A Fantastic Interview With Fantastic Fest's Tim League

Jordan Hoffman:  What are the types of films you want to be associated with your brand?

Tim League: One movie which we're intrinsically tied to is Time Crimes; Nacho Vigalondo's feature had its world premiere here and he's just been this symbol, this fixture at the festival; he's come every year since. We've become pretty good friends; I like him on a lot of levels because he's a super-accomplished filmmaker, loves playing with genre in all sorts of crazy ways. His new movie Space Invaders is a situation where there's an alien UFO that comes down on a big city, but all the action in the movie takes place in one apartment so you see the UFO from the window just hovering there, and it's this guy and a girl that meet at a bar and they have sex and wake up regretting it, but the guy won't leave because he's using the UFO as an excuse...it's like this weird, romantic drama, comedy that has this sci-genre element. He loves to play in this arena and make wonderful movies that have rich characters and have more ideas percolating in a traditional, cinematic way, but that play with time travel, UFOs, or whatever.

Another is Big Man Japan, which we did the U.S. premiere on, I mention because I've been a long-time fan of Hitoshi Matsumoto, that's his debut film, and that's exactly the type of bizarre humor that I like to have at the festival. And a movie like Down Terrace that won awards last year...I find it really interesting because the audiences here respond to a movie like Down Terrace...it won an Audience Award, it won the Next Wave Film-Maker Award, it's one of the highest-rated films, and its one of those unclassifiables; it's got a lot going on; it's a comedy; it's a drama, but its super-dark...people get stabbed...

Jordan Hoffman:  Do you have a need to champion lower-budget stuff?  Because some of the things that I've seen that have been coming from overseas have a bigger budget...it's not somebody maxing out his credit cards but it's still something that's not necessarily going to be seen by American audiences.

Tim League: It's not a mandate; I love it when we find it. We wade through so many screeners that aren't appropriate for the festival or just aren't good enough. I'm not going to program ten new films that are low-budget if I don't find ten that I love, but if I do I would definitely lean in that direction.

Jordan Hoffman: Do you ever worry about stuff that's too shocking? I know that you've shown the very notorious A Serbian Film earlier in the year...

Tim League: It's still the most shocking film I've seen...

Jordan Hoffman: You warn people in advance?  Duck out at the last minute?

Tim League: I debated a lot as to whether or not to play A Serbian Film or not, but ultimately I decided, yes it was shocking, yes it was clearly exploitive, but there's context for it; I think it was a beautifully-made film.

Jordan Hoffman: I haven't seen it actually, and I don't know when I ever will, but I've gotten into bar fights defending Pasolini's Salo. A lot of people would just think I'm gross, walk away, I'm like, listen, if you dress your set with Italian Futurist furniture and square off the shots like that, this is not an exploitation film for the sake of exploitation; there's something going on there.

Tim League: That's where I draw the line too because there are plenty of extreme films that we see in the submission process, but we're not going to play it even though there is a segment that wants to see the next be-all, end-all gore trophy, but it's got to be, ideally, more than that.

Jordan Hoffman:  Some people just can't handle subtitles. What do you say to people like that? How do you feel on a personal level?

Tim League: I feel sorry for them. It's like saying "I don't like soup." or "I don't like white food."  What are you, four years old?

Jordan Hoffman: Well, there is something to be said, as somebody who loves movies from all over the world, but when we were arguing about, Let The Right One In versus Let Me In, when something is in your language, you do connect to it in a different way. Maybe that's a lowbrow of me, and it won't prevent me from watching foreign films, but there is a connection there.

Tim League: Reading subtitles, when you watch enough you get the system down, but I remember watching a Hungarian animated film we had a couple years ago. The dialogue was goes by at such a blitzkreig, that I was watching this beautiful animation but I was having to really focus on this line of dialogue the was going so fast that it was problematic, I probably would have preferred it to be dubbed. It was visual because it was an animated film. I certainly see it but. . . man, I don't know, that's a slippery slope. We program a lot of subtitled films.