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For Immediate Release April 2001

THE OF MODERN ART TO PRESENT RETROSPECTIVE OF FILMMAKER JOHAN VAN DER KEUKEN

MoMA Tribute Includes 13 Feature Films and 19 Short Films

Through the Lens Clearly:

A Retrospective Look at the World According to Johan van der Keuken

April 20, 2001–May 13, 2001

Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

In more than 50 films over the past four decades, Dutch filmmaker Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001) or "JVDK," as he was called by his many international friends and fans, successfully disregarded preconceptions about set barriers between art forms and artificial subdivisions between fiction and documentary filmmaking. From April 20, 2001 through May 13, 2001, at the Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2, The presents 17 programs comprised of 13 feature films and 14 shorts by Johan van der Keuken, who passed away while this retrospective was in the last stage of preparation. This series is offered as a memorial tribute.

Usually a one-man band, van der Keuken worked the camera, wrote, directed, and edited his own films, most often with his wife Noshka van der Lely as sound operator. JVDK’s themes reflect his interest in the social and political affairs of the world and their effects on the individual, the group, and the culture; he created fluid works of great beauty even when exploring prosaic subjects such as the global economy. The filmmaker’s multi-layered documentations of the world and the individuals within it, and created links and contradictions which encourage the viewer to look beyond the frame.

"JVDK’s lifelong fascination with seeing the world reflected through the lens has produced an astonishing body of work, most of which is exhibited in this series," remarks Jytte Jensen, Associate Curator, Department of Film and Video, who organized the program. "Through the Lens Clearly highlights this masterful filmmaker’s persistent social and formal concerns and illuminate their development through time."

The subjects of JVDK’s films travel from the personal to the global. In De grote vakantie (The Long Holiday), 2000, a deeply personal and moving film which was to become his last, the filmmaker learns that he has prostate cancer. This diagnosis propels JVDK and his wife to travel around the globe and look at the world while trying to find a possible cure. The vibrant Global Village, 1996, is a mediation on

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everyday life in Amsterdam as a microcosm of the contemporary world with tangents to India, Peru and Chechnya, among others. Big Ben: Ben Webster in Europa (Big Ben: Ben Webster in ), 1967, is an early example of the pivotal influence music had on the JVDK style of filming and editing.

Through the Lens Clearly: A Retrospective Look at the World According to Johan van der Keuken

was organized by Jytte Jensen, Associate Curator, Department of Film and Video with the generous assistance of Susanna Scott, Idéale Audience, , and Babeth M. van Loo, Producer, Lucid Eye Films, Amsterdam, and The Consulate General of the . All films are in Dutch with English subtitles unless otherwise indicated.

Through the Lens Clearly: A Retrospective Look at the World According to Johan van der Keuken Screening Schedule:

All films are in Dutch with English subtitles unless otherwise indicated.

Friday, April 20, 6:00 p.m.

De grote vakantie

. (The Long Holiday). 2000. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken.

This deeply personal and moving film starts with the filmmaker learning that he has prostate cancer and has only a few years to live, and it ends with the hopeful prospect of reprieve thanks to an alternative therapy discovered in New York. In the meantime, experimenting with different Eastern and Western approaches to his illness, van der Keuken and his wife Noshka do what they have always done and love to do: travel and film. In Dutch, Nepalese, and Bhutanese with English subtitles. 142 min.

Saturday, April 21, 2:00 p.m.; Tuesday, April 24, 2:30 p.m.

Even stilte

(A Moment’s Silence). 1960-63. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. 10 min.

Blind kind

(Blind Child). 1964. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. 4 min.

Beppie

. 1965. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. 38 min.

The Unanswered Question

. 1986. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. In Dutch with French subtitles. 18 min.

Four films that deal with various primary responses in life and art: Even

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stilte is one of the first films JVDK shot himself and an early example of his particular style. Simple poetic observations come to life and form an urban landscape. Blind kind came after the filmmaker spent two months in an institution for the blind. The "star" of Beppie exhibits both a grown-up, worldly side and a childish playful one as she takes us on an unforgettable tour of her world. Memory and oblivion are examined in The Unanswered Question, a work based on the 1907 composition of the same name by Charles Ives and a letter from a senile woman printed in a literary journal. Total running time 90 min.

Saturday, April 21, 5:00 p.m.; Monday, April 30, 2:30 p.m.

Herman Slobbe

(Blind kind 2)/Herman Slobbe (Blind Child). 1966. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. 29 min.

Big Ben: Ben Webster in Europa

(Big Ben: Ben Webster in Europe). 1967. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. 31 min.

