Dutch Film Research Articles

Remixing Early Cinema: Historical Explorations at the EYE Film Institute Netherlands

On April 4, 2014, the EYE Film Institute Netherlands (Amsterdam) celebrated its second birthday with a spectacular “Filmbal” party to mark the second anniversary of the Dutch film archive’s new venue. The futuristic EYE building stands out with its ethereal bulk and imponderable volumes in the new Amsterdam Noord quarter. In this temple of “remix,” visitors experience a composite encounter with different ages of film history and modes of engaging with moving images. Chief curator Giovanna Fossati describes the museum experience as follows:

Review Essay: A Children’s Book and a Soap Opera as Public History? Two Dutch Films on Slavery, Tula, the Revolt, The Price of Sugar (Hoe duur was de suiker)

Review Essay: A Children’s Book and a Soap Opera as Public History? Two Dutch Films on Slavery, Tula, the Revolt, The Price of Sugar (Hoe duur was de suiker)

De bewogen beginjaren van de Nederlandsche Bioscoop Bond, 1918-1925

This article considers the maturation period of what was later to become the mighty DutchCinema Federation (NBB/Nederlandsche Bioscoop Bond). Consolidation didn’t occur until after1926 when it became the player in the Dutch film sector and which no-one could ignore formany decades. During the late 1910s and first half of the 1920s as it was professionalizing and expanding, the cinema and film distribution organisation experienced sharp growing pains.These were caused, firstly, by diverse conflicting interests, for example, between the proprietors of the cinemas on the one hand and the film importers and distributors on the other, between large and small entrepreneurs, between (large) towns and the provincial areas; and secondly,by external pressure from the changing world film market and the hostile attitude of local andnational authorities. The attempt by Loet Barnstijn and his companions to achieve vertical integrationof screening, distribution and production into one ‘Dutch cinema trust’ played a crucialrole in the difficulties and struggle for power within and concerning the NBB.

De bewogen beginjaren van de Nederlandsche Bioscoop Bond, 1918-1925

This article considers the maturation period of what was later to become the mighty Dutch Cinema Federation (NBB/Nederlandsche Bioscoop Bond). Consolidation didn’t occur until after 1926 when it became the player in the Dutch film sector and which no-one could ignore formany decades. During the late 1910s and first half of the 1920s as it was professionalizing and expanding, the cinema and film distribution organisation experienced sharp growing pains.These were caused, firstly, by diverse conflicting interests, for example, between the proprietors of the cinemas on the one hand and the film importers and distributors on the other, between large and small entrepreneurs, between (large) towns and the provincial areas; and secondly, by external pressure from the changing world film market and the hostile attitude of local andnational authorities. The attempt by Loet Barnstijn and his companions to achieve vertical integration of screening, distribution and production into one ‘Dutch cinema trust’ played a crucialrole in the difficulties and struggle for power within and concerning the NBB.

Symbols of nation? Women and the European war film

This article questions the traditional perception of the ‘war film’ as essentially concerned with masculinity, and notes that in recent years there have been a large number of films released which explore the experiences and legacy of war through female protagonists. Focussing on Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement, Verhoeven’s Black Book and Hirschbiegel’s Downfall, it considers the ways in which the presentation of the central female characters can be seen as reflecting the ways in which nations come to terms with their roles in, and the after-effects of, major conflicts. Whilst the French director is able to draw a more distinct line between the ‘innocent’ central protagonist and her more sexually aggressive foil, the Dutch and German films both present more morally ambiguous women, which this article argues can be read as suggesting a continuing discomfort with the roles played by these countries in World War Two.

Jos de Mul, Destiny Domesticated: the Rebirth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Technology, Suny Press, Albany NY 2014

In The Death of Tragedy, George Steiner argued that tragedy, both as a literary genre and a specific worldview, is behind us once and for all. On the contrary, the thesis of this book is that «especially in modern technology all elements are present to reawaken tragic awareness» (p. XXI). Our technological control over nature has led to some impressive success, but «[t]aking God’s place turned out to be less simple than we had hoped» (p. 19). Such a thesis is defended on the basis of several examples. Firstly, current events of the last decade such as the tragicomic adventures of the politician James Stockdale, the murder of Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh in 2004, and the lawsuit regarding Terri Schiavo. Secondly, de Mul deals with the classical Greek tragedy, with the well-known Antigone, Medea, and the Prometheus trilogy as well as with the lesser known Orestea. Thirdly, the author does not neglect those philosophers who have to some extent reflected on the tragic. DOI: http://10.21747/21836892/fil31a13

