 8 to Nov 19.
As part of a previously announced Wang Bing retrospective, the director has been invited to programme his “top 10”. The films he has selected are all Chinese and all date from 1999 or later.
They are: Before the Flood (2005) directed by Yifan Li, Yu YanBing’ai (2007) by Yan Feng; Born in Beijing (2011) by Li Ma; Last Train Home (2009) by Lixin Fan; The Next Life (2011) by Jian Fan; Old Men (1999) by Lina Yang; Petition (2009) by Liang Zhao; To Live is Better Than to Die (2003) by Weijun Chen; Wheat Harvest (2008) by Tong Xu, and When the Bough Breaks (2011) by Dan Ji. The selection is billed by IDFA as offering “a contemplative journey into contemporary Chinese cinema.” One of the films, Last Train Home, received IDFA Bertha-Fund support and won the main award at IDFA in 2009.
The features are programmed as part of what IDFA describes as its widest ever East and Southeast Asian cinema selection. It will include six of Wang Bing’s titles: Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks, Man in Black, Youth (Spring), Alone, ’T il Madness Do Us Part and Mrs. Fang. The director will be in the Netherlands as a guest of honour and will give a major talk.
IDFA has also announced its Focus programmes and Corresponding Cinemas section.
As part of Focus: Fabrications, the festival will be looking at the relationship of trust between documentary film and audiences, 10 films will be screened including Safi Faye’ s docufiction about the village she was born, Letter From My Village, and Massoud Bakhshi’s kaleidoscopic city portrait, Tehran Has No More Pomegranates!
Meanwhile, ”Focus; 16 Worlds on 16” looks back on the 100 years since Kodak introduced 16mm. Less expensive and using lighter cameras than 35mm, the format enabled indie and experimental filmmaking to flourish. Tittles screening include Sara Gómez’s The Other Island, Agnès Varda’s Daguerréotypes, and Abbas Kiarostami’s First Case Second Case.
Another programme strand, ”Corresponding Cinemas: A series of films and conversations on the invisible connections between filmmakers”, will look at creative connections between filmmakers who’ve been inspired by one another. This section includes work from Sky Hopinka, Basma al- Sharif, Jumana Manna, Ibrahim Shaddad, and Abderrahmane Sissako.
As previously announced, British director Peter Greenaway will also be in town to pick up a Lifetime Achievement award. His work straddles documentary and fiction, often blurring genre boundaries. IDFA will be screening five of his films, among them his 1989 cannibalism satire The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, starring Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon, and his fictionalised biopic Rembrandt’s J’Accuse…! which posits the tantalising idea that the Dutch master’s most famous work The Night Watch holds clues to a murder mystery.
During IDFA, Greenaway will be interviewed on stage by IDFA artistic director Orwa Nyrabia and is expected to share secrets of his craft at a surprise screening.
Further programme announcements will follow throughout October and the final competition titles will be announced on Wednesday, October 18, during the IDFA 2023 press conference.
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