In memory of Johan van der Keuken (1938-2001) | Myjour

1 de 1

https://myjour.com/a/jaap-mees/in-memorium-johan-van-der-keuken-1...

In memory of Johan van der Keuken

(1938-2001)
21 mei 2014 18:19 | Jaap Mees in Cinema written by Jaap Mees

We will miss his gentle eye, his genuine touch and most of all his warm compassion.
On Sunday night the 7th of January Johan van der Keuken, the internationally acclaimed lmmaker and photographer
died in Amsterdam. At the end of november 2000 he received the prestigious Bert Haansta oeuvre prijs, named after
another great Dutch documentary maker.
At least van der Keuken, who is much more valued abroad especially in cinephile France, got the recognition he so
thoroughly deserves in his own country. Although he has won earlier three Golden Calves at the Dutch Film Festival in
Utrecht.
A couple of years ago I saw Johan van der Keuken in the National Film Theatre, where he spoke about his lm Face Value
(91). A press- photographer walked in to the cinema and van der Keuken immediately asked him his name and showed an
interest in his work. That is typical for this lmmaker, who always tried to make the impersonal personal.
When he was 17 years old he already published a photo-book called We are Seventeen, portraying sad looking
classmates from his Montesori School. Later followed by two other photo-books: Behind Glass and Paris Mortel. A year
later van der Keuken moved to Paris, where he studied at the famous IDHEC lm school. His debut-lm Paris a lAube (58)
was a love-letter to Paris. In France van der Keuken has always been seen as one of the great cineasts. He said once that
it is dicult to be recognised in France among the cine-literate , but if they do, you belong to their club for life.
Back in Holland he impressed by making short portraits like Blind Child and Beppie. He was a good friend of
photographer Ed van der Elsken (now recognised as an inuential photographer), who also lived in Paris for a while and
did the photography for Beppie. Van der Keuken made three lms on the poet and painter Lucebert. Among his friends
were the Dutch writers Remco Campert, Gerrit Kouwenaar en Bert Schierbeek. The free style musician Willem Breuker
often wrote the scores for his lms, starting in the Seventies. Those artists have inuenced van der Keukens work, and its
very likely that at this time he developed his free-style, associative and intuitive style of lming. Van der Keuken has never
seen himself as a documentarist pur sang, anyway.
In his speech at the Bert Haanstra Award ceremony Van der Keuken quotes the earlier mentioned writer Bert Schierbeek:
There are many who have the voice, but only a few who hear him. Van der Keuken: For people who hears that voice,
the projects they undertake widen from news item to art. Words and images in themselves are not sucient, when one
tries to seize the loneliness and extase of human life and to reconcile the irreconcilable.
New combinations are necessary of pictures, sound, words, music, actions, places and stories, the interchange of all these
elements form a breathtaking interplay.
A turning point in van der Keukens career came in 1985, when he was diagnosed with intestine cancer. Before that he
made political left wing engaged documentaries like The Flat Jungle, Diary North-South and I love Dollars.
He didnt take any longer all the suering of the globe on his shoulders. Van der Keuken about this: In the past ,until I
love Dollars I had to understand how the world worked. After my illness I let that go, now I only understand image for
image, which I work with in the editing , making something in connection with other images. He arguably made his best
lms in the Eighties and Nineties: The Eye Above The Well, Face Value, Moved Copper and his last lm The Long
Holiday. All together Van der Keuken made fty lms.
Another fragment from the Bert Haanstra speech: Johan van der Keuken: Film has its origins at the Fair and that should
stay that way. But is that Fair not situated at the marshy country behind the church, the temple and the mosque? Just
passed the warehouse, the town hall and the meeting centre. Not far from the concert hall, the theatre, the party- centre
and the police- station, the youth-centre and the disco, yes the whole community full of allochtonen (foreigners) and
autochtonen (original Dutch), homeopaths and psychopaths, who all run around or are stuck in a trac- jam, restless
in search of. the meaning of life. The lmmaker is there, I think, to make something of this confusion visible, but also
something of that meaning. And he does that by combining technique, money and play into art.
When Van der Keuken was criticised once by journalists of a lack of clarity and a comprehensive vision in his lms, he got
angry, replying: in fact what you are saying is, take my hand and guide me through the lm, but I dont do that, I resisted
to do that all my life. I dont have to show everything!
And rightly so, its probably a typical Dutch need to have everything explained and made understandable in a rational and
educational clear way. But people who work with their intuition dont let themselves pigeon- hole like that. Or to put it
dierently:
Better one drop of art, than a sea of knowledge.
Its a sad fact that the best people often die rst, like Tarkovski, Kieslowski and now van der Keuken. We will miss his
gentle eye, his genuine touch and most of all his warm compassion. But his lms will live on and a small consolation will
be a tribute to Johan van der Keuken at the coming International Film Festival in Rotterdam (24 January- 4 February 2001).
By Jaap Mees

05/01/2015 18:14