Jos de Mul, Destiny Domesticated: the Rebirth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Technology, Suny Press, Albany NY 2014

In The Death of Tragedy, George Steiner argued that tragedy, both as a literary genre and a specific worldview, is behind us once and for all. On the contrary, the thesis of this book is that «especially in modern technology all elements are present to reawaken tragic awareness» (p. XXI). Our technological control over nature has led to some impressive success, but «[t]aking God’s place turned out to be less simple than we had hoped» (p. 19). Such a thesis is defended on the basis of several examples. Firstly, current events of the last decade such as the tragicomic adventures of the politician James Stockdale, the murder of Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh in 2004, and the lawsuit regarding Terri Schiavo. Secondly, de Mul deals with the classical Greek tragedy, with the well-known Antigone, Medea, and the Prometheus trilogy as well as with the lesser known Orestea. Thirdly, the author does not neglect those philosophers who have to some extent reflected on the tragic. DOI: http://10.21747/21836892/fil31a13

Understanding Dutch film culture

In terms of cinema attendance, the Netherlands has always differed from other European countries. During the first decade of permanent film exhibition "a crucial phase in cinema's development as a mass medium" the movies failed to gain a firm foothold in Dutch society. After a discussion of the prevailing explanations for the low provision of cinemas in the Netherlands, this article develops a comparative analytical framework to better assess the regional dynamics at work within Dutch film culture. In particular, it looks at cinemagoing in the industrialised countryside, combining a qualitative examination of the local social and cultural infrastructure with a quantitative analysis of census data. The agro-industrial North Eastern part of Groningen and the mining district in the South of Limburg are singled out because in both regions we witness a very high density of film venues, suggesting metropolitan patterns in cinema attendance.

Nederlandse animatiefilm in de periode 1991-2011*: De animatiefilm vindt zichzelf opnieuw uit

The Netherlands has a rich animation culture. More than 1200 cartoons were createdin the period 1991-2011: short, unlicensed films, student films, television series, applied animation and the occasional feature film. The production of animated films soared after the turn of the century. Targeted promotion by the Nederlands Filmfonds (Dutch film fund), the advent of new, digital, audiovisual techniques, the development of ways to distribute and present digitally, and the growing interest for animation at art schools led to the emergence of a new generation of animation producers and a new zeal. Digital visual culture provided new techniques and previously unknown freedom and possibilities. It was as if animation had been reinvented. As a result it is no longer a peripheral phenomenon; it has become a visible discipline within Dutch film culture. * <em>Dit artikel is opgedragen aan de op 4 december j.l. op 73-jarige leeftijd overleden Haarlemse animatiefilmmaker en kunstenaar Gerrit van Dijk</em>.**

Nederlandse animatiefilm in de periode 1991-2011 De animatiefilm vindt zichzelf opnieuw uit

The Netherlands has a rich animation culture. More than 1200 cartoons were createdin the period 1991-2011: short, unlicensed films, student films, television series, applied animation and the occasional feature film. The production of animated films soared after the turn of the century. Targeted promotion by the Nederlands Filmfonds (Dutch film fund), the advent of new, digital, audiovisual techniques, the development of ways to distribute and present digitally, and the growing interest for animation at art schools led to the emergence of a new generation of animation producers and a new zeal. Digital visual culture provided new techniques and previously unknown freedom and possibilities. It was as if animation had been reinvented. As a result it is no longer a peripheral phenomenon; it has become a visible discipline within Dutch film culture.

