This week I present a selection, below, of more of my favorite posters from the International Film Festival Rotterdam where the walls of every theater and meeting place were crammed with posters and flyers. Though a couple of these may have appeared at earlier festivals, all were new to me. The one design that I loved that I could not find a better image of can be seen high on the wall above: the poster for Cameron Jamie’s 10-minute ode to furniture humping Massage the History (yes, even short films have posters at Rotterdam). Here are sixteen of my favorites:
Above, clockwise from top left: Bruno Safadi and Noa Bressane’s Brazilian counterculture doc Belair; Emmanuel Laurent’s nouvelle vague history lesson, Two in the Wave, whose poster features a photo of an astonishingly young Truffaut and Godard; Serge Bromberg’s doc on Henri-Georges Clouzot’s unfinished L’enfer, featuring a blue-lipped Romy Schneider; and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s much maligned romantic fantasy Air Doll.
Along with Dave Plunkert’s poster for Do It Again, which I featured last week, there was some great illustration around town: for Emmet Malloy’s concert doc The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights (designed, I'm pretty sure, by regular Stripes poster artist Rob Jones); Omar Rodriguez-López’ Sentimental Engine Slayer (designed by hardcore punk vocalist turned graphic designer Sonny Kay); a sketch of Tiger Award juror Jeanne Balibar for Pedro Costa’s Ne change rien, and some rather fabulous illustration for Dick Tuinder’s Dutch entry Winterland.
Again clockwise from top left: two posters for Thunska Pansittivorakul’s censor-baiting Reincarnate (the NSFW design with the fabulous typography is by Taechit Jiropaskosol while the equally provocative color design is by the filmmaker himself); Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s tree-hugging Nymph, and Nikolay and Yelena Renard’s minimalist Mama.
And finally François Ozon’s Le refuge, Xavier Dolan’s J’ai tué ma mère, Carla Subirana’s Nadar, and Nelson Lyon’s 1971 oddity The Telephone Book. More information on all of these films can be found at the festival website.