INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM (IFFR)
31 January – 8 February, 2025
Art Directions Programme
International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) partnered up with Katoenhuis on the 2025 edition of its Art Directions programme - a space dedicated to immersive media where the festival steps out of the screening room and pushes the limits of what cinema can be, with immersive works from multidisciplinary creators.
The Immersive Media programme at IFFR 2025 invited audiences to step into transformative experiences that merge tradition, technology, and storytelling in groundbreaking ways. Together, these works redefine immersive art as a medium for cultural reflection and personal transformation.
Katoenhuis featured four installations, including world premieres, alongside IFFR’s immersive works.
This collaboration represented the start of a long-term partnership, establishing the venue as the new home for Art Directions and further expanding the festival's vision of storytelling beyond the screening room.
Vanja Kaludjercic, Festival Director at IFFR, said: “Art Directions is a distinctive programme within IFFR which allows audiences to explore the possibilities of cinema and the moving image outside the bounds of a film theatre – creating an accessible interaction between artist, artwork, and audience. Katoenhuis shares our excitement about the future of storytelling and the potential of new media as a tool for creators – and partnering with them both brings IFFR physically into a new neighbourhood and widens the possibilities for this programme both in the upcoming edition and years to come.”
Immersive media:
Revival Roadshow by Luke Conroy and Anne Fehres
The Revival Roadshow takes viewers on an absurd and playful exploration of colonial history and its modern and speculative legacies. Taking the legacy of 17th century Dutch explorer Abel Tasman as its point of departure and blending cinema, theatre and visual art, this absurd, humorous and speculative roadshow allows each viewer to experience their own unique journey.
Show Me the Light – VR Silent Disco by Studio VRij
We humans may have created the digital revolution, but we’re ignoring if this unstoppable progress now reigns over us. Studio VRij proposes a virtual path of light and sound through this crossroad. Based on Brass Rave Unit’s latest single, this is an immersive journey of energising techno-instrumental wind and percussion music, accelerating towards the future, looking for lightning in the midst of this darkness.
Rave by Patrick Muroni
Shy, but excited, you hang out with your older sister and her friends before joining them for what will be your first-ever rave. Right as you leave, the water bottle from which you’ve been sipping generously turns out to have been spiked with LSD. Heartbeat racing, and anticipation building, all that’s between you and the acid techno playing somewhere deep in the woods is finding your way there.
Lacuna by Maartje Wegdam and Nienke Huitenga Broeren
Step into a reconstruction of 84 year-old Sonja’s early childhood and the story of her parents. During World War II, as a three-year-old child, Sonja was separated from them and subsequently grew up with her aunt and uncle in Paramaribo, Suriname. Based on fragments of memories and handed down stories, a subjective history emerges, one that feels both elusive and true to life.
OTHERWORLDS by Sophia Bulgakova
Otherworlds is a VR work and participatory performance blending virtual and physical realities. A reflection on Ukrainian traditions and pre-Christian pagan rituals Otherworlds fuses ancient symbols, soundscapes of traditional instruments and ritual songs with modern XR technologies. While retracing her roots and cultural heritage, Bulgakova invites you to join her on a sensory and transformative journey that rekindles your connection with nature’s cycles and the passage of time.
Installations:
La quema (del Planeta “B”) by Francisco Baquerizo Racines
Francisco Baquerizo Racines’ La quema (del Planeta “B”) is a two-channel video installation that explores South American colonial history by depicting contemporary cultural traditions. Focussing on the mestizo tradition of burning año viejo dolls during New Year’s Eve, these dolls, often made of cardboard and rags, are ceremonially set on fire as a symbol of ending the old year and making a new, hopeful start. At the same time, Baquerizo Racines criticises the colonial fantasy of a planet “B” – the idea that colonisation or technological progress offers a way out of man-made problems such as exploitation and destruction.
The installation shows how an año viejo doll, based on a replica of the cargo ship The Amsterdam, is made. This doll was displayed at a market in Guayaquil-a port city in Ecuador on the Guayas River-and ceremonially burned at a ship breaking yard, 400 years after the Spanish attack on the city.
In this work, Francisco Baquerizo Racines connects colonial history, contemporary capitalist structures and cultural rituals, inviting us to reflect on the past and the future.
