Marco van Geffen talks Among Us Rutger Hauer returns in The Heineken
Kidnapping
The Film Fund looks to the future Patatje Oorlog:
Cinekid opener Halina Reijn:
Dutch Star
Issue #4 September 2011
A publication by the Netherlands Film Fund and EYE Film Institute Netherlands
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Index COLOPHON SEE NL is published four times per year by EYE Film Institute Netherlands and The Netherlands Film Fund and JT EJTUSJCVUFE UP JOUFSOBUJPOBM Ăƒ MN professionals. Editors in chief: Claudia Landsberger (EYE), Jonathan Mees (Netherlands Film Fund) Executive editor: Nick Cunningham Contributors: Geoffrey Macnab, Melanie Goodfellow, Olivier Père Concept & Design: Lava.nl, Amsterdam Layout: def., Amsterdam Printing: 3PUP 4NFFUT (SBĂƒ TFSWJDFT Printed on FSC paper Circulation: 3300 copies Š All rights reserved: The Netherlands Film Fund and EYE Film Institute Netherlands 2011
Pp 2-3 and cover
Pp 18-19 Meeting Holland:
Image preview: Marco van Geffen’s Locarno competition selection Among Us
Signe Zeilich-Jensen is the new boss of the Holland Film Meeting. She talks to SEE NL
View from the Edge: Locarno Artistic Director Olivier Père on the Dutch tradition at the August festival
Simon Pummell’s debut Shock Head Soul, selected for Venice Orizzonti section.
The Heineken Kidnapping, Maarten Treurniet’s October 27 blockbuster release
Jonathan Mees Head of Communications Netherlands Film Fund E K NFFT!Ăƒ MNGPOET OM
%VUDI Ăƒ MNT DVSSFOUMZ JO QSPEVDUJPO
P 24-25 No Kidding!:
Netherlands Film Festival opener The Gang of Oss
Claudia Landsberger Head of EYE international EYE Film Institute Netherlands E DMBVEJBMBOETCFSHFS!FZFĂƒ MN OM
Ger Bouma Head of Intl. Co-productions Netherlands Film Fund E H CPVNB!Ăƒ MNGPOET OM
Pp 22-23 Dutch Harvest – works in progress:
P 5 Image preview:
P 6 Image preview:
Dorien van de Pas Head of Feature Film Netherlands Film Fund E % WBO EF 1BT!Ăƒ MNGPOET OM
Netherlands Film Fund CEO Doreen Boonekamp on the future of the Dutch Ăƒ MN JOEVTUSZ
P 4 Image preview:
CONTACT Sandra den Hamer CEO EYE Film Institute Netherlands E TBOESBEFOIBNFS!FZFĂƒ MN OM
Doreen Boonekamp CEO Netherlands Film Fund E E CPPOFLBNQ!Ăƒ MNGPOET OM
Pp 20-21 Full Focus Ahead:
Cinekid director Sannette NaeyĂŠ on the festival and the need to educate kids in multi-media
Christophe van Rompaey’s Toronto nod, Lena
Pp 26-27 Crime and Punishment:
P 7 Image Preview:
Producer Frans van Gestel and director Maarten Treurniet on the highlyanticipated The Heineken Kidnapping
Pp 8-9 COVER STORY Late Debutant:
Nicole van Kilsdonk talks to SEE NL about her Cinekid opener Patatje Oorlog
Pp 28-29 Against the Odds:
SEE NL talks to celebrated screenwriter Marco van Geffen about his feature debut Among Us
Pp 30-31 Team Reunion:
The All Stars are back, but now they’re the Old Stars. Director Jean van de Velde talks to SEE NL
Pp 10-11 Leader of the Gang: Producer Matthijs van Heijningen talks to SEE NL about his Netherlands Film Festival opener The Gang of Oss
Back Cover Dutch Star 2TQĂ„ NG
Pp 12-13 A Suitable Case for Treatment:
Halina Reijn
Simon Pummell on his astonishing new documentary Shock Head Soul, about the psychoanalyst’s muse, Daniel Paul Schreber, selected for Venice Orizzonti
Pp 14-15 An eye for Restoration:
Netherlands Film Fund Jan Luykenstraat 2 1071 CM Amsterdam The Netherlands T +31 20 570 7676 W XXX Ăƒ MNGPOET OM
Interview with EYE’s head curator Giovanna Fossati about the restored classic We Can’t Go Home Again, world-premiering (again) at Venice
EYE Film Institute Netherlands PO BOX 74782 1070 BT Amsterdam The Netherlands T +31 20 589 1400 W XXX FZFĂƒ MN OM
Christophe van Rompaey on his Toronto-bound Lena
Pp 16-17 A Tale of Loneliness and Longing:
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View from the Edge Among Us
Director Marco van Geffen discusses his Locarno competition/Toronto Discovery selection.
Among Us was still shooting at that point but following Leontine’s presentation I was really keen to screen the completed version. I finally got to see it in Amsterdam a couple of months ago alongside a selection of other potential films. Marco’s film struck me the most and I decided to invite it to Locarno. Olivier Père, Locarno Film Festival Artistic Director Locarno has a long tradition of welcoming Dutch filmmakers. Paul Verhoeven was awarded a Leopard of Honour by the festival in 2000 and his Hollow Man screened on the Piazza Grande that year too. Mijke de Jong also showed Stages and Katja’s Sister here. More recently, Urszula Antoniak won the Golden Leopard for a First Film for Nothing Personal in 2009. That was before my time - I arrived at Locarno from the Quinzaine in 2010 - but I’m continuing the tradition this year with the selection of Marco van Geffen’s Among Us for the main competition. I first heard about the film from producer Leontine Petit at Lemming Film who presented the project to me during Rotterdam. She explained that it was the first part of a trilogy telling several different stories that unfold in the same location, exploring the psychology and behaviour of different people in the same urban environment and social backdrop. It was my second consecutive year at Rotterdam. For a festival director like me, it’s a great event not just for the public but also for professionals. I was able to meet a lot of producers and find out about films in preparation that could be of interest to Locarno.
“In a way, it is all connected to a moment in our society when everything changed. We were this open country but after the murders of Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn, it suddenly changed.”
For a first film it is remarkable - very skilful, very ambitious. It’s a powerful piece with a strong directorial vision and excellent performances. It’s plain to see that Marco is a real cineaste with incredible talent and a very precise vision of what he wants to do and say on the big screen.
see pages 8-9
Dutch cinema has a tough time breaking beyond its national borders even though it’s so strong at home. I think it’s a problem that hits a lot of smaller countries. We see the same issue with Swiss cinema. But I think Marco belongs to a new generation of Dutch auteur filmmakers, alongside the likes of Nanouk Leopold, who are going to get Dutch films talked about internationally. I programmed Nanouk’s early film Guernsey at the Quinzaine and since then her films have gone on to screen at a number of festivals, most notably Brownian Movement at Berlin this year. I’m very keen to see her next work. Up until now international attention has tended to focus on Verhoeven, who started off in the Netherlands but then headed for Hollywood, although I think the film he did on his return home - Black Book - was one of his best works. I would, of course, love to screen his next picture on the Piazza Grande too. In conversation with Melanie Goodfellow
Among Us Director: Marco van Geffen Script: Marco van Geffen and Jolein Laarman Production: Lemming Film Sales: Elle Driver (FR)
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The Gang of Oss
Photo : Victor Arnolds
Veteran Dutch producer Matthijs van Heijningen talks to SEE NL about his period Netherlands Film Festival opener.
‘The socio-political context of the film, Van Heijningen explains, is the oppression of Holland’s Catholic community congregated in the south of the country, beneath the Rhine and Maas rivers, in the 1930s.’ see pages 10-11
The Gang of Oss Director: André van Duren Script: André van Duren, Paul Jan Nelissen Production: Sigma Pictures
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Shock Head Soul
Simon Pummell talks to See NL about his extraordinary Venice Orizzonti documentary selection.
“I was interested in visionary art. I was looking at outsider art. In the Freud history (of Schreber), he excerpts a number of passages from Schreber’s book. They were so extraordinary…it just sent me back to the original text.” see pages 12-13
Shock Head Soul Director: Simon Pummell Script: Simon Pummell Production: Submarine, Hot Property (UK)
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Lena
Director Christophe van Rompaey and producer Els Vandevorst discuss Toronto-bound Lena, a ÃMN BCPVU B TIBUUFSFE ESFBN BOE the lengths to which a girl goes to retain the illusion.
