Hexagon
Alejandro Agresti
Erik van Zuylen
Johan van der Keuken
Frank Scheffer
Jelle Nesna
Frank Zweers
Casts & Crew
Also Directed by Alejandro Agresti
A mage steals a book from a stranger and becomes very famous.
A Hollywood actor grows tired of making the same corporate movies, so he moves to Argentina to find more experimental and meaningful work.
Collection of documentary shorts by various acclaimed directors
Soledad, a girl tired of being a taxi driver in Buenos Aires, travels with her car to Patagonia. She stops in a village whose inhabitants live in isolation and their only contact with the outside world is a cinema where old films are projected.
Valentin, a 9-year-old boy living with his grandmother in late-1960s Buenos Aires, believes his family has problems that only he can solve. The youngster dreams of being reunited with his mother, who's separated from Valentin's abusive father.
An anthology film centering around the worldwide adventures of the Nissan Figaro.
In Curuguazu, located in the Argentinian countryside, seventeen year-old Daniel Montero has been raised by his grandmother for three years since the death of his parents in a car accident. Daniel has a boring life, working in a poultry processing plant and meeting his friends in the square to make small talk. He saves some money from his salary and buys an old television, where he watches late night porn shows of Sabrina Love.
A woman reunites with her husband, who vanished on her years ago.
As an anonymous man, Fermin leaves his underground hideout in the subway. The dictatorship in the country is followed by democracy, but the bright light of it blinds Fermin: he is displaced. At the police station, his anonymity is complete and he doesn't remember his own name. He is fitted with a past of 13 years of illegal political opposition from the police archives. When he keeps silent about the crimes of the dictator regime, he will be a free man. The woman he promised to marry, doesn't recognize him anymore, and thinks he is dead.
This is Buenos Aires, its characters, its history, its reality. A complex movie for a complex city, depicted in the character's language, and in their relationship with the present and the past
Also Directed by Erik van Zuylen
The plot follows a Dutch horticulturist from the day he leaves his farm to be admitted to hospital for a cancer treatment to the inevitable sad ending. The film displays intensely how the different people concerned deal with the taboo of cancer (which was very strong in the 70s). Nobody tells the protagonist that he is in fact fatally ill, so that he has to discover that by himself and come to terms with it.
Also Directed by Johan van der Keuken
Face Value is a film combining a conscious approach with spontaneity, and contemplation with action. It presents us with the differing views of a region we call “Europe”, an imaginary Europe situated somewhere between London, Marseilles, Prague and the Netherlands.
"I am far away on a distant journey through my own city", filmmaker Johan van der Keuken says at the end of his four-hour portrait of Amsterdam. The city is presented as a place where people from all corners of the world live, who all exert their cultural influence on the life in the city. With a motor courier as his central figure, the filmmaker introduces the audience to birds of different feathers. We see diverse cultural expressions, like the house scene, the entry of St. Nicholas and a Ghanese mourning ritual. The binding factor in the film is the concept of 'travelling', in other words Amsterdam as a global village. The camera travels through the film in three ways: over land, over water (canals) and through the air.
In 1984–85, Johan van der Keuken took his camera across the globe, from Amsterdam to New York to Hong Kong, ending in Geneva. The object of his investigation was money, in particular the maniacal drive to accumulate it in the era of Thatcherite/Reaganite neoliberalism.
In his very first ‘independent film’, Dutch master filmmaker Johan Van der Keuken presents an image of Amsterdam in the sixties.
A poetic depiction of life and ritual in the south Indian state of Kerala. We see how knowledge is passed down from generation to generation: within the family, through the village economy, and especially from teachers to students. Performance footage shows how song, dance, martial arts, and religion constitute the building blocks of a culture.
Part of Johan van der Keuken's North/South series, The White Castle focuses on the impact of the West on the underclass: on the concrete realities of their daily life and on the way their existence is isolated and frustrated. Interweaving images of the Spanish tourist mecca of Formentera, a community center in Columbus, Ohio, and factories in the Netherlands, the film vividly illustrates the fragmented, alienated lives that the market economy produces and chillingly portrays what van der Keuken saw as "a conveyor belt [that] runs across the world."
Johan van der Keuken's film was made to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Milky Way (Melweg). The Milky Way is a multimedia venue in Amsterdam, which was established in the spirit of the ’60s, and became an international centre of counter-culture.
Van der Keuken follows the creative process of Lucebert, a Dutch painter annex poet. Episode four of four in a series for the VPRO.
Film essay about the slums of 1960's Amsterdam.