Brown Bodies in an Open Landscape are Often Migrating by Basir Mahmood
Brown Bodies in an Open Landscape Are Often Migrating by Basir Mahmood is a powerful reflection on the dangerous journeys of undocumented migrants. Based on videos recorded by migrants during journeys from South Asia to Europe, Mahmood works with a film crew from Lahore to recreate these scenes. The footage does not recreate the migrants’ experiences, but instead shows the difficulties the film crew faces during filming: an exhausted team, lost actors and complicated direction.
Drawing a link between the harsh realities of migration and the media portrayal of these images. The sound reinforces the difference between what we see and hear, encouraging us to reflect about how we too tell stories about migration. Ultimately, Brown Bodies in an Open Landscape Are Often Migrating raises questions around the gap between the experience of migrants and our consumption and spectation of their stories.
Alice, Bob, Carol and David by Victor Timofeev
Viktor Timofeev’s Alice, Bob, Carol and David combines film, gaming and performance. Inspired by Yvonne Rainer’s generative scores from the 1960s four protagonists move within an interdependent choreographic system, with repetitive, everyday movements, the piece invites us to reflect on the balance between improvisation, chance and structure.
These four characters – named after cryptographic placeholders – move within a system Timofeev created in the Unity game engine. An accompanying video, filmed at an angle from above, shows how their movements are determined by specific rules. Each step is analysed and shown with clear annotations, although they are stuck in a kind of loop, no character does exactly the same thing more than once, revealing the tension between chance and structure.
As their creator, Timofeev struggles with his own role, finding both control and catharsis in his puppet-like characters. The silent theatrics of their programmed interactions resonate with themes of logic, autonomy and emotional engagement. By calling them Alice, Bob, Carol and David, Timofeev elevates their generic identities into something deeply human, bridging the gap between abstraction and recognisability.
Extramission: The Capture of Glowing Eyes by Jessica Sarah Rinland
The installation Extramission: The Capture of Glowing Eyes combines moving images, audio recordings and material from early 20th-century issues of National Geographic magazines. The archival pages show the life’s work of George Shiras III, inventor of the camera trap, which captured the first photographs of animals at night, in their native habitats.
One of the first theories of sight, ‘extramission’ proposed that rays of light emitted from the eyes onto the outside world are what allow us to see. Rinland holds on to the poetry of this now-discredited concept. She frames the earliest night-time photographs of animals in their natural habitat, turns her thermal imagery camera on conservators of taxidermy at the Natural History Museum in London, and shares infra-red camera trap footage of animals recently translocated from Europe back to their native Argentina, where they are no longer found in the wild.
Extramission considers the aesthetics and politics of surveillance technologies used on animals. As illustrated in the acts of conservation and repatriation that recur in Rinland’s work, even contemporary acts of care must grapple with the lasting consequences of colonial violence.
International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR)
International Film Festival Rotterdam’s (IFFR) upcoming 54th edition of the festival will take place from 30 January – 9 February 2025, with the full programme being launched on 17th December 2024. IFFR presents a leading international film festival and year-round programme and actively supports new and adventurous filmmaking talent through its co-production market CineMart, its Hubert Bals Fund, Rotterdam Lab and other industry activities.
IFFR seeks to expand, enrich and challenge people’s views of the world and each other through film and audiovisual arts. IFFR’s programme deepens appreciation of cinema in all its forms, broadens and diversifies audiences, and creates opportunities for independent filmmakers and artists from around the globe.
Through IFFR’s visionary programming and forward-looking initiatives, we create a haven for the plurality of voices, audiovisual formats and diverse storytelling. We are an essential destination for film professionals and film lovers. We support filmmakers and artists with funding and development opportunities and advance the impact of their work in the world. We are accessible to everyone. Through screenings, talks, exhibitions, education, professional initiatives and funding schemes we bring people from all backgrounds together, enabling discovery, recognition dialogue, learning and development. We look where others don’t and we open a space for ideas, pushing creative boundaries that have the power to transform.
Concrete Culture
Concrete Culture uses the generative power of art, culture, and technology within (historic) real estate and area developments to make a social impact, drive economic growth, strengthen communities, and combat gentrification. Concrete Culture’s flagship initiatives include Koelhuis Eindhoven (former Campina Vrieshuis) and Katoenhuis Rotterdam. Both initiatives focus on Immersive Experiences (IX), offering communal workspaces, studios, and presentation spaces that actively support creative and technical talent. By bringing diverse artists, technologists, and makers under one roof, Concrete Culture initiatives create a space for research, experimentation, and presentation of immersive experiences and contribute to the growth of the immersive technology sector in the Netherlands.
