Netherlands

A beautiful short about Voyager 1

PostPanic director Mischa Rozema’s new short film, Stardust, is a story about Voyager 1 (the unmanned spacecraft launched in 1977 to explore the outer solar system). The probe is the furthest man-made object from the sun and witnesses unimaginable beauty and destruction. The film was triggered by the death of Dutch graphic designer Arjan Groot, who died aged 39 on 16th July 2011 from cancer.
The entire team at PostPanic (the Amsterdam-based creative company) pushed themselves in their own creative post techniques to produce a primarily CG short film crafted with love.
The film’s story centers on the idea that in the grand scheme of the universe, nothing is ever wasted and it finds comfort in us all essentially being Stardust ourselves. Voyager represents the memories of our loved ones and lives that will never disappear.
From a creative standpoint, Rozema wanted to explore our preconceived perceptions of how the universe appears which are fed to us by existing imagery from sources such NASA or even sci-fi films. By creating a generated universe, Rozema was able to take his own ‘camera’ to other angles and places within the cosmos.
Objects and experiences we are visually familiar with are looked at from a different point of view. For example, standing on the surface of the sun looking upwards or witnessing the death and birth of a star  – not at all scientifically correct but instead a purely artistic interpretation of such events.Read More »

Table of Contents
Preface 9
Introduction
European Cinema: Conditions of Impossibility? [2005]

National Cinema: Re-Definitions and New Directions
European Culture, National Cinema, the Auteur and Hollywood [1994]
ImpersoNations: National Cinema, Historical Imaginaries [2005]
Film Festival Networks: the New Topographies of Cinema in Europe [2005]
Double Occupancy and Small Adjustments: Space, Place and Policy in the New European Cinema since the 1990s [2005]

Auteurs and Art Cinemas: Modernism and Self- Reference, Installation Art and Autobiography
Ingmar Bergman – Person and Persona: The Mountain of Modern Cinema on the Road to Morocco [1994]
Late Losey: Time Lost and Time Found [1994]
Around Painting and the “End of Cinema”: A Propos Jacques Rivette’s
La Belle Noiseuse [1992]
Spellbound by Peter Greenaway: In the Dark … and Into the Light [1996]
The Body as Perceptual Surface: The Films of Johan van der Keuken [2004]
Television and the Author’s Cinema: ZDF’s Das Kleine Fernsehspiel [1992]
Touching Base: Some German Women Directors in the 1980s [1987] Read More »

IMDB:
User Reviews

Amsterdam: city of pigeons, karate and dirty movies
12 November 2004 | by Chip_douglas (Rijswijk, ZH, Netherlands)

This 1973 film is based on one of six ‘Srillers’ (short for sarcastic thriller) by Rinus Ferdinandusse, who also co-wrote the screenplay and appears in the film. It stars Rijk de Gooijer as Rutger Maria Lemming, or Rick for short. Lemming suffers from Angela Lansbury syndrome: murder mysteries regularly cross his part even though he is happy milking pigeons and running a pinball arcade. When his loyal but gullible friend and former karate champ Ed Swaan (John Blumming) finds himself involved with some pornographers, the two of them set about getting their hands on the embarrassing footage.Read More »

Quote:
19-year old violinist Belle lives in a small farming village in the Netherlands. Everyone around her seems obsessed with sex: her boyfriend, her sister and especially her mother. But Belle’s only interest is her violin, and she is put off by the constant flirting and mating of her peers.Read More »

“This beautiful example of far-fetched blasphemy accompanies a happy, ugly nun into the woods for her constitutional, replete with charming bird noises. Praying to and fondling a priapic mushroom, she is unaware of the evil rapist shadowing her. When the rape occurs, it is in long shot, hidden from view, under a huge tree. Articles of clothes and her cross sail through the air; the tree – entirely dominating the screen – sways rhythmically and repeatedly. A few minutes later it stops; then another tree, a few feet away, begins to sway in identical fashion. The rapist finally emerges, exhausted.”

Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive ArtRead More »

Description: This film is dominated by an icy blue. In a monumental building a group of scientists submit women to obscure and inhuman experiments, in which sexuality and cruelty constantly merge into one another. When the film was released, this horrifying game of power and powerlessness was condemned severely by a militant group of feminists. The criticism was undeserved. After all, ‘Pentimento’ is an art-historical term for a hidden image underneath the actual image giving an indication of how the latter evolved to its current state. The film does not endorse the lopsided power relations in our world but actually challenges them.Read More »

Description: “Visual Training” is a short 1969 experimental film from the Netherlands. The film looks so ahead of its time, with its goth makeup and gritty look. I wonder if Marylin Manson or the band the Misfits have ever seen Visual Training? A man and two topless ladies sit at a table and eat. They grotesquely smear food on one another. The one girl is blindfolded and covered with baking powder by the guy. The screen sometimes turns black, as the camera cuts fast between shots. When the camera zooms in on the actor’s face, it looks as if he’s staring right at the viewer. The one girl’s nude body is used as a canvas for body food art. Frans Zwartjes has a created a rare short film that’s unique for viewers. It’s like a mild version of the “Vienna Aktionists” for the surreal at heart.Read More »

“Living (1971), Zwartjes’ own favourite film is the much praised climax of his series Home Sweet Home, in which he explores the rooms of his new house in The Hague. ‘Living has this weird, indefinable atmosphere’, Zwartjes said in an interview. ‘The strange way people move around and the whining music with it…’ The film is a demonstration of Zwartjes’ virtuoso camera work. He plays the main character and at the same time operates the camera, which is hand-held while he films himself. Zwartjes: ‘I was strong as a horse in those days.’ Two persons, Zwartjes and his wife Trix, move aimlessly through the house. Living was filmed with an extremely wide-angle lens (a 5.7) that suggests a powerful atmosphere of alienation.”Read More »

Johan van der Keuken films in India, in Kérala, various situations of teaching or training: courses of a school of dance, songs, martial arts, a vedic school, a scene of theater. In counterpoint, the circulation of the money through the route of a small busy lender of countryside of village in village. It is a filmic movement which collects the gasoline of a civilization, the permanence of certain values of harmony and artistic discipline.

Note: Grand Prix with the Festival of Brussels, 1989.Read More »