“I like Christophe a lot, not just as a director but also as a human being. It was clear to me that he was the right director for the project.” see pages 16-17
Lena Director: Christophe van Rompaey Script: Mieke de Jong Production: Isabella Films, Kazbek, A Private View (BE) Sales: Bavaria Film International (GER)
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The Heineken Kidnapping
“When this giant of a man (Hauer) walked into the rehearsal room all these young actors held their breath.” see pages 26-27
Photo: Piet Weyman
Rutger’s back, and explodes into cinemas October 27. Producer Frans van Gestel and director Maarten Treurniet discuss the Dutch crime of the century - and what it’s like to work with a legend.
The Heineken Kidnapping Director: Maarten Treurniet Script: Kees van Beijnum, Maarten Treurniet Production: IDTV Film
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Late Debutant He is the writer of the smash hit comedy, Schnitzel Paradise (2005). For years, he has been one of the leading script ediVQTU KP VJG &WVEJ Ă„ NO KPFWUVT[ contributing to almost every Ă„ EVKQPCN RTQLGEV OCFG D[ Lemming Film, and he has also directed award-winning shorts. Now in his early 50s, Marco Van Geffen has taken the leap into feature production with Among Us, the ďŹ rst part of a planned trilogy on “the drama of the happy familyâ€? set around a modern Dutch housing estate. The ďŹ lm was recently awarded the CICAE (International Art & Essay Cinema Confederation) prize at Locarno as well as a Special Mention from the Ecumenical Jury, and has been selected for the Discovery section at Toronto 2011. What’s more, the ďŹ lm has been picked up for international sales by top French outďŹ t Elle Driver. Geoffrey Macnab talks to the debutant director. Among Us is loosely inspired by van Geffen’s short, My Sister, about a ďŹ ve-year-old girl who witnesses her father’s abuse of her baby sister and is helpless to do anything about it. The new feature ďŹ lm also features an observer – a Polish au pair in a small town in the Netherlands who thinks she can identify a serial rapist. She, too, is a “powerless witness to an act of violence.â€? The next two ďŹ lms in the trilogy will take different perspectives on violence within everyday Dutch life. By honing in on domestic experiences, the director’s intention is to probe away at the tensions and discontent lurking beneath the surface of Dutch society‌ and beyond. “In a way, it is all connected to a moment in our society when
everything changed. We were this open country but after the murders of Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn, it suddenly changed,� Van Geffen states. “We were a country that was clean, more or less. Suddenly, we noticed we were not so clean.�
wife) and Joost de Vries in 1995. In the process he developed strong ideas about how screenplays should be constructed. “There is this three-act structure,â€? he comments, refering to the familiar pattern of ‘set-up, confrontation and resolution’ found in so much storytelling for the screen. “But, because I know it by heart, I never use it.â€? When he reads a screenplay, he tries to “feel the ow.â€? He agrees that it is useful to “have the knowledgeâ€? about structure that scriptwriting gurus like Robert McKee and Syd Field teach their students but he favours a more organic and “intuitiveâ€? approach.
As a screenwriter honing his craft, Van Geffen has participated in workshops and script labs everywhere from Torino to Sundance and Amsterdam’s own Binger Institute. He is full of praise for Cannes, where his short ďŹ lm My Sister screened in 2007. “They’re really very supportive and they remember you,â€? he says of the festival, which has continued to help him to develop contacts and opportunities. “It’s a long route, I think,â€? Van Geffen reects on his journey toward directing features after so long as a screenwriter and script doctor. Born in 1959, he is from
“The writing that is really interesting, because it is more dangerous, is when you just go in this untreaded territory. You have to ďŹ nd the right style and the right story. It is far more intuitive. There are not so many rules.â€?
“I started late so I am quite calm. I don’t like all the macho stuff.�
Van Geffen continues to work on screenplays for other directors, for example the forthcoming kids’ adventure yarn Boy 7, Erik De Bruyn’s political comedy The President and Simone van Dusseldorp’s Briefgeheim. On Among Us, he wrote the initial treatment himself but then brought in another writer, Jolein Laarman (whose credits include Katja’s Sister). He says he relished being able to bounce ideas off her and to have a dialogue.
an art school background (he studied at the College of Art in Arnhem). A talented draughtsman, he was as interested in storytelling and literature as in drawing – and this drew him towards ďŹ lmmaking as a means of expression.
Initial response to the project was positive. The Netherlands Film Fund boarded early. Finding a broadcaster was more of a struggle. “We started shooting without one but luckily the Buddhist Broadcast Organisation stepped in and so we were fully there at the end.�
As he worked on his own projects, Van Geffen was also heavily involved in the ďŹ lms being made through Lemming Films, the Amsterdam-based production outďŹ t set up by Leonine Petit (his
When it came to stepping on set on the ďŹ rst day of shooting, he wasn’t as neurotic or combustible as some other feature directors making their ďŹ rst movies. “I started late so I am quite calm. I don’t like all the macho stuff.â€? His long experience of script editing had given him invaluable experience in how best to communicate with his collaborators. “You have to be clear, analytical‌and you have to be convincing and inspiring,â€? he says of how he set about rallying his cast and crew. Casting was crucial. Van Geffen had made two trips to Poland before casting the lead. “We saw 75 young Polish actresses,â€? he recalls. What was he looking for? “You don’t know. You’re just looking. That’s always (the way) with casting. You look and you know!â€? When Dagmara Bak auditioned, there was no-one for her to act opposite. Killing time, Van Geffen talked to her. Finally, at the very end of his time in Warsaw, he was able to see her in a scene with Natalia Rybicka, another actress he admired. “They blew the roof off!â€? Both were eventually cast. The director is at pains to point out that Among Us is not intended as a political statement. “The whole of Europe is tilting toward a more fearful approach toward politics and society,â€? he says. “What I am merely doing is portraying a certain way of behaving that is not completely open. I could stick this whole political theory to that, but I am just trying to tell a story. A ďŹ lmmaker should not make statements but trigger people to start doubting statements.â€?
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Photo: Joost Guntenaar
Among Us Director: Marco van Geffen Script: Marco van Geffen and Jolein Laarman Production: Lemming Film Sales: Elle Driver (FR)
Marco van Geffen
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Leader of the Gang The Gang of Oss, produced by veteran Dutch producer Matthijs van Heijningen, will open the 2011 Netherlands Film Festival. The producer talks to Nick Cunningham. Matthijs van Heijningen’s The Gang of Oss was, like many of his other film projects, an idea many years in gestation. A historical piece about the sectarian divide evident within pre-WW2 Netherlands, it is a subject that the producer concedes has fascinated him for a long time. In the film, Johanna, a young woman played by rising Dutch star Sylvia Hoeks (Dutch Shooting Star 2010), is desperate to distance herself from the activities of a violent gang that meets at her inn. But a core member of the gang is her husband Ties, played by Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts (Bullhead, 2011), so the harder she tries to break free from the gang’s tyranny, the stronger the links become. The socio-political context of the film, Van Heijningen explains, is the oppression of Holland’s Catholic community congregated in the south of the country, beneath the Rhine and Maas rivers, in the 1930s. “This story has struck me for years,” he says. “In Brabant, a small town already dating from the 9th or 10th century, a fight breaks out between the enormous, local poor population and the authorities - the authorities being the Roman Catholic church, the Jewish meat industrialists and the Protestant state police. You had this great friction and lots of murders and fights, and it got so bad that they called it Chicago on the Maas.” The resulting political turmoil following Brabant’s occupation by the State police led to the
collapse of the pre-War national government. “But this is just the one strand within the film,” Van Heijningen continues. “On the one hand you have all of these political and gang problems that more resemble Chicago from this time. On the other it is a basic story about a girl who tries to fight her way out of a bad situation.”
Heijningen stresses. “So you have to move somewhere else like Rotterdam or The Hague, or Brabant.” The Gang of Oss is Van Heijningen’s third film to open the Netherlands Film Festival. His A Month Later, by Nouchka van Brakel and starring Monique van de Ven and Renée Soutendijk, opened the 1986 festival, while Kracht by Frouke Fokkema kick-started the event in 1990.