Audio Description with Audio Subtitling for Dutch Multilingual Films: Manipulating Textual Cohesion on Different Levels

There is a strong trend towards multilingualism in Flemish and Dutch films today. In order to make such films accessible for a blind and visually impaired audience, the audio description (AD), which supplies the information from the visuals that cannot be accessed by this target audience, must be combined with audio subtitling (AST), for the translation of the dialogue. Today, a wide variety of strategies is used to accomplish this form of textual manipulation, but current practice is largely based on intuition. The present paper reports on the first phase of a research project carried out on four films, in collaboration with the AD scriptwriter and the sound engineer responsible for the recordings of the Dutch films with AD and AST, two of which will be considered here: Oorlogswinter (Winter in Wartime 2008) and Tirza (2010). The project makes use of four films, but due to limits of space we focus on two only, aiming to reply to three questions. First, we look at how the AST is inserted and whether it interacts with the films’ foreign language dialogue exchanges. Then we consider whether intonation contributes to the coherence of the text. To conclude, the audio and written subtitles are compared. Finally, suggestions for further research are provided.

Anne Frank Abroad: The Emergence of World Atrocity Literature

28 World Literature Today essay K nown to the English-speaking world by its translation, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank’s diary marks what many regard as the seminal example of testimonial literature. Today, the international fame of the diary is well known; the number of its translations now reaches over sixty. Taking a long journey from its original Dutch, translations of the Diary reach globally into languages such as Farsi, Sinhalese, and Esperanto. Yet little has been documented about its afterlife in these numerous non-European languages. Despite the Diary’s wide circulation, most examinations only focus on the text’s proliferation throughout Europe and North America. Here, I would like to trace the Diary’s circulation outside the West, examining the text’s influence in places like North Korea, Cambodia, Bosnia, Palestine, and Algeria. Looking at the ways a familiar text is interpreted in less-familiar settings not only tells us about the transnational circulation of atrocity testimonies but also tells us something about the way world literature works. Anne Frank Abroad The Emergence of World Atrocity Literature Katherine Wilson “If she was going to be thought exceptional, it would not be because of Auschwitz and Belsen but because of what she had made of herself since.” – Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer photo : anne frank fonds basel / anne frank house / getty images may–june 2013 • 29 When we examine the Diary’s foreign translations , we might be surprised to discover unexpected and, at times, disconcerting interpretations of the Diary emerging from areas such as North Korea, Palestine, and Cambodia. The “Anne Frank Translation Project” in Cambodia, for example, has proven to be an important teaching tool used to combat the widespread public belief that mass atrocity is unique to Cambodia. “Genocide did not only happen in Cambodia,” cites the Diary’s Khmer translator, Sayana Ser, in an interview for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s podcast, Voices on Antisemitism. Ser’s mission is to offer Cambodians a way to make sense of the Khmer Rouge genocide within the broader framework of the world history of atrocity: “I think if [Cambodians ] know that genocide has happened in other places, they would not feel like they are the only ones that suffered.” So far, so good—right? You might be more scandalized to learn how the Diary is officially used in North Korea. In 2004 a Dutch film crew gained rare access to cover the Diary’s adoption as a required text in all secondary schools in the nation. They revealed firsthand that the Diary was being used as an allegory to paint then-President George W. Bush as Hitler and the North Koreans as the Jews. As one North Korean student explained in an interview, “According to our respected leader, Kim Jong Il, The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the great classics of the world. That is why we read the diary—out of great respect for our leader.” When questioned about what they had learned from reading the Diary, one student stated, “That warmonger Bush is just as bad as Hitler. Because of him we will always live in fear of war.” Another student declared, “For world peace, America will have to be destroyed. Only then will Anne’s dream of peace come true.” The negotiation between the host culture and source culture of a work is complicated— much can arguably be lost in translation. In What Is World Literature?, David Damrosch sees this as a natural attribute of world literature: “The receiving culture can use the foreign material in all sorts of ways: as a positive model for the future development of its own tradition; as a negative case of a primitive, or decadent, strand that must be avoided or rooted out at home; or, more neutrally, as an image of radical otherness against which the home tradition can more clearly be defined.” Damrosch concludes that world literature is “always as much about the host culture’s values and needs as it is about the work’s source culture.” We may believe that the Diary’s circulation will advance an accurate education about the Holocaust—a value held by...

