IFFR to honor Nils Malmros with a retrospective; focus on Heinz Emigholz in Regained

• IFFR to honor Nils Malmros with a retrospective
• Focus on Heinz Emigholz in Signals: Regained

The 43rd edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam puts the spotlight on two remarkable auteurs of European cinema. Danish filmmaker Nils Malmros will be honored with an extensive focus on his films, drawing much from his own life and depicting growing up and living in his hometown ?rhus. Signals: Regained, IFFR's returning section dedicated to the memory of film from a particular and contemporary viewpoint, includes highlights of the documentary series Architecture as Autobiography by German experimental filmmaker and artist Heinz Emigholz.

Nils Malmros retrospective
IFFR 2014 honors Danish film auteur Nils Malmros (1944) with an extensive retrospective of his films. With films such as Lars Ole 5.c, Boys and Tree of Knowledge, he is considered the ‘father of Danish cinema realism'. He has consistently worked on an oeuvre that draws from his own life and that of his relatives, and is a graceful chronicler of growing up and living in his home town ?rhus. Highly regarded at home, he is the winner of four Bodil Awards for best film in Denmark. His timeless cinema is unflinchingly honest, but stears far from hip provocations; an international reappraisal of his cinema is long overdue.
Nils Malmros was trained as a doctor and is autodidact as a filmmaker. His father Richard Malmros, a famous neurosurgeon, was the inspiration for Facing the Truth (2002). Lead actor Jacob Cedergren will join Malmros in presenting his latest film, Sorrow and Joy, that deals with Malmros' greatest personal tragedy.

Heinz Emigholz focus
Heinz Emigholz (1948) is an eminent German experimental filmmaker-artist whose monumental body of work stretches from film to drawing to literature. He dedicated the past fifteen years to completing the documentary series Architecture as Autobiography, focusing on visionary 20th century architects such as Luis Sullivan, Bruce Goff, Adolf Loos and August Perret. At the occasion of the conclusion of this series, IFFR and The New Institute join forces to present highlights of the series encompassing fifteen titles of various formats including an installation. The focus is part of Signals: Regained.

Signals: Regained
Regained shows innovative works using cinema's history as a main ingredient. Many filmmakers and artists choose to deal directly with images, sounds, themes or texts from cinema's rich legacy. These works are all new, but they are not quite 'contemporary'. They create a particular sense of cinematic experience, as they merge the present with the past.

A typical example is the documentary Tresspassing Bergman, that leads us to the remote house of the late Ingmar Bergman, with its surprising viewing room full of curious VHS-tapes. Another time-warp experience is delivered by British artist Jamie Shovlin, reconstructing the illustrious seventies B-movie Hicker Meat with his Rough Cut.

Regained does not only deal with the tradition of the narrative feature film. There is the much delayed European premiere of a recently restored experimental portrait film, Tiger Morse, shot by Andy Warhol himself. Two major projects revive home-movies in a unique way. Yaël André presents the world premiere of a Super-8 film compilation, Quand je serai dictateur. Through a very inspired voice-over the anonymous footage is transformed into a deeply personal story. With his No More Road Trips? Rick Prelinger on the contrary requests the audience to deliver their own voice-over, just like one comments on home movies.

Nowadays, the language of cinema is used in many contexts outside of the conventional cinema. The exhibition POST SCRIPT unites seven artists who have created important new work by revisiting, re-editing or otherwise recycling older, classic films. The media they use vary from film posters to Photoshop-animation and from vinyl records to light-boxes. If anything, this year's harvest of Regained works demonstrates that also in cinematic terms, ecological thinking can be one of the most adventurous contemporary attitudes.

For more information please contact the IFFR Press Office, Nancy van Oorschot / Mieke van der Linden / Isabelle de Klein, [email protected], +31 10 8909090.