The film was shot in Brabant and Rotterdam over a seven week period, on a budget of €2.9 million. Most of the key cast came from the region, so their use of local dialect offered the production more authenticity. “It was fun using actors from there, it worked very well,” comments Van Heijningen.
“Opening the festival has always turned out well for me publicitywise, and we really aimed for that again this year,” he points out. “We were fast enough to show the festival a working print that they could decide on. The Gang of Oss isn’t really commercial, more of a cross-over, but with its historical background it’s a good mix for opening film.”
Production finances were sourced from the Netherlands Film Fund (50%) with further contributions from the Rotterdam Media Fund and Dutch broadcaster NTR. Van Heijningen managed to raise private equity valued at €600,000
Budgeted at €8 million, financing for the Gijsbrecht van Aemstel project hit the buffers in 2009 during the recent financial crisis, but nevertheless Van Heijningen has retained good contact with potential international coproduction partners in Belgium and Romania. He is confident that the project’s status as a national icon should free up local institutional funding. “It is about the rise and fall of Amsterdam in the 13th century,” explains Van Heijningen. “It’s our national epic play, performed for the past 400 years every New Years day. It is like our King Lear.” A longer version of his article can be read on the Netherlands Film Festival website
In 2012 Van Heijningen will celebrate 40 years as a producer. How has the business of being a producer changed over this period? “Before, you had individual producers,” he opines. “Now it’s completely different. You have all these big companies with really big overheads and foreign stockholders, doing tv, commercials, films. But individual, independent producers like me? There are not many of us left. We are absolutely in the minority.”
“It got so bad that they called it Chicago on the Maas.”
Strictly a one-film-at-a-time producer, Van Heijningen will oversee the world premiere and local release of The Gang of Oss before he returns to his epic Gijsbrecht van Aemstel project. The film will be an adaptation of the classic and emblematic Dutch play written by Joost van den Vondel, who is to the Dutch what Shakespeare is to the British.
from 150 investors, each paying €4,000. A 10% gap in the budget was filled by Van Heijningen himself. The producer was happy to shoot away from Amsterdam where, he feels, locals are beginning to tire of location crews pitching up with increasing regularity. “They are getting a bit bored with all the shooting in Amsterdam,” Van
The Gang of Oss Director: André van Duren Script: André van Duren, Paul Jan Nelissen Production: Sigma Pictures
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Photo : Victor Arnolds 11
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A Suitable Case for Treat Movie subjects don’t come much stranger than Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911). In middle age, the German lawyer and judge suddenly began to receive messages from God that he thought were coming via a “writing down” machine. Geoffrey Macnab investigates. During his illness, diagnosed as dementia praecox, Schreber felt his identity was disintegrating. He wanted to become a woman and have a child. His memoirs of his own psychosis were the subject of a famous essay by Sigmund Freud. Celebrated writers and academics from Elias Canetti to Jacques Lacan have also written about him. Now, Schreber has inspired Shock Head Soul, the new film from Simon Pummell (which premieres in Venice’s Orizzonti section in September 2011). Like Pummell’s Body Song (2003), this is a “hybrid” film, combining documentary, fiction and animation. “I was interested in visionary art. I was looking at outsider art. In the Freud history (of Schreber), he (Freud) excerpts a number of passages from Schreber’s book. They were so extraordinary…it just sent me back to the original text,” Pummell explains of how he became hooked on Schreber’s story. Schreber had an uncanny ability to describe his own condition clearly, even after he was institutionalized because of his madness. “He had a very brilliant mind. He was a top-flight lawyer. He had that kind of precision, that legalistic thinking,” Pummell notes of the paradox of the madman who never lost his lucidity. Schreber was never ‘cured’. Nor did he lose his belief in his status as the chosen one.
In Shock Head Soul, there are interviews with several celebrated psychoanalysts, neurologists, film theorists and academics, all with different theories about Schreber. They’re presented to viewers in period costume, as if they are in a 19th century court. One psychological explanation for Schreber’s behaviour is that his father, Moritz Schreber, was an educationalist notorious for designing mechanical devices to improve children’s posture and to stop them masturbating. Schreber himself came up with the idea of a cosmic writing machine.
Freud is not necessarily a film about psychoanalysis. The reason I wanted to make a film about Schreber was that it (his story) has a really big puzzle in the middle. Can we in some adequate way empathise with this person who is quite far outside the norms of our subjective experience?” The audience of Shock Head Soul is in the position of the analyst – listening and trying to empathise with the patient who has such an extreme vision of the world. “There are essentially three threads,” the writer-director explains about the structure of Shock Head Soul. Dramatic reconstruction (with Hugo Koolschijn playing Schreber) sits alongside documentary interviews and CGI animation. “The idea is that these three threads continually bleed into each other and question the status of each other.”
“He talks about nerves and rays and fibres a lot but those are completely interchangeable terms,” Pummell explains. “Somehow, for him, light rays become nerves which become fibres.” How do you visualize the elaborate, psychotic visions of the madman? Pummell’s solution was to study the technology that was available at Scherber’s time. The “writing machine” was a mixture of the typewriter, the telegraph and the early X-ray machine. Pummell himself has shown a Schreber-like ingenuity in designing a version of the writing down machine – an orb-like object with tentacles. Shock Head Soul isn’t the only recent film dealing with the early days of psychoanalysis. This is also a subject that David Cronenberg is tackling in his Freud-Jung feature, A Dangerous Method (likewise premiered in Venice.)
“He (Pummell) has a high expertise in the technical process of filmmaking. He also has an interest in using new animation technologies,” Femke Wolting enthuses of her director. “He is also very conceptual and really understands film language.” The British-born Pummell is seen by the Dutch film industry as one of their own. He is married to a Dutch woman and has lived for many years in the Netherlands. Does the Leiden-based director have a “Dutch sensibility,” however that may be defined? “I have a very firm footprint here (in the Netherlands),” Pummell suggests. “I feel I have a home here in terms of my work.”
Shock Head Soul has been put together as a UK-Dutch coproduction. Submarine, the adventurous Dutch outfit headed by Femke Wolting and Bruno Felix, partnered with British company Hot Property, run by Janine Marmot. Illuminations’ Keith Griffiths (producer of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Palme d’Or winning Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives) came on board as executive producer. Funding came from the Netherlands Film Fund and the Rotterdam Media Fund as well as from the Wellcome Trust. There was also support from The Harvard University Film Study Center. Following its Venice premiere, the movie is set to travel to Rotterdam (where it may be accompanied by an associated installation called The Sputnik Effect).
Pummell has mixed feelings about how cinema has dealt with psychoanalysis in the past. “Often, such topics – to be really general – are treated through the historical figure. So a film about
Shock Head Soul Director: Simon Pummell Script: Simon Pummell Production: Submarine, Hot Property (UK)
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atment “Schreber was never ‘cured’. Nor did he lose his belief in his status as the chosen one.”
Simon Pummell
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Industry Analysis
An eye for Restoration EYE Film Institute Netherlands played a key role in the restoration of Nicholas Ray’s controversial We Can’t Go Home Again, which receives its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September. Head curator Giovanna Fossati tells Melanie Goodfellow about the project. “Didn’t you direct that Eskimo movie with Anthony Quinn... and Rebel without a Cause you directed that also, huh?” a student quizzes director Nicholas Ray in an early scene of We Can’t Go Home Again. “Yeah, did you like it?” asks a white-haired, eye-patched Ray of his 1955 classic which hit cinemas when the young man was still a small child. “It was okay,” is the response. Set against the backdrop of campus life and civil unrest in America in the early 1970s, We Can’t Go Home Again is a collaborative work, produced by Ray and his students during the director’s tenure as professor of film at the Harpur College of Arts and Sciences in upstate New York. It mixes dramatised scenes of student life, staged conversations between Ray and his students, documentary-style coverage of demonstrations and some news footage, shot on a variety of formats: video, Super 8, 16mm and 35mm. These elements are re-combined in a back projection, showing strands of the chaotic narrative simultaneously on the same fragmented screen. Ever since the film’s premier at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973, it has divided audiences: some see it as a visionary masterpiece, others, simply as a mess. “I don’t think it matters whether it’s a masterpiece or not. It’s an
interesting film. In the light of new technologies and what we can now do digitally, it gains a whole new life,” says Giovanna Fossati, head curator at the EYE Film Institute Netherlands. “It’s a film made before its time in very constrained circumstances and what it achieves is extraordinary.”
time we met she came with my book in her bag. She had read it and had loads of questions, pretty technical ones,” says Fossati. “Throughout the project Susan acted as our interface with the original crew, sitting in the director’s chair so to speak. I don’t know how many hundreds of emails and phone calls we exchanged. We also had a couple of good fights but it was all in the spirit of the restoration.”
