Roaming Rotterdam in Winter
To survive or to merely navigate a space, one reduces novel encounters to the familiar. I happened on this thought over the course of a fortnight in Holland, where alongside three others I was attending the Young Critic’s Project, a yearly programme for film critics running along, and hosted by, the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). The thought was spurred by Nick Cunningham, Editor of the English segment of the IFFR’s newsletter, The Daily Tiger.
Nick called me Silent B and then explained why. Nick is British, meaning he heard echoes of Boris (Johnson) in my first name. With a typically British imagination, Silent B becomes short for Oris. If you wince at that, then welcome to British humour. At least one person he later explained it to was confounded. He was boss and I wasn’t going to complain. I thought it clever besides.
That was my name in the press office, which I visited mostly to pinch sandwiches for lunch, careful to avoid the ones with cheese, a difficult task since they were labelled in Dutch or not at all. Nick’s office was higher; the man inhabited the rarefied 4th floor of De Doelen, the festival’s main building. The rest of us minions found space elsewhere.
The night I was informed of this rechristening we were walking to the IFFR’s Industry Party held at Club Bed—named perhaps for where the guys hoped to end with company. Ahem. We were with the subeditor, also British, and he confirmed my sobriquet, laughing.
Encouraged, Nick continued his wordplay revelation. My Belgian colleague Ruben Demasure was called ‘Measured’. “Demasure is an anagram of Measured,” he said. “We’ll have to find names for the ladies”— British Harriet Warman and Slovenian Tina Poglajen. If he found them new names he didn’t share. II My own reduction of Europe to my familiar took a different form. During a changeover at Istanbul I found John Malkovich and Willem Defoe. Not the actors, of course. But it seemed apt since I was heading for a film festival. The former was holding a tablet and balding in the same ballpark as the real Malkovich; he also had the actor’s intensity. Defoe sat beside me in fashionable brown leather shoes, with a good head of brown hair and angular features. “You know Willem Defoe?” I asked. “Yes.” “You look like him.” “Thanks.” I am not sure it’s a compliment, I told him. He laughed.
Upon arriving the cold city of Rotterdam via train from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport and lugging my bag from Centraal Station to De Doelen, I was aware my skin drying on my face from the cold, my fingers numbing to the cold. It was winter and as everyone but me knows it is harmattan, only colder. No gloves. And I wore 2 sweaters but they were useless. I had arrived underdressed and unprepared.
“You should get a coat,” Martin McNamara said to me two days in.
A great guy and guide, Martin and the incredible Laura Sok were our hosts. Martin himself was never without a coat. I nodded to him and kept braving the weather. Heckled into sanity eventually, I purchased a thick blue sweater. By way of Martin’s legacy, I have that sweater in almost every photo I have of Europe. The sweater conceals four layers of clothing. III Unlike the weather, the people of Rotterdam were warm or at the minimum helpful, someone to walk you to the train station, someone to show the way. But charity is not accuracy. Looking for Hotel Rotterdam on my first day I was pointed in a million different directions. If a hotel is named after the city, then people should know it, no? Well, not exactly.
Forty-five minutes later I got to the hotel and my fingers needed thawing. The walk back to the festival main site took less than 15 minutes. (In Berlin a fortnight later, every person I asked for directions whipped out a phone to use Google. I thought this strange especially with a shop owner who produced his phone only to point me roughly 2 blocks away. In any case, Berliners, aided by technology, were almost always right. Were they as warm? Well…) IV Corrupted by the brisk business of Lagos living, I thought Rotterdam was sleepy but confident—and maybe more content than confident. The city struck me as reluctant to be anyplace else, not nearby Amsterdam, not far away New York. There were no skyscrapers I could see. No bustle. Once, an artist from Lebanon told me Beirut was always under construction. Not Rotterdam. I kept my head down most times, trying to avoid the cold by ducking my head inside my sweater in the manner of a tortoise so perhaps I missed cranes. A sign went up in my mind: “This Is Not Lagos.”
It was possible to walk the city eyes closed without hitting anyone. The sidewalks were uncrowded and the only impact I feared was non-human. It goes without saying that if you can survive crossing the busy roads of Lagos, you are indestructible to anything on four wheels. Yet, with its combination of trains, cars and bicycles, Rotterdam presented a unique challenge. Crossing the myriad-coloured roads, I was careful, if for nothing to avoid the embarrassment of a headline: “Man Survives Lagos, Gets Maimed by Bicycle in Europe”. V The way the city approaches Cinema is remarkable. Back home, I had attended festivals where venues brim with film and film-related chatter but 20 metres away from the exit, life goes on without an indication of a festival of any magnitude.
In Rotterdam most streets had flags, pennants, posters of the IFFR, something I was to see again in Ouagadougou a month later. I wandered into shops where people didn’t know the festival had started but knew of older editions. And I was more impressed by this historical memory. It shows, I believe, a traditional relationship with film that goes beyond blockbusters at the Cineplex. People of all ages attend screenings of the most tasking art house films, some fascinating, many a vain tribute to the artistic ego.
It appeared plausible for a local filmmaker to receive support and earn a living. What more can a film lover ask?
VI
As a corollary to the notion starting this piece, here’s another: If you can’t reduce what you don’t know to what you know, you impose what you know.
At De Doelen, there was a deejay or a playlist—my colleagues assured me that it was the latter—suffusing the air with music. I tried to find the source of this music so I could infiltrate it. You know, put in some Nigerian songs. But I could never locate the source. I wondered if this music homesickness wasn’t spurred by the absence of Nigerians: since except for my Editor at This Is Africa and a friend, both of them Amsterdam residents, I didn’t meet any Nigerians.
I finally caught a break on the Hivos Award Night. I walked up to the thankfully conspicuous deejay. The deejay, a burly, amiable guy inclined his head to my lips and straightening he told me he had none.
“I have Fela,” he said. Every European DJ has Fela. But I wasn’t looking to dance to the late, great maestro. How about some Wizkid, I asked. Mr. DJ had never heard of Wizkid. I got him to play Wizkid’s Ojuelegba, which he bought off ITunes right before me—an express tribute to the wonders of European wifi. I stayed away afterwards. But after a few more glasses of Warsteiner beer, Dutch courage, you know, I went up again. This time to request some hip-hop. The deejay, tolerant and perpetually smiling, nodded. Shortly after he played Can’t Touch This. A little shocking in 2015: MC Hammer was barely hip-hop in the ’90s! I dunked my disappointment in another glass of Warsteiner and conversed with my colleagues.
In any case, a few days before, I heard Wande Coal’s Rotate as I walked along Karel Dormanstrat. I was late to a screening and couldn’t seek the source. Not the greatest song ever, not even for Mr. Coal, but it was sweet music to my EDM-stomped ears. Moreover, at the time a line from Coal’s chorus captured the plight of this Nigerian critic in Rotterdam. Sing along if you know it: “See, I’m new in town…”