Protesting youngsters chant slogans such as “Johnson murderer” and sing “Murderer, many people are being killed”. It is the late sixties. In his film, Van der Keuken presents his visual view of the changes in the mentality of a growing group of young people in Western society. He films youngsters who paint their faces and react against the monotonous lives of pen-pushers and civil servants. Their attitude exudes resistance against existing social structures.Van der Keuken exchanges images of protest marches that occasionally get out of hand with charming pictures of nature. He said the following about this film: “In the case of these youngsters, the surrounding violence is turned inside, as it were, and directed at the exploration of personal observations.” (idfa.nl)
Also Directed by Frank Scheffer
Composer Gustav Mahler is the subject of filmmaker Frank Sheffer's two documentaries. In Conducting Mahler, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra and others interpret Mahler's symphonies under the direction of such musical luminaries as Simon Rattle, Bernard Haitink and Riccardo Muti. In I Have Lost Touch with the World, maestro Riccardo Chailly and biographer Henri-Louis de la Grange analyse Mahler's Ninth Symphony.
Described by writer Henry Miller as “the stratospheric colossus of sound”, French sonic alchemist Edgard Varèse (1883 - 1965) continues to influence music even 40 years after his death. Artists who cite his influence include Frank Zappa, John Cage, Elliot Carter, Pierre Boulez and many others in the contemporary DJ scene. Classifying music as ‘organised sound', Varèse was the first composer to emancipate music from accepted chordal combinations.
In 1968 Zwartjes was one of the first Dutch visual artists to make use of film: initially as a record of his performances, but quite soon after as an independent medium, perfectly suited to his way of creating visual art. Zwartjes did everything himself – camera, sound, editing and even the developing in the laboratory. He would work with non-professional actors selected from his circle of friends, and filmed in and around his own house. He particularly favoured editing his film ‘in the camera’ by switching the camera on and off while shooting. ‘My own motor system determined the film style,’ Zwartjes stated in an interview. ‘It never occurred to me to wonder: can this shot follow on after this one? If you start wondering about that you should be looking for another job straight away.’ This publication consists of a selection of photographs taken by Zwartjes during his years of filming and a short footage film on DVD from 1969.
Attrazione d'Amore is a touching illustration of the unique relation that has developed between the Conductor Riccardo Chailly and his famous Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. Voyage to Cythera navigates through wonderful musical quotes made of performances conducted by Berio, rehearsals, archival documents and interviews featuring Riccardo Chailly and Louis Andriessen.
An intense portrait of the painter Robert Zandvliet that moves through his studio and his head. While the artist explains what interests him about a painting, we see him at work: mixing paints, stretching canvas, trying out different brushes, but above all being concentrated and busy at length.
Carefully composed portrait of prominent modern composer Elliott Carter (1908-1912). Scheffer depicts both the person and the development in his music and the musical tradition it grew out of, as well as the time in which the American Carter grew up. The result: historical images of the city of New York, old film footage, cinematographic finds to illustrate the music and statements by conspicuous fellow-composers and musicians, including Pierre Boulez and Daniel Barenboim.
Director Scheffer registered a performance of the Tea Opera by Chinese composer Tan Dun (who won an Oscar in 2001 with his score for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Scheffer interlaces the images with interviews with Dun, stage director Pierre Audi and librettist Xu Ying, about the opera and the role tea and oriental philosophy play in this work. Using monochrome, sometimes abstract images (in yellow, blue, red and green), close-ups of plants and flowers and images of the Chinese nature and people (sometimes accelerated or decelerated, sometimes in black-and-white), he mirrors the stylised opera performance and Dun's reflective music.
It is the dream of the Persian avant-garde composer Nader Mashayekhi to bring modern classical music to his country Iran. His dream becomes reality when he is asked to conduct the Teheran Symphony Orchestra.
Eclat is a fascinating documentary about the work. We witness rehearsals by the Netherlands' Nieuw Ensemble, hear comments about the piece from the composer, conductor Ed Spanjaard and some of the musicians, and we see a full performance of the work. Eclat ("To burst out") is a beautiful example of the strangely lyrical pointillist style that Boulez had inherited from Anton von Webern. Aural pinwheels and shifting musical kaleidoscopes with stunning instrumental color is the only way to verbally describe what must be heard to be understood. This is definitely not for those who hate "modern" music. For those who respond to contemporary music, this piece is masterful and this film is a must-see!
2012 documentary on John Cage celebrating his 100th birthday in the form of a re-edit of partially unused film material shot for the film 'Time is Music’ in 1987. Includes interviews and recordings of performances with the influential zen composer.