If it's Wednesday, it must be Pussy Riot day. Pranksters, punk singers, activists and ex-cons Nadya Tolokonikova and Masha Alyokhina were here to give Rotterdam Film Festival their all. At lunchtime they gave a talk; at teatime they showed their Pussy Riot v Putin, a film pieced together from years of self-documentation in life, performance and in rehearsal.
They're not subtle performers, but they have a tyrant to defeat. "Shit, shit, the Lord's shit!" they shout enthusiastically over a thrashy guitar. "Mary, Mother of God, drive Putin away!"
Nadya, left, and Masha of the Russian Punk band Pussy Riot attend a press conference at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.Credit: AFP
A second documentary is on the way; what's missing from it, they say, is the record of their jail time filmed by the state. "We were filmed every hour," said Masha at their lunchtime session. "In the US there are surveillance cameras, but the Russian prisons are not so rich, so the guards walk around filming you, even in the shower. It's about control. After the revolution, we will use a lot of this footage!"
Rotterdam turned out in force for the Riot grrrls, but then the Rotterdam Film Festival audience goes to everything. Of all the major film festivals, Rotterdam is the one that remains staunchly and almost exclusively focused on cinema as art. There are no red carpets and no stars; Pussy Riot were greeted with enthusiasm, but not as celebrities. "Hosanna, it's about films and those films reaching an audience," says Australian director Rolf De Heer.
Dutch-born De Heer is chair of this year's jury for the festival's Tiger Awards, a competition between 13 films. He believes that audience is the proof of the festival's success. No film is too difficult and there are very few walk-outs. "They are committed, passionate, they think about the films and discuss them," he says. "They may not think highly of every film but they will give it a shot. And they'll applaud the effort."
year, but it was in the '90s that it both grew and gained enormous kudos for unearthing and promoting films from Asia and South America when no other European festival was interested in them. Now that auteurs such as Takeshi Kitano and Carlos Reygadas are international festival staples, some say Rotterdam has lost its USP.
"But this notion of it being a festival of discovery can't really go on," says De Heer. "Once South American cinema has been discovered, it will keep going but there's less left to discover. The whole festival scene is changing – it has developed to such an extent from where it was 20 years ago it's extraordinary – so a festival like Rotterdam can't stay the same, with the same reputation, and nor should it.
"The fundamental thing for me is how they link up with their audience and as long as you are doing that, you are doing something perfectly good."
All that said, everyone here surely makes a discovery of some kind. I have been here only for three days, but that has been time enough to catch up with Adelaide director Matthew Bate's Sam Klemke's Time Machine, one of four Australian films on the program. Having discovered Klemke, an American basement-dweller who has made annual commentaries on his life for most of his 57 years, Bate uses this home-movie life story to unravel our need to make a mark on the world in a narrative that is both inventive – and thus very Rotterdam – but also funny in a wry, very Australian way. (The other Australian films were de Heer's own Charlie's Country, Mark Hartley's documentary about Cannon Films, Electric Boogaloo, and The Search for Weng Weng, Andrew Leavold's investigation of a dwarf actor in Filipino exploitation movies.)
A personal highlight for me was the Argentinian film Parabellum by Lukas Valenta Rinner: a weird, ruthless view of a forest training camp for survivalists that recalls Michael Haneke at his sourest. Alice Cares, a Swedish film about a doll-like robot programmed to talk to lonely old people, is an indisputable festival hit for director Sander Burger. So is Above and Below, Nicholas Steiner's documentary, which is competing for a Tiger, about people pursuing romantic hopes by living off the grid in America.
Fittingly for Rotterdam, the audience award is of crucial importance. Each day a chart shows the shifts in the top 10 audience favourites, compiled from report cards after the screenings, as more films enter the fray. The number one hasn't changed all week, however: The Dark Horse. This little film from New Zealand about the Maori chess prodigy Genesis Potini has come up trumps against everything else, including a whole sidebar of hits from other festivals: it's a tribute both to James Napier Robertson's film, but also the eager curiosity of the Rotterdam audience.