For its 25th iteration the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival (AFFF for short) changed its name into "IMAGINE", the reason being that the organisation behind the festival felt that too many people had wrong expectations concerning the line-up.
It's not the first time the festival changed names for this reason. Twentyfive years ago it used to be called "The Weekend of Terror" but that got a bit silly once:
A: the festival started to last almost a week, and
B: it featured many non-horror films.
This year's line-up indeed has more to do with the films being imaginative: titles like "The Good, The Bad and The Weird" fit awkwardly into either SF, horror or fantasy. The rest of the program contains other impressive titles including "Let The Right One In", "Martyrs", "Acolytes", "Mum & Dad", "Sauna", "Tokyo Gore Police", "I Sell the Dead", "From Inside", "Seventh Moon" and many more.
Still, this year I don't see any anime whatsoever (so no "Sky Crawlers", boohoohoo...) and that is quite baffling.
Ah well, maybe next year again...
The IMAGINE Film Festival 2009 takes place in Amsterdam from the 16th till the 25th of April.
Last year this festival allowed me to see "The Machine Girl" only a few days after its world premiere, and it's also where I saw "Auf Bösem Boden / On Deadly Ground", so happy memories abound.
Cool, I'm actually going to be in Amsterdam for the last couple of days of the festival...maybe I'll catch one or two of the films.
Yeah, I wasn't impressed by SKY CRAWLERS and while I understand why you would want to see it on a big screen, its omission here isn't anything to linger on, I don't think.
It's the omission of ALL anime that worries me a little.
Just as I find the omission of SKY CRAWLERS in ALL Dutch festivals a tad odd.
I suspect an angry distributor...