Jazz and Poetry

Hans: Het Leven voor de dood (Hans, Life Before Death) is a documentary feature film about the life of the young composer Hans van Sweeden (1939-1963) and those who knew him intimately. The film is about the harrowing life of the musician, poet and actor Hans van Sweeden (1939-1963), who ended his life at the age of 24. Simultaneously, the film offers a poignant portrait of his contemporaries in the turbulent fifties and sixties and the children of the Nazis. It won the Golden Calf for Best Feature Film in 1983. Award of the Dutch film critics, 1983; the Belgian film critics Award, 1984; Best Dutch Documentary 1980-1990. (Wikipedia)

More than thirty years ago, Louis van Gasteren made the documentary BEGRIJPT U NU WAAROM IK HUIL? about a therapeutic LSD session that professor Jan Bastiaans did with a traumatised ex-prisoner of German concentration camps. The patient died in late 2000 at the age of 81. He left a wife and three children. Poignant conversations with the widow and youngest son, and excerpts from letters from the other two children reveal that a concentration camp syndrome can also inflict deep wounds in those who have not personally experienced it.

This movie, made in 1969, documents the shattering story of a concentration camp survivor and his severe traumatisation, treated by Jan Bastiaans M.D. and his method of LSD psychotherapy.

Short documentary about the construction of tramlines in the centre of Amsterdam

The director views the street from his window and starts directing everything he sees.

Short documentary where a student of medicine describes an experiment for which he drilled a small hole in his forehead in order to achieve a higher state of being

On 19 March 1966, a photo exhibition about the police intervention during the wedding of Beatrix and Claus opened in Amsterdam. After the opening, filmmaker Louis van Gasteren filmed how, in the distance, policemen began beating up a young man, seemingly without any provocation. This footage was shown that same evening on television. Van Gasteren interviewed the victim, a 22-year-old student, who declared that he was walking in that direction because his ‘bicycle was there’. That became the title of this short film, in which Van Gasteren used slow motion to analyse the objectionable actions taken by the police.