^{Still: Kookaburra Love by Sjoerd Oostrik}

Dutch director Sjoerd Oostrik’s experimental work Kookaburra Love, which screens in IDFA’s Paradocs selection this year, captures the trajectory of a relationship through exchanges on WhatsApp. The inclusion of the short film (produced by Amsterdam-based 100% Halal that also made Tara Fallaux’s doc Louis the Ferriswheel Kid as well as co-produce the highly successful New Kids films) makes perfect sense for a sidebar that explores the fringes of documentary filmmaking.

“It’s an interesting comment on contemporary life and how modern couples communicate, and an interesting starting point for a documentary,” says Paradocs curator Joost Daamen of the work, a Wildcard winner supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival earlier this year. “The WhatsApp conversation is sort of an abridged version of the relationship. The imagery is poetic but also linked to the mood of the exchange. In one scene where they fight, for example, there’s imagery of riot police.”

Beyond the main programme, the Netherlands involvement in Paradocs 2014 is underlined by the choice of contemporary Dutch artist Aernout Mik as guest of honour. Mik’s complex video installations, combining staged and found footage, have been shown in the world’s top modern art galleries including the Jeu de Paume in Paris, MoMA in New York and most recently the Stegelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The focus on Mik follows a similar initiative last year in which Dutch artist Barbara Visser was invited to contribute to collaborate with the section.

As part of the 2014 initiative, Mik’s 2006 installation Raw Footage that assembles television footage shot during the Yugoslav War will be on display at the De Brakke Grond arts centre throughout the festival. “Raw Footage is a montage of news agency footage showing images we don’t normally see in the mainstream media’s coverage of war. You see soldiers eating and sleeping and ordinary civilians trying to go about their everyday lives. There’s even an incongruous shot of a kangaroo in a zoo,” says Daamen.

“It challenges our pre-set idea of war and what it looks like, showing it’s not all armed combat and people riding tanks,” he continues. “In the installation it’s completely unclear who’s who and who’s on what side. This unclearness allows the viewer to look at other things in the image. It makes other things interesting to look at. It’s also an exceptional work for Mik in a way because it is drawn from raw found footage rather than staged footage which is more common in his work.”

Daamen has also asked the Dutch artist to curate a selection of documentaries dealing with the media’s representation of reality as part of IDFA’s larger festival theme Of Media and Men. The artist’s selection includes Johan Grimonprez’ Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan, Hubert Sauper’s Kisangani Diary and Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin’s A Letter to Jane. “Rather than an arty programme, Aernout was really keen to pull together a selection of films exploring the media’s representation of reality,” comments Daamen. “The subject of these films is important but they’re also interesting in that they open up a conversation about how they were made and how they show reality.”

Aside from Kookabura Love and Mik’s involvement, the sidebar will also showcase the video work of Netherlands artists through the collaboration with the Amsterdam Art Weekend (for the second consecutive year) at the end of the festival. Through this initiative, Paradocs is presenting a programme of 13 recent works of video art from Amsterdam galleries. The Dutch works include Erik van Lieshout’s The Basement (loop version), Paulien Oltheten’s Chairman, Rebecca Digne’s Climats and Emma van der Put’s Room.