Fossati manages a collection of some 37,000 film titles and is responsible for its digitisation and restoration. She and her restoration team played a key role in giving We Can’t Go Home Again a new lease of life, in collaboration with the Nicholas Ray Foundation, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Academy Film Archive, and some of Ray’s former students.
EYE boarded the project in early 2010, managing the restoration of the image in collaboration with New York-based laboratory Cineric which carried out the work, while the Academy Film Archive handled the audio. “Our aim was to make the experience of watching the film easier and less challenging for a broader audience without destroying the signs of the original crafted process,” says Fossati.
“Susan Ray emailed EYE director Sandra den Hamer in early 2010,” says Fossati, referring to Ray’s wife and president of the Nicholas Ray Foundation, who
centenary of Ray’s birth on August 7 1911. “The fun part is when a restored work is screened and you see the public’s reaction as well as that of colleagues from other archives. Restoring a film is the same as restoring the Sistine Chapel - you will be criticised whatever approach you take and that’s fine,” says Italian-born Fossati. “Restoration is not an exact science. There’s no one way to restore a film.”
The biggest challenge was agreeing what should be restored. Ray continued working on the material up until his death in 1979. As well as the film shown at Cannes in 1973, he cut a shorter version in 1976. Some of Ray’s former students did not like either version and wanted to reassemble the source elements from scratch.
“We had a couple of good fights but it was all in the spirit of the restoration.”
“We were at times divided,” explains Fossati about the actual restoration process, “but we ended up agreeing to do a number of tests, on the basis of which we decided to digitise at the highest resolution available to us (e.g. 4K) the existing 35mm negative which was the source of the 1973 print shown in Cannes.”
was the driving force behind the restoration. Her interest in EYE’s work was prompted in part by its restoration of the 1922 Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentinostarrer Beyond the Rocks, which Fossati wrote about in From Grain to Pixel (Amsterdam University Press, 2009) examining the challenges of digitising film archives.
The restored picture will be given a world premier at the Venice Film Festival in September, in an event commemorating the
“She really wanted to understand the restoration process. The first
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Lena: A Tale of Lonelines Developed and produced by Amsterdam-based Els Vandevorst, Lena is the second HGCVWTG Ä NO HTQO FKTGEVQT Christophe Van Rompaey after his critically acclaimed debut Moscow, Belgium. After its selection in the Contemporary World Cinema programme at Toronto, Lena’s producer and director spoke to Melanie Goodfellow. Inundated with scripts after festival hit Moscow, Belgium, Flemish director Christophe Van Rompaey nearly turned down Dutch producer Els Vandevorst when she contacted him asking whether he would like to direct Lena. “He had a lot of scripts on his desk, a lot of people approaching him and was on the verge of shooting another film but he told me to send him the script anyway and that he would read it,” says Vandevorst. The film, which Vandevorst started developing with writer Mieke de Jong after they collaborated on Martin Koolhoven’s South in 2003, focuses on isolated, overweight teenager Lena who makes dark compromises to keep her dream boyfriend. The story revolves around her unexpected romance with the good-looking, popular Daan, who asks her to move in with him and his father. Lena thinks she has found the loving home she never had. This dream is quickly shattered but the lonely teenager goes to incredible lengths to maintain the illusion. Something in the character captured Van Rompaey’s imagination. “He called me and said ‘I can’t get the girl out of my head. I can’t think about anything else other than this lonely
character,” recounts Vandevorst. “We met up and immediately clicked. I like Christophe a lot not just as a director but also as a human being. It was clear to me that he was the right director for the project.”
found intriguing. I immediately saw things in her that I could connect to the story,” he explains. Polish actress Buzek, meanwhile, was a revelation to Van Rompaey. “Agata was appearing in a play in Amsterdam. I didn’t know her films but Els was keen I audition her. I drove to Amsterdam from Belgium, did a casting and then jumped back into the car and headed back for the opening of the Brussels Film Festival because I was on the jury,” recounts the director.
“Of all the scripts I read, Lena spoke to me the most,” agrees Van Rompaey. “It’s a very personal, character-based story, which I like. Lena’s this isolated, rootless figure brought up in the Netherlands by a young Polish mother, who needs her but rejects her at the same time because of her own back story.”
tragicomedy about a fortysomething recent divorcée and a single mother’s unlikely relationship with a truck driver. “I am actually a bit puzzled when people refer to the film as a comedy because I don’t see it that way. The dramatic and comic are two sides of me. Sure I have an upside, an ability not to take things, and especially not myself, too seriously, but I also have a pretty dark side too, or so people tell me,” says Van Rompaey.
“By strange coincidence, the opening film was The Reverse in which Agata is the lead. I took this as some sort of sign,” he concludes. “It was a good call because she is an amazingly professional, talented actress.”
The director was scheduled to shoot his adaptation of Peter Terrin’s dark novel Blank first but when finance for that film fell through, he shifted his attention to Lena. First-time actress Emma Levie plays Lena opposite Niels Gomperts (Daan), who recently starred in Shocking Blue (Mark de Cloe). Rising Polish star Agata Buzek (Polish EFP Shooting Star 2010) was cast as Lena’s mother and Jeroen Willems as Daan’s father. But for Van Rompaey, the casting of Lena was key to the success of the film.
The shoot took place on the outskirts of Rotterdam earlier this year. In an unusual move, Van Rompaey and cinemato-
“Of all the scripts I read, Lena spoke to me the most.”
“It took us more than a year to cast Lena. She is in every frame. The story is told through her. We are not showing the audience anything she doesn’t know. The actress had to be able to carry the film,” he says.
grapher Menno Westendorp decided to frame the film in Four-by-Three, shooting uniquely with hand-held cameras. “The decision to shoot in Four-byThree is so right for this film. I wanted to shoot it from the perspective of Lena, the story is revealed through her eyes. I wasn’t aiming for an epic look with lots of landscapes, but rather something up-close and personal, claustrophobic almost.”
“I must have seen hundreds of girls. I was getting desperate. Emma came to us by chance. She was something like the best friend of the babysitter of the neighbour of the assistant casting director,” says Van Rompaey with a laugh. “She wasn’t exactly what I was seeking and her first casting was really very bad. It was actually what she did between takes that I
Lena marks a change in mood and style for Van Rompaey after Moscow, Belgium - a romantic
Lena Director: Christophe van Rompaey Script: Mieke de Jong Production: Isabella Films, Kazbek, A Private View (BE) Sales: Bavaria Film International (GER) 16
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ess and Longing
Christophe van Rompaey
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“The best way to find a strong partnership is to secure a Dutch producer!”
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Industry analysis
Meeting Holland This year Signe Zeilich-Jensen takes over as head of the Holland Film Meeting, the international B2B arm of the Netherlands Film Festival. She talks to Nick Cunningham. For a country of its size the Netherlands has more than its fair share of major film festivals, all of which are of crucial importance to the sector they serve. IDFA is the most important international documentary festival in the international calendar. Rotterdam (IFFR) has redefined the finance of independent cinema, while executives working in the field of youth production design their yearly schedules around October’s Cinekid. To these must be added the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF), the showcase for the very best of Dutch cinema, which this year runs September 21-30. For the Dutch public it is an essential annual event, but the NFF has a vital international purpose too. Its international arm, the Holland Film Meeting (HFM), was established by the late Wouter Barendrecht in 1988 to forge alliances between Dutch producers and their international counterparts, and to kickstart the process of quality cross-border feature film co-production. Based in Utrecht’s luxurious Karel V Hotel, the HFM runs this year from 22-26 September. “Our ambition is to be the best place for film professionals to meet,” points out Signe ZeilichJensen who this year replaces former HFM head Ellis Driessen. “We always want to create a unique place for European film professionals to meet in the shadow of the bigger film festivals and markets. The Holland Film Meeting offers a very effective way
to get to know more about the Dutch film industry and for Dutch producers to understand better the production and financial mechanisms outside the Netherlands. We see our task as promoting and supporting the Dutch film industry and offering strong links to the international film world.”
