29/6/2009
NIFFF
Different Venues, Neuchatel
Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival
Created in 2000, the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF) has become a major film event in Switzerland in just 8 editions. Indeed, the NIFFF’s quality and original programs, as well as its prestigious guests convinced both the public (more than 20,000 spectators in 2008) and the critics.
The first characteristic of the festival is a rich and diversified programming constructed around one central axis:
* Fantastic cinema
and two complementary axes:
* Asian cinema
* Digital Images
Fantastic cinema : pioneering aesthetics for the seventh art
The concept of "fantastic cinema" upon which the NIFFF's programming is based, is open and encompasses those films which transcend the commonly accepted view of 'normal reality' defined by the 'laws of nature.' These transgressions can take many different forms, from the most spectacular to the more subtle. They can actually allow us to enter completely imaginary worlds, introducing a minute doubt into our habitual perception of everyday reality.
The festival is interested in all these divergences. This allows the programming to include a huge variety of films: from blockbusters to films d'auteur, from black comedy to Sci-Fi, and from stop-motion animation to CGI. The aim of the Festival is to emphasize both the creativity of the genre today and its role in the history of cinema here and abroad.
Asia: fantastic for new trends
Over the years, the vitality of Asian cinema has been acknowledged internationally. Despite the fact that Asian cinema produces its fair share of blockbusters and wins awards in many of the largest film festivals, its access remains very limited in Switzerland ; hence, the Festival’s decision to launch New Cinema from Asia, a competition devoted to Asian cinema only. This competition is not restricted to fantastic films, as it also encompasses other major popular genres : thrillers, comedies, kung fu and sword films. Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong are well represented, but films from less expected countries such as Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines also attract remarkable attention. A unique opportunity to explore the tremendous diversity of this booming cinema, still largely unrecognized here.
Digital images: the cinema of tomorrow
From the very beginning, "fantastic cinema" was closely associated with technology. Thanks to special effects, filmmakers were able to give form to their imaginary worlds. Today, developments in computer technology produce extraordinary results in the creation and manipulation of images. To take the measure of these recent technologies, the festival not only presents a selection of films created with digital imagery, but also organizes a workshop bringing together designers, scientists and industrialists. Screenings, meetings, workshops and demonstrations give experts and laymen a unique opportunity to discover the latest artistic and technological innovations in the field of digital images.
For more information, please visit : http://www.imagingthefuture.ch
In optimized conditions (wider screen, Dolby Surround, more seats), the 3.0 version of the Open Air will offer as usual the most expected unreleased movies and previews of the season. Atypical and quality animation movies will be screened: Brendan and the Secret of Kells (Tomm Moore & Nora Towney) and Mary and Max by Adam Eliott. Also in the program: the successful manga’s adaptation 20th Century Boys by Yukihiko Tsutsumi, the complex free action of Crank 2: High Voltage (Mark Reverdine & Brian Taylor, the pessimistic realism of the thriller The Chaser by Hong-jin Na or the dark and venomous romanticism of The Countess, a drama signed by Julie Delpy.
9th edition : June 30th – July 5th 2009
The 9th edition of the Neuchâtel Fantastic Film Festival will take place from Tuesday June 30 to Sunday July 5 2009. If the complete program will only be disclosed to the public on June 12, three exceptional programs can already be revealed now:
WILLIAM CASTLE, A VISIONARY ILLUSIONIST
In his prolix career, William Castle (1914-1977), in turn, directed, produced and acted in about fifty movies, but he became legendary mainly due to his vocation to frighten the audience by all possible means. In the late fifties, spurred on by the ambition to both challenge the competition of TV and to ensure the success of his movies, he developed the most far-fetched promotion strategies of the cinema history by turning the projections into real fairground attractions: glasses with supernatural powers (13 Ghosts, 1960), vibrating seats (The Tingler, 1959) or even a decisive vote from the spectators to seal the hero’s fate (Mr. Sardonicus, 1961).
CATEGORY III: TRANSGRESSION MADE IN HONG-KONG
Corresponding to our “not allowed for audience under 18” rating, the fiendish Category III appeared in Hong Kong in 1988 and was intended to allow the broadcast of movies with a tendentious content (violence, sex, politics) that were until then purely and simply censored.
As a result of this rating category institution, a totally transgressive production was quickly generated then and blew up all genres and aesthetic norms, expressing excessively the Honk Kong life style of the late 20th century.
COLD SWEAT: CONTEMPORARY SCANDINAVIAN GENRE CINEMA
By considering that the fantastic genre renewal in Europe was only the work of a handful of inspired Spanish directors, one forgets probably a little too fast the wind of freshness that has blown from Scandinavia on genre cinema in the last years.
For its 9th edition to be held from 30 June to 5 July 2009, the Swiss event for fantastic and Asian films and for futuristic images (NIFFF) presents its mysterious poster.
“This is all an illusion!” is the phrase that best describes both this poster and the festival’s approach to fantastic cinema: a cinema playing on appearances, whose aesthetic moves from the uncanny to humor, seduction, or violence; and filmmakers, from Georges Méliès to more contemporary directors, who present an out-of-joint reality where the imagination takes precedence over reason.
Mystery, glamour, and illusions will thus reign supreme over Neuchâtel’s movie theaters from June 30 to July 5, where spectators will have the opportunity to discover the most anticipated films of the summer.
Different Venues
Neuchatel