February 2008, nr 296

... Rotterdam and the rest of The Netherlands

Masochism

If you're not Dutch, chances are you can't list five Dutch films. Why is Dutch film invisible on the international stage?, asks Jos van der Burg.

Shanghai trance at IFFR.

1975 was the last year in which a Dutch film competed at Cannes. Since Jos Stelling's Mariken van Nieumeghen, an adaptation of a medieval legend, no Dutch film has been included in Cannes' competition. A Dutch film has occasionally crept into a sidebar, such as Nanouk Leopold's Guernsey, which made the Quinzaine in 2005, but the doors of the competition have remained firmly closed.
You could say, 'So what?' - Cannes is not everything - but then, you could also see this as a painful illustration of the irrelevance of Dutch film culture. There are two causes for this, both of which lie in the past. In the Calvinist Netherlands, until well into the 1960s, film was seen as a threat to morality. Instructive documentaries on god-fearing farmers, fishermen and workers could just about pass muster, but fiction films could bring nothing but trouble. When religion lost its stranglehold on the population at the end of the 60s, filmmakers were confronted by a new set of obstacles. No longer were priests and prelates up in arms; now it was the Dutch commercial spirit and cultural small-mindedness that blocked the way. Unlike on stage, in music and literature, film was seen principally as pure entertainment, and the government saw little reason to dip into the treasury to support this. After all, they didn't subsidise funfairs and circuses either.
The situation is no longer that bad, but film remains the poor cousin of the other arts. Of the three hundred million euros the government will spend this year on 'cultural production', less than twenty million will be spent on film.

Just blips
The government's lack of enthusiasm for film is part of a wider poverty of film culture in the Netherlands. The Dutch are not, by and large, interested in film. At an average of 1.4, cinema attendance per head of the population is lowest in all of Western Europe. In neighbouring Belgium, it is higher by half as much again, at 2.3. The English and Spanish go to the cinema twice as often, and the French even almost three times as often as the Dutch. The Dutch get excited about a lot of things, but not about film. Films never lead to debate. Articles about films never reach the opinion pages of Dutch newspapers. Film critics dutifully turn out their reviews every week, but nobody is really interested in what they write. The Dutch are driven to the cinema only by a fear of being left out of the conversation at work. They therefore go only to 'must see' films. Which are never films made by the likes of Tsai Ming-liang (I don't want to sleep alone), Jia Zhangke (Still life) or Cristian Mingiu (4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days), but rather American blockbusters. Occasionally, a Dutch film will manage to gatecrash the party. Paul Verhoeven's war film Zwartboek (Black book) sold more than a million tickets. And last year, the romantic comedy Alles is liefde (Love is all) did even better, with 1.2 million tickets sold. These spectacular figures may seem to indicate a blossoming film culture, but they are in fact just blips. The Dutch are not interested in film culture, but in hit films. But they do love their children. Film producers understand this, and as a consequence the Dutch film world runs on family and children's films. It is only with these films that the Netherlands makes the prestigious festivals, such as Berlin, which has selected two Dutch children's films for its children's competition this year (Waar is het paard van Sinterklaas?/Where is Winky's horse? and Dunya & Desie).

Masochist
Dutch filmmakers who don't want to make a war film, romantic comedy or children's or family film, would be better off choosing another profession. With the exception of a handful of film lovers, no one is interested in their work. The art-filmmaker in the Netherlands has to be a masochist. It speaks volumes about the strength of will of these hardy few that a surprising film is occasionally released. An example is the work of the abovementioned Nanouk Leopold. It is thanks to her stubbornness that Guernsey made the Quinzaine. Its successor, Wolfsbergen, made the Forum in Berlin last year. Fortunately, Leopold is not the only obstinate type prepared to go his or her own way. The film festival Rotterdam screens work by a number of these. We are curious about David Verbeek's Shanghai trance, selected for the Tiger Awards Competition, for example. Verbeek is a passionate young filmmaker, who as a student at the film academy in 2004 made the film Beat for a thousand euros. The film festival in Rotterdam has selected this film, inspired by the work of Tsai Ming-liang. Shanghai trance is Verbeek's first film, made with a normal budget. The film has not yet been shown, so we cannot as yet review it. We can however say something about Links by Froukje Tan, also screening at the film festival. This (low budget) debut film, about a boy who, through a neurological defect, sees every woman as his girlfriend, is pleasantly self-willed and forces us to think about romantic relationships. Are they unique, or interchangeable? These are not the only Dutch films at the festival, but you should in any event try to see Shanghai trance and Links. And spare a thought for the makers, who know that their films will never be the topic of animated discussion in Dutch workplaces.

Jos van der Burg (Rotterdam)
Jos van der Burg graduated in 1986 as a (film) historian. A film critic from that moment on, he works as an editor for de Filmkrant and as a film journalist for daily newspaper Het Parool.

Translation: Mark Baker