Page 240 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

There are more selection criteria than the premiere. The most obvious, when we talk about a
genre festival, is of course whether or not the film belongs to the genre. Consequently, the definition
of what constitutes the genre becomes quite an import point of ongoing discussion in the process of
programming. Far from giving an exhaustive definition of the fantastic, the Festival's dictum has been
to present the fantastic in its broadest possible spectrum: from horror to slasher, from science fiction
to fairytale to heroic fantasy, with the inclusion over the years of categories such as thriller, animé
and the bizarre. The addition of these new categories has more to do with the evolution of the genre
away from large narrative and interpretative cultural and historical communities ('the western', 'the
horror film') to the notion of genre as an intertextual play of denaturalised and appropriated generic
conventions ('a kung fu space opera with a bit of Jaws), than with marketing or the following of
certain trends.
Armed with such abstract guidelines as quality and innovation, the selection process turns out to
be a sometimes very personal journey which ends in a confrontation of different aesthetic judgements
and tastes from which the final programme is crystallised. In all this, the selection committee constitutes
an 'interpretive community', a position from which the festival team as a whole and the individual
programmers relate to each other and make meaning through texts/films. The committee consists of
the four founders who were themselves first and foremost genre enthusiasts. The newcomers in the
team are recruited in the Festival itself: all of them did, at one time or another, some kind of voluntary
work for the Festival, which is an indication of their passion and commitment to and identification
with the Festival. This team of eight different people, each with their own sensibilities and cultutal
capital, cuts across generations and different backgrounds. The result is a melting pot of popular and
intellectual, younger and older assumptions, which guarantees the diversity of the programme.
The proliferation of the notion of genre led to a heightened awareness of the differences between
audiences and of the importance of specialised constituencies such as fans and cultists. To meet their
expectations, the Festival tries to establish a programme scheme where the different constituencies
should more or less easily find their way. The films in competition and the big-budget productions,
the most attended part of the Festival, are programmed at the most convenient hours, at 8 pm and
10 pm. The midnight screenings have their own, more die-hard, fan-based following. The films
programmed at 6 pm are of a more familiar and less violent nature. And, finally, the opportunity of a
new screening theatre with a smaller capacity, which during the rest of the year programmes films that
do not find a distributor and film cycles that demand a different approach, attracts a very specialised
public and helps, through way of a co-production, to outline the contours of a section apart, the
seventh orbit, with films that flirt with the borders of genre and that through their semiotic diversity
signal complex social messages ( Visitor Q by Miike Takeshi, Seul contre tous by Gaspard Noe and Of
Freaks and Men by Alexei Balabanov are some of the most successful examples).
The Festival programme, however inscribed in a cultural dynamic, cannot cut itself loose from
a certain commercial logic. This results in a sometimes conflicting and heterogeneous mix between
commercial and independent films. It is a fact that in a time when an independently produced film
can become an overnight commercial success ( The Blair Witch Project, for example) and 'independent'
film has become a niche market for major companies, the separation between the two is not that
easy to make. The fact is that of the 80 odd films in the Festival, only about 8 to 10 would normally

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