Film Festival in August 2011, during which four Dutch projects were presented to the assembled copro-oriented experts. The Holland Film Meeting will reciprocate with the selection of four Scandinavian projects during the 2011 Production Platform. “The Scandinavian countries are in many ways similar to the Netherlands,” explains ZeilichJensen. “We are from countries with a ‘small’ language, and that makes it difficult for our films to travel across our national borders. But Scandinavian film and television appeals to Dutch taste. In the past there have been co-productions especially between Denmark and the Netherlands, but now the interest from Dutch producers to co-produce with other Scandinavian countries is stronger. We hope of course that this interest is mutual and have therefore invited Scandinavian producers and funds to visit us in Utrecht.”
The Holland Film Meeting comprises a number of key strategic elements, foremost among which is the Netherlands Production Platform (NPP), a pitching forum during which approximately thirteen European and seven Dutch projects are presented to the cream of international financiers, distributors, commissioning editors and potential co-production partners. The numerous Platform projects that have seen international success include Mohamed Al-Daradji’s Son of Babylon (2010, NFF closing film), Adrienn Pál (Ágnes Kocsis, Un Certain Regard 2010) and Nanouk Leopold’s Wolfsbergen (Berlinale Forum 2007).
The Scandinavian theme at this year’s HFM theme will continue as Danish TV executive producer Sven Clausen will discuss the recent worldwide success of Danish television drama, such as The Government and The Killling. “Sven has his own unique method of nailing these great HBO-type drama series,” comments Zeilich-Jensen. The Government head-writer Adam Price will also attend the discussion.
“Dutch film producers are hard working, social, capable and very ambitious professionals,” points out Zeilich-Jensen. “The best way to find a strong partnership is to secure a Dutch producer! The Netherlands Film Fund is also creating more possibilities for co-productions in their programmes. Co-production is going to become more and more important in the future.”
“The yearly focus on a different territory or country gives producers, funds and other financiers an easy way to effectively learn more about each others’ work,” she continues. “Personal contact is the best reason for co-production.”
Every year the HFM turns a spotlight on a fellow European industry in order to explore the opportunities for mutual collaboration. This year’s HFM will place special emphasis on the potential for Scandinavian co-production. Zeilich-Jensen partnered with the New Nordic Films market of the Haugesund
Annual HFM events include the Cinema Militans lecture, during
which a luminary of international cinema is invited to expound upon his or her vision of the future of cinema, and the Binger/ Screen International interview with a key creative player from the international film scene. Past Cinema Militans lecturers include Peter Greenaway, Tom Tykwer and Agnieska Holland. Former Binger/Screen interviewees include experimental filmmaker Steve McQueen, directors Pieter Jan Brugge and Terence Davies, and producer Nik Powell. This year’s lecturer and interview subject will be announced early September. Another core piece within the Holland Film Meeting jigsaw puzzle is the Benelux Screenings programme that enables professionals to see the cream of Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourgian output from the previous 12 months. The films are English-subtitled and are also available for viewing in the HFM videotheque. This year’s Dutch titles will include Urszula Antoniak’s Code Blue (Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes 2011), Paula van der Oest’s Black Butterflies (Tribeca, 2011) and David Verbeek’s IFFR Return of the Tigers winner Club Zeus, and a host of other new titles. “The Holland Film Meeting has been proven to work,” ZeilichJensen confirms. “Many of the guests return every year. This is a good sign. But we also want to encourage new producers to use the platform. So we intend to strengthen the ties with more and more international producers’ associations and bodies. We want more people to know about the Holland Film Meeting, about our activities and about the great possibilities that exist to work so closely with the Dutch film industry.”
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Doreen Boonekamp
Still: The Zig Zag Kid Photo: Jaap Vrenegoor
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Industry analysis
Full Focus Ahead After a tumultuous and worrying year for the Dutch Ă„ NO KPFWUVT[ JQY FQGU Film Fund chief Doreen Boonekamp assess the future? She talks to Geoffrey Macnab. The Dutch cultural sector has been in turmoil since the coalition Government announced its plans for savage cuts in public funding at the end of 2010. State Secretary for Culture Halbe Zijlstra remarked pointedly that “the cultural sector needs to become less dependent on government subsidies.â€? At the same time the city of Rotterdam announced the closure of the Rotterdam Media Fund in 2012. The public broadcasters also are facing major cuts. In the short term at least, there are few alternative sources for ďŹ lm ďŹ nancing in the Netherlands. The net result is that local producers remain very dependent on the national ďŹ lm agency, the Netherlands Film Fund. “From every possible side budgets for Dutch ďŹ lm are under pressure,â€? CEO Doreen Boonekamp notes. Inevitably, the Fund has been in the crossďŹ re as the debate about cultural funding has intensiďŹ ed. Boonekamp is in a paradoxical position. On the one hand, the Fund becomes even more vital than before to the ďŹ lm industry. On the other, despite its added responsibilities, the Fund’s budget will shrink. “We have to go on working with a lot less money,â€? Boonekamp states. As it looks now, the Fund’s new budget in 2013 will be â‚Ź28.8 million per year, down from â‚Ź37million. The challenge now, she points out, is to make the right choices in order to retain a
healthy industry, but using less money.
Culture Secretary Zijlstra. As she points out, the Government has reafďŹ rmed that it wants to “strengthen and keep up international co-operation.â€? Zijlstra has also stated his desire to see Dutch ďŹ lm maintain its impressive market share in local cinemas.
During Cannes 2011, Dutch ďŹ lmmakers were angry and despondent having read the advice of the Arts Council to cut back nearly 30% on ďŹ lm spending. Many warned that if Culture Secretary Zijlstra decided to heed this advice then job losses and bankruptcies were inevitable.
“Obviously, with a lot less money the Film Fund can ďŹ nance a lot less ďŹ lms. So in order to reach the high ambitions of the Government, alternative measures for ďŹ lm ďŹ nancing should be put in place, otherwise these goals will be very hard to reach,â€? Boonekamp states. The level of ambition of the government gives room for a constructive dialogue between the ďŹ lm sector and the Ministry for Culture, she adds.
In June Zijlstra published his policy letter. In terms of money the letter contained a small step forward for Dutch ďŹ lm industry, as cuts where downsized to average 22%. In short the cuts include the following. The International Film Festival Rotterdam, IDFA and the Netherlands Film Festival had their budgets cut by 10%. Both Cinekid and the Holland Animation Film Festival will no
“Long before the cuts were even announced we stressed the importance of putting in place alternative measures for ďŹ lm ďŹ nancing in order to give the Dutch ďŹ lm industry a healthy and competitive international position. Together with our international colleagues we have designed several measures which could well be implemented in the Netherlands. Within the coming months we will thoroughly talk things through with the Government to see which could get their support,â€? the Film Fund boss declares.
â€œâ€Śalternative measures for ďŹ lm ďŹ nancing should be put in place.â€? longer receive funding through central government, but will have to turn to the Film Fund from 2013 onwards. The support for both the Binger Film Lab and the Netherlands Institute for Animated Film is cut by 100% and the EYE Film Institute will get neither support for its distribution activities nor extra support for its change of location. The Film Fund will see a 22.5% shrinkage in its budget while at the same time taking on more tasks.
Hopes remain strong that the Dutch will get their own soft money scheme to attract inward investment and bolster further the country’s status as a coproduction partner. Boonekamp also oats the idea that various regional ďŹ lm funds could be set up across the Netherlands.
Council of Europe Fund for co-production, distribution and exhibition. The Film Fund is also determined to keep up the annual volume of minority co-productions it is involved in. Next to working closely with Germany, Belgium, Denmark and Hungary, ties are also still strong with the Irish Film Board. The Film Fund has actioned a number of improvements. The organisation rewrote its regulations and streamlined its structure, relaunching its website in mid-June and inviting future applications to be made digitally. The new logo incorporates the word “Netherlandsâ€? to clarify the country of origin. Earlier this year the Fund launched additional measures to boost the international release of Dutch features and documentaries. Boonekamp and her team are now busy determining how they will spend their (reduced) budget for the next four-year funding cycle, running 2013-2016. “We have to think how we can serve industry best and to deďŹ ne the goals for the coming period and how these can be reached,â€? she says. Notwithstanding the announcement of the Government’s planned cuts, there has been a mini production boom with over 10 ďŹ lms such as the Dutch-Irish co-production Milo, Vincent Bal’s The Zig Zag Kid (co-starring Isabella Rossellini) and Peter Greenaway’s Goltzius And The Pelican Company all shooting over the late summer.
