Page 60 - Studio International - November December 1975

theme of the film however is violence, which runs as a dimensional flatness of film.
red thread through all of van der Keuken's work : Mattijn Seip, Jos Schoffelen, Nico Paape, Tom
violence of social structures, of war and hunger. His Chomont (who is an American living in Amsterdam) and
films can be characterized as social documentaries in a myself form the sum total of experimental film-makers in
progressive, poetic form, and in recent works the Holland. Tom Chomont has made many of his films
political themes are put forward in the form of contrast : outside Holland, and many 'inside'. He has been
in The White Castle work in the factories against the influenced to a certain extent by Gregory Markopoulos.
right of people to choose their own situation ; in His films are romantic and mystical, delicate but strong in
The New Ice-Age the poor but politically motivated image. Nico Paape has so far made one long double-
population of Peru against the indifference of people screen film, a personal poetic diary. In Jos Schoffelen's
in affluent Western society. Van der Keuken's most work there is a curious mixture of the personal and the
recent film is about the Palestinian problem. formal. His long film Violets are Blue consists of a number

Jos Schoffelen Violets are Blue

of 'chapters' in which he uses many personal re-filmed
8mm films in 16mm loops, thereby isolating them and
altering their personal meaning to fit a different context.
Schoffelen is certainly obsessed with film, and it
leads him to constant production and sometimes to long
performances in which theatrical elements, formal and
personal film are mixed into a never-ending and strange
event. He was, together with Lynne Tilman, the founder
of the 'Electric Cinema', the first cinema in Holland to
show 'alternative' and avant-garde films. Although it
lasted for only 3 months it was an important step.
The most consequential formalist film-maker is
Mattijn Seip. His earlier films consist of abstract
animation, in which he scratches, paints and puts dirt,
little objects and dust on film. His later ones are
structural : the structure is the form and the form is the
content. In Double Shutter he alters the speed, image,
Johan van der Keuken The Palestinians 1975
The Dutch film avant-garde consists of a few figures
who work individually, and in spite of efforts to promote
avant-garde film and facilities in the form of a free studio
(financed by the Town Council and Government) an
avant-garde movement has failed to grow. (Unlike the
United States and England). Frans Zwartjes is by now the
most well-known of 'experimental' film-makers. He was
the first to experiment in form and to work totally
independently, shooting, editing and printing his films
himself. For us film-makers, working on the 'margin' of
conventional film, his films were a shock : no story or
associations but a series of spatially jumping images.
But however new Zwartjes' film form was for Holland,
the content of his films shows a nineteenth-century
obsession with sexual frustration and aggressive forces.
His strongest films are in black and white, in which the
contrast of the material and the large grain of the film
qualify the pictorial impact those images have.
Mattijn Seip Horizontal Orientation
A number of artists in Holland are also using the
medium of film. Their work is closely associated with
art galleries and mostly treats a concept reproduced by outlook and impact of film by rotating another series of
film ; therefore I think those films belong more to 'shutters' before the camera, while the image is always
conceptual art than to film-as-film (Ger van Elk, Bas Jan moving up and down. (The film-maker was sitting on a
Ader, Marinus Boezem). An exception must be made for swing !). In Negative Positive Light Vibrations a window
Jan Dibbets, whose film projects can be categorized as is filmed frame by frame, and negative and positive images
formal films. In one project, loops of sea-waves are are composed into a rhythmic pattern. Mattijn Seip and
projected on two screens so that the horizon can be seen Nico Paape were the founders of the studio STOFF,
as a line from below to above and from left to right ; a where film-makers have facilities (camera, projectors,
three-dimensional 'subject' transferred to the two- sound equipment, primitive cutting table) to work
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