I so miss Wouter Barendrecht at Cannes this year. He represented all that was good about the often trying festival circuit. This sales agent and producer par excellence, champion of many great filmmakers, especially Asian, and ex-Rotterdam programmer was, for me, more than anything a close friend.

But loads of others thought of Wouter as an intimate. We could see that last Wednesday afternoon, a few hours before the opening festivities began, at a memorial held at the Plages des Palmes, the beach venue closest, appropriately enough, to the huge market inside the Palais. The event was word-of-mouth, but it was PACKED. It was short and upbeat, save for Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux's breaking down at the microphone. Buckets of tears had already been shed at a large tribute to Wouter in Amsterdam three weeks ago.

Other speakers included Wouter's longtime partner at Fortissimo Films and fellow Hong Kong resident Michael Werner and Wouter's close friend and Fortissimo managing director Nelleke Driessen. They announced the establishment of the Wouter Barendrecht Film Foundation (www.fortissimofilms.com), intended to help young directors. Aussie producer Jan Chapman was a gracious emcee.

I will sorely miss Wouter's affectionate jibes, his politically incorrect irreverence, his downright sassy freshness. After a dig, he would place his hand over his mouth and say, "Oops," like a naughty kid. His inner child was extraordinarily seductive. People were drawn to him like metal to a magnet. No matter that he was successful, a well-travelled bon vivant: He was underneath it all still a provincial kid from eastern Holland. He was too genuine and unpretentious to be anything else. He was unable to disguise his essential persona. When he began to wear Yohji Yamamoto, he always bought the wrong jacket.

We had a Cannes tradition. The night before the opening, we would have dinner, sometimes with Michael, sometimes with my colleagues at Screen, writers Mike Goodridge and Finn Halligan. This year, Michael organized a dinner for us, along with some others from Fortissimo and a couple of Wouter's other pals. It was fun. We laughed and caught up. But a slight air of melancholy hovered over the table of, naturally, Chinese food. It reminded me of the part of the Passover seder when an empty chair is left for the prophet Elijah. Wouter's absence was very present.

# posted by Howard Feinstein @ 5/17/2009 08:38:00 AM

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