Interview with producer Laurence Desarzens about Resfest Switzerland 2005. Resfest is a film festival taking place in several cities in Africa, America, Asia, Australia and Europe. Zurich is the tour city in Switzerland with Resfest Switzerland being produced by Laurence Desarzens and Monica Pozzi. This year’s festival was held at the movie theater Riffraff in Zürich. For more information visit: Resfest Switzerland, Resfest International, Res Mag. November 27, 2005. Part 1/2 of the interview.
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00:00 My name is Laurence Desarzans, I'm Swiss, French and I live in Zurich.
00:05 I'm the producer with Monica Pozzi of Rassfest Switzerland.
00:10 I come a little bit from the music, like you would say, actual music side and the internet side also.
00:18 And since two years we produce Rassfest in Zurich.
00:21 It's the second year now we do it here at the Refroph cinema.
00:26 I read your biography, that's quite impressive.
00:30 You made a lot of things, certainly a lot of people remember, like Skimcom here in Switzerland
00:36 and other really important things, Wipa for example, it's also known in Switzerland.
00:42 It's really impressive.
00:45 Thank you very much.
00:47 I had the chance that I was invited into different projects, like you mentioned Swisscom.
00:54 I was invited with my partner at the time to make the whole new media site,
01:00 it's been the website and at the time we did this teasing newsletter for example,
01:05 so I was always involved into let's say new media.
01:09 I'm also producer of Boombox.net, we started in '96 to do a webcast
01:15 and we experimented with this webcast from hip-hop to electronics.
01:20 We have a kind of media archive of all these webcasts and we experimented with the media.
01:26 My background is really in music from hip-hop to electronics and new media.
01:32 So it's quite logic somewhere that I end up with these guys here in Switzerland.
01:39 Was it easy to install Rassfest in Switzerland?
01:45 Did you have sponsors?
01:50 What was the challenge to introduce Rassfest in Switzerland?
01:55 I think the challenge is, Switzerland is a very lively film festival scene,
02:02 there is a lot of film festivals, so maybe the question is why another one?
02:09 On the other hand I think it's a very specific aesthetic
02:13 and a very specific language which for me comes straight from pop culture, club culture
02:19 and I don't see any festival like this in Switzerland.
02:23 So the difficulty was to try to explain to people from the film side.
02:32 Yes, it's a film festival but it's different and then to define it precisely towards the media
02:39 for example or towards a potential sponsor and explain why is it different.
02:43 And still today I think it's not so difficult.
02:46 Also Rassfest is really an experience, it's not only the films or the short films, the program,
02:53 it's also a lot of side things with workshops.
02:56 And this is not so easy to explain why you are so different unless the people have seen it.
03:02 I would say the people who have decision power.
03:04 So it's not easy but we are very motivated and when I see the success,
03:10 like now you came, it's sold out, for By Design we had also yesterday almost everything sold out,
03:16 so I think there is an interest from younger people but also people coming from advertising
03:22 or from maybe more traditional films to see these aesthetics and these different things
03:26 that you don't see in traditional media.
03:28 First the challenge is of course to explain what is it
03:33 and we don't really have a very simple definition, we have to do it and that's our work.
03:40 So as you already mentioned it's really a great success, also I saw,
03:46 because it's sold out and people are very interested in it.
03:50 Could you perhaps tell me some highlights of what you showed this year?
03:57 Sure, I think one highlight is definitely the Retrospective series from Rastfest last year,
04:03 we had Jonathan Glaser and this year it's Traktor, this collective from Scandinavia who live in LA,
04:08 who I think works in different areas, people know probably better the advertising or the Yuka Brother from MTV
04:15 but I think this is for me a highlight because it really shows the visions of somebody going through the years
04:23 and how they can develop their vision to advertising short films or music videos
04:29 and that's a very interesting series and it has had a big success here.
04:34 The shorts are also very short ones, for example I think it's a very highlight with a very excellent film,
04:41 I mean of course Gaël Denis is a beautiful, poetic short movie with animated
04:48 and my favorite, Pic Pic André, The Big Sleep, which is hilarious,
04:53 which is in a way more traditional animation, that was really good.
04:57 And the documentary, I really liked the documentary in Rastfest because they show documentaries,
05:03 specifically in Switzerland you have no chance to see this documentary anywhere.
05:08 So Infamy we showed here, this documentary from Doug Praybott-Grafty, which is great, really fantastic,
05:16 superbly edited, also for people who really are not interested in graffiti, I would recommend to go for it.
05:23 And we're going to show in January Just For Kicks, about sneaker culture,
05:29 and Ginga, the Soul of Brazilian Football from Fernando Meirelles,
05:34 producing a production house with three young directors, which is also beautifully edited,
05:40 even if you're not a football fan, so it's a big theme, we're going to show it again next year also.
05:46 Oh that's great, because in Germany it's also the World Championship, so a lot of people will certainly come here.
05:53 I think you can see it, they will show it in Berlin, in Ginga.
05:57 Ah, ok, perfect.
05:59 You have a website, so anyone who is interested in the Rastfest can go there and have a look, get some information.
06:12 Yeah, you can definitely go on a local website, which is rastfest.ch, that's a Swiss Rastfest website,
06:22 and definitely go also on rastfest.com, because there you have the whole view about the whole city,
06:29 the festival is going to 35 cities this year, and it goes from everywhere in the world,
06:34 from Seoul to Istanbul, from Zurich to Sao Paulo, New York, so next week for example,
06:40 end of early December it's Vienna, so I would really recommend to go on the website,
06:46 you also have an overview of the whole programs we show here on your part of it, this second year,
06:52 and so you really see that it's very various.
06:55 And I would also recommend for the big Rastfest fan to go to rast.com, r-e-s-t-o-m,
07:04 because there you have information about the magazine, because Rast, it's also a magazine, it's DVDs,
07:09 and there you see the whole activities of the people who work behind RAS,
07:16 and for the people who like it, it's pretty rich.
07:19 On the DVD you have a selection of works, you show it here and the other one?
07:25 Yeah, on the DVD you have the best of RAS 2000, I think 1, 2, 3 are out, and the 4th is on the way,
07:33 so that's the best of each year program, and that's pretty good.