The Filmmaker`s Holiday

Colour, 16mm
The Netherlands, 1974, 39 min
Section: Johan van der Keuken

Synopsis

In a small French village in the Aude region an elderly married couple tells a cameraman “on holiday” of their memories of the War, of illness and death.... While never veering too far from everyday reality, Van der Keuken is still unable to cut himself off completely from sentiments which enter the film as autonomous images, bringing together the director’s mental world: happy times with his family, the fair-haired son just beginning to discover the world around him, fragments of his own films, a tribute to saxophonist Ben Webster, two poems by contemporary poets Remco Campert and Lucebert, a portrait of the director’s grandfather who taught him how to take photographs.... All this unfolds against a background of the summer French landscape, drenched in sun and steeped in southern colours and fragrances, creating a special blend of sensuality and uneasy melancholy.