The program provides a cross section of varied Dutch experimental films and artists’ moving images that are included in the catalog of Eye Experimental. Both established film makers and upcoming talents are represented, sharing their unique take on unconventional subject matter, working method or form. ABIDING made from a single 35mm photograph moving through a shutterless camera or ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER – THE ART OF BODYBUILDING where unprocessed, original 16mm material from the artist (held in the Eye archive) was re-edited in collaboration with Eye and presented as a new work.Reflections on both universal and personal current issues are the works by Klančar, Tortum & Hamilton and PolakVanBekkum, while they are also truly original in their different formal approaches. Furthermore, FRAGMENTS OF DECAY by Henri Plaat is an example of a recently restored and digitized work by Eye and distributed as part of curated retrospective programs focused on exceptional Dutch avant-garde filmmakers.
An essay film on our efforts to create a virtual replica of the real world. We are backing up the planet, creating 3D models of animals, rainforests, cities and people. We are archiving as if ecological collapse could be staved off through some digital Noah’s Ark of beasts and objects.… >>>
After retiring a man wants to return to the Caribbean Island of Curaçao where he spent his working life. The preparations are going well: he sells his house and all his possessions are put into boxes. But then his health fails him. Dementia affects his memory. Except for the opening scene, all we see is the view from a tropical veranda. At the same time we hear the man having telephone conversations with his son in which he gradually acknowledges that he is losing his grip on reality.… >>>
// Taken from a train window between Dordrecht and Rotterdam, the artist has pulled the film manually in a shutterless camera. The movement of the film and the continuous influx of light dissolved both the center of perspective and the spaces between frames. The work leans on the notions of fluidity and continuity to question the sequential recording and the frame by frame ideology in photographic and cinematographic processes. In this attempt to record without division, trees and houses lose their solidity and oscillate between abstraction and figuration.… >>>
REMEMBERING THE NIGHTS IN SAFE HAVEN is a short film in three parts. The starting point of this project is the sudden loss of nightlife due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its detrimental effect on the social fabric of queer people. The film addresses this loss by means of fantasy scenes, combined with performances and activities that would have taken place if nightlife was still alive. These fictitious events suggest a mental state of suddenly having to adapt to our new reality.… >>>
From the left-overs of the films Henri Plaat made during his many travels, he made this film as an improvisation on deterioration and decay. Observation of ruins, coloured surfaces, and light and shadow alternate with portraits of elderly people or dead animals. A world in decay, but also a world of nostalgia, full of signs of time past, of how people created and lived, before it all falls apart again when relationships dissolve and lives evaporate. The film was restored and scanned for digitization from the original 16mm print by Eye Filmmuseum in 2020.… >>>
A new work made by BABETH Mondini-VanLoo in collaboration with Eye Filmmuseum, consisting of unprocessed, original 16mm material which she shot during the Mr. Olympia Bodybuilding contest in the 1970s and an interview with Schwarzenegger by Raymond Mondini recorded just after. In her art installation Sculpting the Body she presented him as a living work of art. The installation is unfortunately lost, but the original recordings have been used for a new cut. Because the sound of the recording could not be synchronized with the image, the text of the interview has been visualized on screen.… >>>