The Dutch are committed to remaining in Eurimages, the
But Boonekamp is accentuating the positive signals coming from
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Production Overview
Dutch Harvest Dutch ďŹ lms currently in production 170Hz
#NĂ„G VJG 9GTGYQNH &QNHLG 9GGTYQNHLG
Jackdaw (Kauwboy)
Director: Joost van Ginkel Script: Joost van Ginkel Production: Column Film, Crocchetta Films Two lovers, both deaf, escape a world hostile to their love. #VU EPFT POF PG UIFN IBWF B RVJUF EJGGFSFOU SFBTPO UP ÂżFF
Director: Joram LĂźrsen Script: Tamara Bos Production: BosBros, CinĂŠ Cri de Coeur (BE), uFilm (BE), LĂźrsen Filmproducties Sales: Delphis Films 8IFO UIF JOOPDFOU "MĂƒF TVEEFOMZ UVSOT JOUP B XIJUF ÂżVGGZ XFSFXPMG PO UIF OJHIU PG IJT TFWFOUI CJSUIEBZ IF doesn’t know what is happening‌
Director: Boudewijn Koole Script: Boudewijn Koole, Jolein Laarman Production: Waterland Film Sales: Delphis Films Jojo gets caught between caring for a jackdaw and his loyalty towards his father. Eventually, something’s got to give.
Ataraxia – Poodle Shaving for the Blind
Fidgety Bram (Brammetje Baas)
Milo
Director: Sander Blom Script: Sander Blom Production: seriousFilm " RVFTU UP ĂƒOE UIF VMUJNBUF NBOVBM GPS MJGF
Director: Anna van der Heide Script: Tamara Bos Production: BosBros Sales: Delphis Films For Fidgety Bram, constantly moving around isn’t a QSPCMFN VOUJM IF FOUFST UIF ĂƒSTU HSBEF XJUI UIF TUSJDU Mr. Fish‌
Director: Berend Boorsma, Roel Boorsma Script: Berend Boorsma, Roel Boorsma, Heather Imani Production: Fu Works, Samon Films (IE), A Private View (BE) Ten-year old Milo’s rare genetic disease forces him and his parents to embrace the imperfections in their lives.
Above my Head (3D) (Ondersteboven)
Hemel
Nick
Director: Eugenie Jansen Script: Patrick Minks Production: De Productie, Minds Meet (BE) " ĂƒMN BCPVU UIF DPOGVTJPO GFMU CZ PG B ZPVOH HJSM BOE UIF way fantasy helps her cope with her mother’s death.
Director: Sacha Polak Script: Helena van der Meulen Production: Circe Films, Bella Cohen Films, Jaleo Films (ES) )FNFM JT ĂƒHIUJOH B HVFSSJMMB XBS XJUI FWFSZ NBO JO UPXO looking for the difference between sex and love.
Director: Fow Pyng Hu Script: Fow Pyng Hu Production: IDTV Film, De Productie After he loses his job and is kicked out by his girlfriend, /JDL FNCBSLT PO B SPBE USJQ UP $SPBUJB UP ĂƒOE IJNTFMG
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Dutch ďŹ lms soon to be released Nova Zembla
Bennie Naught (Bennie Stout)
Tony Ten (Tony Tien)
Director: Reinout Oerlemans Script: Hugo Heinen Production: Eyeworks Film & TV Drama, Inspire Pictures Nova Zembla tells the gripping true story of the legendary GBJMFE NJTTJPO PG UIF UI DFOUVSZ %VUDI ÂżPUJMMB USZJOH UP ĂƒOE B USBEJOH SPVUF BDSPTT UIF /PSUI 1PMF UP "TJB
Director: Johan Nijenhuis Script: Wijo Koek Production: Farmhouse Film & TV, Nijenhuis en Co The only way that Bennie can see his father is to be the naughtiest boy in town.
Director: Mischa Kamp Script: Mieke de Jong Production: Lemming Film, Ma.Ja.De (DE), U-Media (BE) Sales: Delphis Films The story of little Tony whose father rises from humble crane driver to become Secretary of State.
SĂźskind
Lotus
All Stars 2: Old Stars
Fourteen years later, the All Stars are re-united - but now they’re the Old Stars. See page 30
The Gang of Oss (De Bende van Oss)
A young woman is desperate to escape from the web of crime that surrounds her, but the harder she tries the more embroiled she becomes. See page 14
Director: Rudolf van den Berg Script: Rudolf van den Berg, Chris W. Mitchell Production: Fu Works, Cadenza Film, Rinkel Film 1942. In an attempt to save a group of Jewish children from EFQPSUBUJPO 8BMUFS 4½TLJOE NVTU CFGSJFOE BO 44 PGĂƒDFS but the Nazi later exacts ruthless revenge on the Jew.
Director: Pascale Simons Script: Philip Delmaar Production: IJswater Films, Revolver Media Productions 0WFS UIF DPVSTF PG IPVST -0564 QSPÂżJFT TFWFSBM anonymous and lonely lives within our hectic society.
The Zig Zag Kid
The President (De President)
The Heineken Kidnapping (De Heineken Ontvoering)
" ĂƒMN CBTFE PO UIF OPUPSJPVT LJEOBQ BOE JODBSDFSBUJPO PG beer magnate Alfred Heineken in 1983. See page 26
Isabelle
After Isabelle, an exceptionally beautiful actress, is abducted by Jeanne, an ugly artist, the two women enter into a prolonged psychological battle. See page back cover
Lena
A plump, harmless girl makes dark compromises to keep her dream boyfriend. See page 16
Patatje Oorlog (A Small Chance)
A small girl tries to minimise the odds of her absent father coming to harm. See page 28 Director: Vincent Bal Script: Vincent Bal (& John Gilbert) Production: BosBros, N279 Entertainment, Prime Time (BE) After 13-year old Nono commits a series of crimes with master-burglar Felix, the boy discovers the true story about his father and his deceased mother. And also a lot about himself....
Director: Erik de Bruyn Script: Marco van Geffen, Erik de Bruyn Production: Lemming Film, Proton Cinema (HU), U-Film (BE) What happens when an illegal Moroccan accidentally CFDPNFT UIF ĂƒSTU %VUDI QSFTJEFOU
Shock Head Soul
Documentary about the brilliant 19th century lawyer Daniel Paul Schreber who received messages from God telling him to change into a woman. See page 10
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Festival Focus
No Kidding! Cinekid is the international festival for kids par excellence, and celebrates its 25th edition in October. Director Sannette Naeyé talks to Nick Cunningham. Cinekid may host a prestigious international competition. It may provide the ideal platform for the release of new Dutch and international films for kids. It may also offer must-attend co-production forums to all of the key players within the global film, tv and cross-media sectors. But Cinekid isn’t just a film festival, albeit one with enormous appeal to leading international film professionals. Through its extensive and interactive media literacy programme, and its roving Cinekid on Location programme across 30 Dutch cities, it is also an event with an avowed aim to educate children within the green fields of new media. “In Holland, kids spend on average about four hours per day with media,” points out Naeyé, “but, in general, we don’t prepare children at all for the life they are living. In school it is about linear teaching, learning to read and write and it more or less stops there. But at Cinekid we are very much advocates of media literacy, especially for young children, because they live in a totally interactive media world. We allow them to participate actively and creatively develop skills to empower themselves fully within this context of media.” This year’s Cinekid conference, titled Living in Media: Successfully Engaging the New Generation, will address head on the issue of the media industries’ engagement with children’s content. The message is simple. Interacting with media is no longer optional.
On the contrary, it is a crucial component of everyday education and play. Conferences speakers will include former head of CBBC and Cbeebies Marc Goodchild and transmedia expert Christy Dena.
change within this new world. With the different types of platforms, all kinds of possibilities as to how to produce must be explored, because everywhere budgets are tight.” This need to adapt may well affect the future structure of Cinekid’s ‘Junior’ events. “I foresee that these three different co-production markets will eventually drift into one as all production in the future will look for cross-platform applications,” Naeyé predicts.
