Report on the Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival 2016

From January 27th to 31st 2016 took place the Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival, the oldest and most famous of such Festivals in France, that replaces the no-less-famous Avoriaz one since 1994. JoRafCinema was present for most of the time as mentioned in a preview article, missing only the last afternoon and closing ceremony, but following anyway the awards attribution online from the train ride home.

The Villa Monplaisir near the Espace du Lac where the Opening Ceremony was held, and the beautiful poster of the 23rd edition.

Where is Gérardmer you may wonder? Well it is a small ski resort located in the middle of the French Vosges mountains (see the map below). It is a nice small town that apparently comes to life only during holidays when filled with ski enthusiasts, or during the four days of the Festival. The relatively bad weather this year made the town look even more haunted, only criss-crossed by groups of people with accreditation around their necks rushing to the next movie or looking for a warm meal.

The Munstiflette, a good lunch choice in this cold weather.

Talking about accreditation, we have been refused the Press one under the pretense of too many requests. Well, that didn't spoil our pleasure of following the festival as long as we could carry cameras to the projection rooms and document our experience there. We managed to attend the Opening ceremony in spite of it being reserved for guests with invitation, and there we could see the opening speeches by many contributors either from the Festival organization of from the local and regional political representative giving their support.
I liked in particular the speech by deputy mayor Jean-Francois Duval that revolved around this year's beautiful Festival poster, making metaphors and comparisons between Theseus and Daedalus' Labyrinth and the Organization team. A very inspired and inspiring speech.

Introduction by the Festival Host (left) and Jean-Francois Duval (right), deputy mayor of Gérardmer who gave an inspired speech.

The Jury for the official selection was composed of nine guests from the worlds of Comics book, art and cinema of course, and presided by renowned French director (although not in Genre) Claude Lelouch. The Festival also proposed a selection of short movies, and the jury for those included in particular Philippe Nahon (Kaamelott, Haute Tension, Seul Contre Tous, In the Name of the Son) and Francois Pinon (Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain, Alien Ressurection).

From left to right: writer Sophie Audoin-Mamikonian, composer Francois-Eudes Chanfrault, actors Guillaume Gouix and Jonathan Lambert, directors Gilles Marchand and Dominik Moll, actresses Louise Monot, Mathilde Seigner and Elsa Zylberstein, and the President Claude Lelouch.

Philippe Nahon caught at the Espace Tilleul.

The Festival is organized from the Espace Tilleul downtown and the main event location is the Espace Lac along the lake, a conference hall converted for the occasion into a theater (like is done at the BIFFF actually), which makes it not very comfortable or adapted but can host enough people. At least the sound was much better than at the BIFFF. Movies are also shown at the cinema room of the Casino (a multiplex-style room, the most comfortable of all), in an older cinema called PARADISO and in a kind of theater room at the MCL (Maison de la Culture et des Loisirs).
What we severely missed at this Festival, and thus criticize, is the lack of entrance hall next to any of the four projection rooms, so that one always had to queue outside (often under the cold rain) and then enter directly in the projection room. There was only room for a small counter where one could grab a coffee. This lack of space also meant that there was nowhere an area where movie-goers could hang-out for a beer and a chat about the movies they have seen. There is in fact a small bar at the Espace Tilleul, next to a room where one can buy Festival memorabilia, Comic books and meet their authors, but as it is not near any projection room there is not much incentive to hang around there. In that respect the large common area at the BIFFF is much more welcoming.

How to find your way around Gérardmer.

The main projection room at the Espace Lac where the jury was sitting (blue seats).

Let us now talk about movies! We have seen 16 in four days and all have been quickly reviewed on JoRafCinema. We managed to organize our schedule in order to see all the 10 movies in the official selection, and our favorites have been:
- The Devil's Candy: 9/10. An excellent possession movie by the director of The Loved Ones, featuring original characters.
- Bone Tomahawk: 8/10. A pure Western like we missed, tainted with a little Fantasy/Horror, with Kurt Russell (same look but different acting as in The Hateful Eight) and Patrick Wilson.
- The Witch: 7/10. Another possession movie taking place in the 1630's.
- Frankenstein: 7/10. Against prejudice, a well-though and useful modern adaptation of the classic story.
We found that the selection was of high quality, and rated four more movies with 6/10, including the good Danish What We Become that we could have better recommended if we were not tired of the Zombie genre.

Bernard Rose (left) and Paul Hyett (right) introducing their respective movies Frankenstein and Howl.

I was surprised to realize that this Festival doesn't belong to the circle of Festivals that deliver a Méliès d'Argent award for the best European Fantastic film, like the Bruxelles, Neuchatel, Espoo or Strasbourg ones. The official selection thus contains movies from all around the world and even if the Audience Award didn't go to a European film, I was glad it was attributed to The Devil's Candy (also receiving the best soundtrack award), our favorite as well and belonging to a genre more original than Bone Tomahawk's Western although this movie was very good as well.
The Grand Prize however did go to Bone Tomahawk, the Jury award to both Jeruzalem and Evolution, this one also getting the critics' prize (unsurprisingly), the region student prize to Southbound and The SyFy Jury prize to The Witch (also both as could have been expected).
Besides the Official Selection we wisely chose to see the Danish Epic The Shamer's Daughter which we rated 7/10. The Festival was paying tribute to the recently departed Horror genius Wes Craven by showing his movies Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, and we went to see the only one we didn't know The People under the Stairs that we liked for it's enjoyable 90's cachet.
A tribute was also paid to the well-alive 87-years old Franco-Chilean Alejandro Jodorowski with the cult movies El Topo, La Montagna Sagrada, Santa Sangre and again we went to see the one we didn't know, his latest movie and the first after 23 years of absence: The Danza de la Realidad, an interesting fantasized autobiography. A short Ceremony was organized in which the director was praised by the energetic critic Philippe Rouyer and two of his spiritual sons: Nicholas Winding Refn (The Pusher trilogy, Bleeder, Drive, Only God Forgives) who sent a video from his kitchen decorated with a poster of El Topo, and Jan Kunen (Doberman) who tackled Refn for not being present. Jodorowski received an award and on the next day was at the center of a discussion panel during which we replied to various questions about movie-making and Psycho-magic with his incomparable honesty and mysticism.

Jan Kounen, Alejandro Jodorowski and Philippe Rouyer sharing a good time on stage, probably after a good word by Jodorowski.

In spite of the poor weather and some possible improvements in organization, JoRafCinema and guest Nick were definitely glad to have attended the 23rd edition of the Gérardmer International Fantastic Film Festival, after reading about it for as long as it exists in the Mad Movies magazine. It is a difficult town to reach but the stay was definitely worth the trip. We liked that the Festival is concentrated in a burst of only four days, better than when stretched over seven or more (like the Munich Fantasy Film Fest).
As mentioned, we found the selection to be pretty good and we actually saw a surprisingly small rate of disappointing movies, which rate could be as high as 50% in some other Festival!
Gérardmer may seem like a ghost town at some times of the day, it is small enough that you can cross its center on foot, and wherever we went we met friendly people, in particular the ones in the shops and restaurants who were always curious to know which movies we had seen or where we were going next.
Some places we can recommend include Mémé for breakfast, the Vesuvio for lunch, La Brasserie de l'Hotel de Ville for an afternoon break, the Grizzly for dinner (although a tad expensive), le Grattoir for a concert and a beer, the bar La Ruelle for a cocktail and if you still don't have enough the mandatory club Le Caveau downtown.
This is one of the Festivals to which we will think about going back in the next few years.

Some landmarks to be found in Gérardmer.

The angry players of GAMESDØGLÄR at the Grattoir.