Beauty

. 1970. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. In English. 25 min. In his highly acclaimed second film with blind children, JVDK focuses on a young boy who is reaching puberty and is struggling to carve out his path. At one point, the boy takes the microphone and becomes the film’s reporter. JVDK’s lifelong passion for music is highlighted in this portrait of the jazz saxophonist Ben Webster. Beauty focuses on the dream world of a fascist spy. Total running time 86 min.

Sunday, April 22, 2:00 p.m.; Thursday, April 26, 2:30 p.m.

Bert Schierbeek: De deur

(Bert Schierbeek: The Door). 1973. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. In Dutch with French subtitles. 11 min.

Het witte kasteel

(The White Castle). 1973. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. 78 min.

Bert Schierbeek takes its subtitle from a volume of poems that the Dutch poet wrote for his wife after her death and celebrates the power of language to change absence into presence. The White Castle, made in association with Schierbeek, focuses on the way existence is fragmented and frustrated. Set in a tourist island, a community center in Columbus, Ohio, and two factories in the Netherlands, it employs collage to create tension and associations.

Sunday, April 22, 5:00 p.m.; Monday, April 30, 6:00 p.m.

Vietnam Opera

. 1973. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. 11 min.

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De nieuwe kasteel

(New Ice Age). 1974. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. 80 min.

Impressions of the Opera’s tour of Holland, followed by a comparison of the relationship between the living conditions of Peruvians on the outskirts of Lima and the situation of four young workers in an ice cream factory in the north of Holland.

Monday, April 23, 2:30 p.m.; Saturday, April 28, 5:00 p.m.

Vakantie van de filmer

(The Filmmaker’s Holiday). 1974. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. 39 min.

De tijd

(Time). 1984. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. 45 min.

The first film is put together as a collection of autonomous images that together make up van der Keuken’s mental universe. Time is made up of independent series of shots all traveling in the same direction and set to the powerful music of Dutch composer Louis Andriessen.

Monday, April 23, 6:00 p.m.; Friday, April 27, 6:00 p.m.

De snelheid: 40-70

(Velocity: 40-70). 1970. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. 25 min.

De muur

(The Wall). 1973. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. 9 min.

Het leesplankje

(Reading Lesson). 1973. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. 10 min.

De Palestijnen

(The Palestinians). 1975. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken.45 min.

When asked to contribute to the commemoration of the end of the Second World War, JVDK (born 1938) bypassed archival footage and chose to interview a survivor of Auschwitz; De snelheid is the result. The Wall is a document of local people (among them the filmmaker and his family) mobilized during the 1970s to protest the city’s policy of demolishing housing in order to make way for big commercial buildings. The filmmaker subverts the traditional learning method in Reading Lesson. This program of implicitly political shorts is rounded out with The Palestinians, shot in Lebanon in 1975, shortly before the outbreak of civil war.

Tuesday, April 24, 6:00 p.m.; Sunday, April 29, 2:00 p.m.

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De platte jungle

(Flat Jungle).

1978. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken.

Waddenzee

(the sea of wetlands) is a unique natural phenomenon, a coastal zone

Friday, April 27, 8:00 p.m.; Sunday, April 29, 5:00 p.m.

De beeldenstorm

(Iconoclasm-A Storm of Images). 1982. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. The filmmaker captures Amsterdam’s De Melkweg (the Milky Way), a 1960s-type counterculture center, set up in a former milk factory. Musical groups, theater companies, and poets all come here to perform. 85 min.

Saturday, April 28, 2:00 p.m.; May 3, 3:30 p.m.

De weg naar het zuiden

(The Way South). 1980-81. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. On a voyage from Paris, through the Drome region, the Alps, Rome, and down to Cairo, the film explores the way in which we project ourselves onto the different worlds we discover. 143 min.

Tuesday, May 1, 3:30 p.m; Sunday, May 6, 2:00 p.m.

Het oog boven de put (The Eye above the Well).

1988. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. In one of JVDK’s most beautiful cinematic poems, he assays India’s spiritual and economic situation, moving from the city to the countryside of the region of Kerala as he captures the essence of that civilization. He juxtaposes dancing, singing, martial arts classes, a Vedic school, and a theater performance with the itinerary of a modest country moneylender traveling from village to village. 90 min.

Tuesday, May 1, 6:00 p.m.; Thursday, May 10, 3:30 p.m.

Face Value

. 1990–91. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. The director offers an epic on an imaginary Europe made up of London, , Prague, Germany, and the Netherlands in the period between the fall of Communism and the Gulf War. "Everything revolves around faces and the act of looking," JVDK explained. "The desire to show oneself, the fear of being seen, the impossibility of seeing oneself, the fear and desire of seeing the other. And, as well, within this theme of looking and seeing, the uncertain struggle for identity, the ferocious struggle for territory, the sweeping movements of love and death." In Dutch with English intertitles. 120 min.