Central to the festival’s professional programme are three co-production markets - for film, television and crossmedia. The Junior Film Market, an initiative of the festival and leading Dutch producer Lemming Film, offers a selection of fifteen highly entertaining and challenging international projects to potential coproducers. A minimum 10% of the required financing must be in place to qualify for selection. Fifteen further projects are up for co-pro grabs in The Junior Television Market.
In between meetings, open mic will be offered to potential co-pro partners who are offered the opportunity to explain what they are looking to invest in, and hence the type of product they need. Unlike many other co-production markets there are no open pitches by producers, and most meetings with potential co-producers have been set up in advance of the event.
“At Cinekid we are very much advocates of media education, especially for young children, because they live in a totally interactive media world.”
Cinekid also offers a digital market, equipped with state of the art screening facilities, for professional guests. At the Screening Club film and tv buyers, as well as programmers, financiers, producers and press, can view more than 250 new Dutch and international productions for children, including the full festival programme. Business facilities are laid on for executives to discuss and conclude film sales.
thirteen new films from the Netherlands, why has the kids genre developed so successfully in the Netherlands? The first reason, Naeyé argues, is the highly supportive levels of funding from the broadcasters and funds, especially the Netherlands Film Fund. The other reason, she explained in interview in 2010, why such a profusion of strong, groundbreaking and highly educational works of entertainment emerge from the Netherlands is to do with something inherent within the Dutch psyche. “The Dutch can be categorised on one side as teachers with one finger in the air, telling you what to do, and practical on the other side, but nevertheless anarchic and unconventional,” Naeyé observes. “Our key is applied art. That’s why we are strong in design and architecture, and we think outside the box to create new things. Also the Dutch are very strong in children’s production because we look to the content and not to political convention, so we are innovative.” “The Dutch mentality is to be solid, content-oriented, prepared to go into things in depth, a bit naughty, and a little bit mad, continually testing commercial boundaries,” she concludes.
“There is no international alternative to Cinekid,” Naeyé underlines.
The Junior Cross-Media Market looks to stimulate the finance of 8-10 projects within the shifting multi-media production landscape. “The multi-media markets are still very much in development because the producers in the industry have to find their way to collaborate,” stresses Naeyé. “We all have to
Kicking off the festival this year is Nicole van Kilsdonk’s Patatje Oorlog (see pages 28-29), which competes both in international and Dutch competitions. With the latter competition offering
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Sannette NaeyĂŠ
Photo: Gerlinde de Geus
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Crime and Punishment # Ä NO CDQWV VJG 0GVJGTNCPFUl most audacious kidnap case sees Rutger Hauer’s return to the Dutch production scene after 30 years. The Heineken Kidnapping producer Frans van Gestel and director Maarten Treurniet speak to Nick Cunningham In Dutch terms it was the crime of the century. When beer magnate Alfred Heineken was kidnapped in 1983 the nation was gripped. Heineken was the majority stakeholder in his family business. He was a friend both of the nation’s queen and Frank Sinatra, and a pillar of Netherlands society. For 21 days his incarceration was the lead item on every news bulletin. Nobody knew if he was alive or dead. As The Heineken Kidnapping producer Frans van Gestel of Amsterdam-based IDTV Film points out, “For the Dutch it was as if crime had finally grown up. Until then, we even weren’t aware that these kinds of thing could happen in the Netherlands. We didn’t have the Red Brigade (Italy) or Germany’s Red Army Faction. We weren’t familiar either with political crime or with big crime in general. The impact of the Heineken kidnap on the Dutch was enormous. “ So when director Maarten Treurniet approached Van Gestel to make a film of the story, the producer jumped at the chance. The project’s seeds, however, were planted many years before. Treurniet takes up the story. “In 1993 I had just finished film school and a fellow student and I were asked by a producer to develop a story for a feature film about a kidnapping,” he recalls. “That was all he said to us, so I said why not the Heineken case.
So we investigated this possibility, but the people who committed the crime, and especially their leader Cor van Hout, were not happy. They had a spokesman who said if Cor says don’t do it, then I wouldn’t do it. It was quite sinister.”
audiences, much like the beer, and the pedigree of the production team is beyond question. What’s more, the film is proving very interesting to major international sales companies. But what is set to ignite the highest interest in the film is the return of Rutger Hauer in his first major role in a Dutch film since Paul Verhoeven’s Spetters (1980)
After Van Hout’s murder in 2001 Treurniet revisited the project. Then he discovered that the father of one of the kidnappers had been fired by Heineken many years before because he was an alcoholic. “I was intrigued,” Treurniet stresses. “I had found the motive for my story.”
the whole time. We talked a lot and in the end it became a mix. I am very happy with the result. To work with an experienced professional like Rutger as a director you have to be prepared to the max. The collaboration improved the film greatly.”
“At first it was difficult to get Rutger’s full attention,” admits producer Van Gestel. “But after he read the script and met with Maarten he was really willing to play the role. We always thought of him in terms of age, in terms of international appeal, and the power of his acting. He was by far the number one. We didn’t have an alternative.”
“The impact of the Heineken kidnap on the Dutch was enormous.”
Treurniet was delighted with the ease of transition from verbal to contractual agreement, and was eager to see the effect that working with a luminary of Hauer’s stature would have on his fellow thespians.
He had also found the structure for his story. While the first half of the film chronicles Heineken’s kidnap and captivity, the second half details the magnate’s dogged pursuit of the fugitives and his determination to put them behind bars. “If you make just a one-way story about the kidnap then it is not interesting – everybody knows the ending,” insists Treurniet. “You can only make this story if you see it from both sides.”
“When this giant of a man walked into the rehearsal room all these young actors held their breath,” Treurniet observes. “But he is very generous with the other actors. He is very interested in them. He went out to dinner with the actors who played the four kidnappers, just to get to know them. He had a right to refusal to co-stars in his contract. But he went with all of our choices. He is very professional.”
IDTV and local distributor A-Film are fully aware of the enormous potential of the film. Budgeted at €4.5 million with a Dutch release date of 27 October 2011, The Heineken Kidnapping is pure commercial fare, but with strong international breakout potential. The subject is powerful and relevant to Dutch and European
Hauer was, nevertheless, demanding when the cameras began to roll. “He was so involved with his character and he wanted to decide whether Heineken was a nice guy or a bully,” Treurniet observes. “In my script he is a bully that becomes a nice guy, but Rutger wanted to play him nice
The Heineken Kidnapping Director: Maarten Treurniet Script: Kees van Beijnum, Maarten Treurniet Production: IDTV Film
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Against the Odds Nicole van Kilsdonk’s Patatje Oorlog will open the 2011 Cinekid Festival on October 18. The director talks to Nick Cunningham about kids, the festival and the nature of chance.
Patatje Oorlog is based on the Golden Pen-winning Een Kleine Kans (A Little Chance) by Marjolijn Hof, a children’s book that has been translated into many languages (the English-language title is Against the Odds).
Patatje Oorlog may be a film about calculating odds and reducing risk, but it’s not a film about cynical and wise-cracking gamblers. Nor is it a Wall Streettype portrayal of high finance across the trading floors of London and Frankfurt. Rather, it is a poignant and intimate film about a child who looks to minimise the odds of her father getting hurt by transferring his potential suffering onto the animals within her imagination.
One shift from the originating text is that the title wasn’t deemed kid-friendly enough, hence its change to Patatje Oorlog, which is a Dutch dish of fries and a mixture of kethup and satay-flavoured mayonnaise. The term patatje oorlog literally means potato (or chips) war. In the film, we observe such an army of war-bound animated chips.
Nine-year old Kiek worries about her dad who works as a doctor for an international aid organisation. One day in her class a discussion takes place about the nature of chance, and later her mother explains that the chances of anything happening to her father are very small. Nevertheless, Kiek reasons that if she owns a dead mouse then the chances of her having a dead father too must be very small indeed. But when her father continually fails to phone home, the need to offset the danger that she feels he encounters becomes more necessary, and more graphic. “So she thinks ‘ok, I must kill a dog’,” explains the film’s director, Nicole van Kilsdonk. “But her fantasy about how she must kill the dog is a bit sinister, so we animated it. She thinks about how she can shoot the dog to the moon in a rocket, or throw him under a train, but because it is done in animation it has a totally different tone to the rest of the film.”
