11st Geneva Festival Tous Ecrans

Cinema Tout Ecran, held in the capital of the Canton of Geneva, is unique amongst film festivals, presenting movies from both the little and the big screen. In the words of Leo Kaneman, Artistic director of the Festival, “The key elements are the artistic quality of the film, the director’s talent and the sense of his direction, but the media producing the film has no importance.” The fourteen films that were presented in the official competition ranged from an examination of the death penalty, (Manner’s of Dying), to a curiously titled coming-of-age story, (Kim Novak never swam in Genesaret’s Lake) to FIPRESCI-winner Ryna, which both our reports discuss. The festival also held a tribute to always-controversial Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, as famous for pointing his camera up Sharon Stone’s skirt as he is for the blood-splattered drama of RoboCop – but even from his early Spetters-days it was clear that much social criticism lay behind his penchant for blood, sex and sleaze. In keeping with the tenets of the festival, his early TV-movies will be screening alongside those made for the big screen. There is also a retrospective to French-Swiss filmmaker Pierre Maillard whose films, as the festival website writes, “…reflect the existential concerns of characters with distressing backgrounds.”