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Friday, May 4, 6:00 p.m.; Sunday, May 6, 2:00 p.m.

I Love $.

1986. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. Described by the filmmaker as an attempt "to film how people survive, and the money, how it flows, those who have it and those who don’t," this provocative film moves through the financial centers of the world, exploring the attitudes of those on top and bottom of the social and economical pyramid. Interviews with bankers and investors are intercut with journeys into the lives of people on the margins: Puerto Ricans and African Americans in New York, a young family in , illegal immigrants in . According to Dominique Paini in Cahiers du Cinema, "the constant overlapping of the sound of different languages is as strikingly beautiful as the visual fascination offered by the cities he filmed." 145 min.

Saturday, May 5, 2:00 p.m.; Sunday, May 13, 2:00 p.m.

Amsterdam Global Village.

1996. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. A highly original take on the city symphony genre, this vibrant work is a meditation on everyday life in Amsterdam as a microcosm of the contemporary world. Encountering a Moroccan moped courier, a businessman from Chechnya, and a Bolivian immigrant with a newborn baby, the filmmaker follows their stories, always circling back to Amsterdam as the city that unites the different impulses and people. A truly magnificent patchwork of very personal tales, the film is also a penetrating and loving portrait of Amsterdam in the 1990s. 228 min.

Monday, May 7, 3:30 p.m.; Friday, May 11, 8:00 p.m.

To Sang Fotostudio.

1997. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. Many nationalities are represented in the street of Amsterdam where a Chinese photographer has his photo studio. To Sang takes portraits of his neighbors, and van der Keuken films the process. 32 min.

Laatste soorden, mijn zusje Yoka (Last Words: My Sister Yoka).

1998. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. This deeply moving portrait of the filmmaker’s sister, made shortly before her death in 1997, is mostly conversations videotaped with Yoka speaking directly to the camera. According to JVDK, "The conversations are about: The meaning of life, the pros and cons of metaphysics, vitality, passing on experience and insight—that may have been the most important to her. And also about our relationship within the family, quarrels that were later resolved as we came together. I also filmed her house, her possessions, the wind in the garden. And her daughters (my nieces) and my eldest sister, photos from all periods, paintings that Yoka made." 52 min.

Tuesday, May 8, 3:30 p.m.; Saturday, May 12, 2:00 p.m.

Bewogen koper (Brass Unbound).

1993. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. JVDK explores the links

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between culture and society and between different cultures via the subject of brass bands, in this personal variation on the music documentary. Making their way from Europe through the world with armies, traders, and the church, wind instruments were emblematic of conquering land and enslaving nations. But as the people regained their freedom and broke away from colonialism, brass bands were given tribal rhythms and new, strange melodies—later to be recaptured by the West through jazz and world music. An intoxicating camera riff, featuring musicians from a range of nations, from Nepal and to Ghana. 106 min.

Saturday, May 12, 5:00 p.m.

Sarajevo Film Festival.

1993. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. During the civil war in the city of , in its twentieth month of siege, van der Keuken participates in a film festival and asks: why movies in the midst of a raging war? An interrogation of art’s validity and importance in society, regardless of the circumstances. 14 min.

On Animal Locomotion.

1994. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. In a short loosely composed around the theme of physical movement, the filmmaker and the modern jazz composer Willem Breuker explore new avenues of presenting music on screen. 15 min.

Tuesday, May 8, 6:00 p.m.; Friday, May 11, 6:00 p.m.

Lucebert: tijd en afscheid (Lucebert: Time and Farewell).

1962–94. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. Van der Keuken’s acclaimed triptych of three short films from 1962, 1966, and 1994 about Lucebert, one of the greatest and most influential Dutch poets and painters, who in his art explored the gesture of creation itself. 52 min. Total running time 81 min.

Saturday, May 12, 5:00 p.m.

De grote vakantie (The Long Holiday).

2000. The Netherlands. Johan van der Keuken. This deeply personal and moving film starts with the filmmaker learning that he has prostate cancer and may have only a few years to live. It ends with the hopeful prospect of reprieve, thanks to an alternative therapy discovered in New York. In the meantime, experimenting with different Eastern and Western approaches to his illness, van der Keuken and his wife Noshka do what they have always done and love to do: travel and film. On the road from Nepal to Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Mali, and , JVDK’s subjective camera, as perceptive as ever, looks beyond his own body into a world of sharp contrasts and vast differences between cultures and people, finding the magical beauty of it all. 142 min.

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© 2001 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

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