Hence the balance between Kiek’s engagement with her real-life dilemma and her animated chance-altering fantasies. “You must accept that Kiek believes that throwing a dog in front of a train can influence chance,” Van Kilsdonk adds. “That was the challenge, to see the dilemma from the girl’s perspective, but in a really visual way, and without being too heavy on her. You have to like the girl in the film. You shouldn’t think ‘oh God, she’s frowning all day’.”
“And we are very happy to open the festival,” she enthuses. “With this film I’m really happy that we captured the right atmosphere and that we found the right actress. I think that we made an accessible, warm and emotional film. I am really happy that Cinekid saw it that way too.”
The film started life as a telefilm project pitched to public broadcaster VARA. With producer Marleen Slot of Lemming Film and screenwriter Lotte Tabbers, Van Kilsdonk received script development finance, but VARA subsequently passed on a commission. “But this was ok because we were able to complete the script, and the project was obviously better for cinema,” Van Kilsdonk stresses. “We really wanted to continue. So we went to the Netherlands Film Fund and NCRV [public broadcaster], which went very smoothly, and we then received money from the VAF (Flemish Audiovisual Fund) and eventually another €100,000 from Eurimages.” The film was made for €1.4 million.
“I wanted to make a film with lightness and engagement, which is very hard in a child’s movie.” “The novel was small and very beautiful in terms of the way it was told,” comments Van Kilsdonk. “The girl’s whole process of thinking was totally illogical but Hof made it logical, and she told the story with a lot of humour and some very special writing. I’ve always been interested in making a child’s movie, especially as I have a child the same age as Kiek. I wanted to make a film with lightness and engagement, which is very hard in a child’s movie. Very often you have to make it adventurous or funny, but this story was very nice, and I wanted to figure out how I could get into the head of this girl, talking about her contemporary world, but still engage the public.”
Van Kilsdonk believes that her film fits into the long-established Dutch tradition of smart and engaging films made for kids. “This tradition developed at a time when Dutch adult films weren’t being taken seriously at all,” she comments. “When I left film school at the end of the 1980s we were very cynical about Dutch cinema, except children’s films. People say that the Dutch are good for documentaries and films for kids, but that was a reaction because people just didn’t take the adult fiction films seriously.
Patatje Oorlog Director: Nicole van Kilsdonk Script: Lotte Tabbers Production: Lemming Film, A Private View (BE) Sales: Delphis Films (CAN) 28
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Nicole van Kilsdonk
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Team Reunion Jean van de Velde’s All Stars 2: Old Stars, a sequel to his 1997 soccer-based comedy hit, which was later transformed into a popular television series, is one of the Netherlands’ most eagerly CYCKVGF DQZ QHÄ EG TGNGCUGU this autumn. He tells Melanie Goodfellow why he decided to reunite the team. Dutch writer and director Jean van de Velde is perhaps best known internationally for his hard-hitting feature The Silent Army about child soldiers in East Africa, which screened in Un Certain Regard in 2009. But back home he will be forever associated with All Stars, his tragicomedy about a bunch of men who have played football together for the same amateur team since they were young boys. The film spawned a popular television series of the same name, which was a huge hit at home and won an international drama Emmy in 2000, as well as several international remakes. Van de Velde’s decision to make a sequel came partly out of a desire to work with the cast of the original film and television series, many of whom had remained good friends. “When we shot the original film, for four or five of them it was their film debut... most of them came not out of acting but rather from a stand-up comedy background. We had a hilarious time,” he explains. “The idea was always there that maybe we should do one more All Stars... I just needed to come up with the right story.” The director eventually found inspiration in British Michael Apted’s Up documentary series, capturing the lives of 14 Britons
every seven years, starting with Seven Up in 1964. “I got the boxed set for my birthday five years ago. I thought to myself why not do the same thing in fiction? Why not make a new All Stars 14 years later?” he says.
“But my wife, who is very wise, said, ‘don’t even think about the project for a month and then see how you feel.’ I also spoke with Antonie’s widow Isa, who was also in the original and the sequel as the wife of another character, and she felt strongly that the production should go on.”
“I started thinking about how life can play all sorts of tricks, how characters who were the most promising 14 years ago have met with failure, how some are dealing with divorces, how one can even become a grandfather at forty-something,” he continues.
Van de Velde reworked the script in such a way that Kamerling’s character remained part of the story although he is absent from the screen. “The film was always meant to be partly about dealing with loss,” he says. “I’ve tried to honour the character that Antonie would have played in the backdrop.”
As van de Velde imagined what had happened to his characters in the interim, he hit upon the idea of taking the friends on a road trip to Barcelona to attend the wedding of the one gay player on the team and watch a Madrid-Barcelona soccer derby.
story of the cabaret show which took place at the Westerbork transit camp every Tuesday in northeastern Netherlands, after the departure of the weekly train bound for Auschwitz. “I decided a long time ago that I didn’t want to get stuck doing one type of movie for the whole of my career,” comments Van de Velde. “My ultimate mantra, to quote Monty Python, is ‘and now for something completely different’.”
As the media campaign revs up for the film’s release in October, van de Velde is already developing two other, very different, projects aimed at the international co-production scene. The first is
Tragically, just as he was finishing the script, key cast member Antonie Kamerling died, almost prompting Van de Velde to abandon the production. “The day I met with the producer Rolf Koot for lunch to lock down the script, Antonie committed suicide,” says Van de Velde. “The irony was that he was due to play the part of the guy who died in the movie and was then reincarnated in another character. We had talked about the role a few weeks earlier and he was very excited about it - he was a very spiritual person.”
“The idea was always there that maybe we should do one more All Stars... I just needed to come up with the right story.” an adaptation of Surinamese writer Cynthia McLeod’s popular novel The Price of Sugar about the relationship between a wealthy family of plantation owners and their slaves in the former Dutch colony of Suriname in South America.
“His death was a total shock for all of us. We knew he suffered from depression but nobody expected this drastic act,” he continues. “I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go on with the project. I didn’t really feel like being on the set, making jokes without Antonie around. I think a lot of the actors felt the same.
The second project is based on Edwin de Vries’ WW2 screenplay Westerbork Blues, about the true
All Stars 2: Old Stars Director: Jean van de Velde Script: Jean van de Velde Production: M&B Film BV, All Yours Film
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Photo: Janey van Ierland
5VCT 2TQÄNG Halina Reijn Halina Reijn is best known internationally as good-time girl Ronnie in Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book. But back home, she is regarded as one of the most talented and versatile actresses of her generation with past credits that include roles in the Oscarnominated Zus & Zo, Grimm, Father’s Affair, Polleke and Blind. The 35-year-old star recounts how she caught the acting bug at the age of six after seeing the film Annie. “When I saw it I knew
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I had to be an actress,” she says. Reijn is as at home on stage as on the film set. She recently toured with Jean Cocteau’s The Human Voice, about a woman grieving over the loss of her lover, and is currently appearing in Hedda Gabler. Back on the big screen, Reijn will soon be seen in Ben Sombogaart’s adaptation of Tessa de Loo’s novel Isabelle, a pyschological thriller about glamorous movie star Isabelle who is kidnapped and starved by the unattractive artist Jeanne. Sombogaart reveals he had originally earmarked Reijn for the role of the artist.
“One day during rehearsals, I asked Halina to switch roles as an experiment,” recounts Sombogaart. “Halina is not a conventional beauty but the result was remarkable. The moment she started playing this beautiful star, she became it. She filled up the part. She made an amazing transformation through the sheer strength of her personality. ” The director was impressed by Reijn’s commitment and focus during the production. During a 4-week break she lost 20 kilos for the final scenes of the film. “It was a gruelling process. She had to go on a severe diet and also through a
tough daily exercise plan to achieve the emaciated look required for the role,” says Sombogaart. Reijn has just come off the set of Peter Greenaway’s Goltzius and the Pelican Company about Hendrik Goltzius, a late 16th century Dutch printer and engraver of erotic prints. “It was one of the best experiences ever! I loved working with him. He is so smart and wise. The cast is made up of actors from all over the world (such as F. Murray Abrahams), all of them serious actors with theatre backgrounds,” says Reijn. “I really learned a lot.”
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