The Long Holiday

Colour, 35mm
The Netherlands, 2000, 142 min
Section: Johan van der Keuken

Synopsis

An autobiographical essay whose theme treating the confrontation of life and death was induced by the director’s illness. “If I wasn’t making films, I’d be dead”. The director’s passion for film is also evident from his last opus in which meditative images are fused with portraits of people and the landscape. His treatment of prostate cancer brought him into contact not only with modern medical practices but also traditional remedies from Nepal. In the form of “diary entries” detailing the last few months of van Keuken’s life, the camera discloses the contexts of modern technology and magic which, despite apparent contradiction, work through one another. Hopes for insights which, in close proximity with death, would change the filmmaker’s life perspective, endure until the peaceful close, where they are finally fulfilled through the camera lens: the sparkling surface of the water with its gently swaying boats is diffused into a shimmering imaginative film vision.