“Delicias holandesas” dirigidas por mujeres: cine contra estereotipos

This paper offers a brief history of women filmmakers in The Netherlands from the 1920s to the present, in an attempt to achieve two goals. The first aim is to show that despite the scarcity of women directors in the histories of the cinema of the Netherlands, there are many women in the Dutch film industry, particularly so given its small size in the European context. Secondly, this paper aims to show that many of the myths that have been commonly associated with Dutch cinema, such as its inability to produce good fiction films or to handle important socio-political issues, can be easily dismantled after seeing the work of Dutch women filmmakers. Although it is certainly much easier to find documentaries than dramas among their works, it is nevertheless true that they have also produced many of the latter. Moreover, in both categories they have explored complex and controversial themes that are highly relevant to their society, as well as opening up new thematic paths along which male directors had never travelled. Issues related to the new national identities resulting from the multicultural contexts of present-day Europe are among the former, while the latter is best represented by topics traditionally dealt with by feminism, such as the question of abortion, rape or women’s submission in patriarchal societies, among others.

‘Not a colonial war’: Dutch film propaganda in the fight against Indonesia, 1945–49

This article is about the films that were made by the Gouvernements Filmbedrijf Multifilm Batavia during the colonial war, and about how these films were re-used in later years, mainly in historical documentaries. Most of these historical documentaries were made for television, reaching a large audience. Thus, these documentaries form part of the national cultural memory, and have had considerable consequences for the way Dutch people remember the war with Indonesia. Accordingly, the proposition of this article is that the films produced by the Dutch East Indies administration during 1945–49 constitute a successful propaganda strategy.

Entertainment from the Netherlands: the Geesink collection

The Geesink studio, which was named after its director Joop Geesink and operated between1942 till 1972, specialised in puppet animation under the name of Dollywood. It also producedlive-action films under the name of Starfilm. Geesink produced hundreds of commercials forclients all over the world. It approached advertisements as a form of entertainment. This articleanalyses how Geesink commercials appropriated various genres of entertainment such asmusicals, westerns and comedies and used them for advertising purposes. The size and internationalclientele of the Geesink films suggests that Dutch cinema should not only be identifiedwith the genre of documentaries, as is usually the case, but it should also be recognisedfor great achievements in entertainment. With their high entertainment value, commercialsuccess and American approach, Geesink films therefore occupy a special place within Dutchfilm history.

Entertainment from the Netherlands: the Geesink collection

The Geesink studio, which was named after its director Joop Geesink and operated between1942 till 1972, specialised in puppet animation under the name of Dollywood. It also producedlive-action films under the name of Starfilm. Geesink produced hundreds of commercials forclients all over the world. It approached advertisements as a form of entertainment. This articleanalyses how Geesink commercials appropriated various genres of entertainment such asmusicals, westerns and comedies and used them for advertising purposes. The size and internationalclientele of the Geesink films suggests that Dutch cinema should not only be identifiedwith the genre of documentaries, as is usually the case, but it should also be recognisedfor great achievements in entertainment. With their high entertainment value, commercial success and American approach, Geesink films therefore occupy a special place within Dutchfilm history.

Explanations for the Restrained Development of the Dutch Cinema Market in the 1930s

Cinemagoing in the Netherlands during the 1930s appears to have been much less intense than in the English-speaking world. To support this assertion we examine film attendance and diffusion in the Dutch market by recourse to a new large dataset, and contrast it with observations drawn from recent research on the Anglo-Saxon countries (United States, United Kingdom, and Australia). In setting down the economic principles behind the organisation of the film industry that best describe the Anglo-Saxon model, we show how the Dutch experience differed in scale, but not in type. To investigate the reasons for this, we examine the idea that film consumption in the Netherlands was constrained through the operation of informal institutional pressures. In particular, we investigate the influence that the vertical stratification of Dutch society into distinct religious and ideological strands may have had on the filmgoing appetites of the Dutch people. A further investigation looks at the combination of exhibitors and distributors into a single industry cartel and its impact upon prices and cinema building. The paper concludes that a complex mixture of cultural, economic, institutional, and social factors were at play, causing the Dutch people to be an outlier as far as film provision and consumption was concerned.

Explanations for the Restrained Development of the Dutch Cinema Market in the 1930s

Cinemagoing in the Netherlands during the 1930s appears to have been much less intense than in the English-speaking world. To support this assertion we examine film attendance and diffusion in the Dutch market by recourse to a new large dataset, and contrast it with observations drawn from recent research on the Anglo-Saxon countries (United States, United Kingdom, and Australia). In setting down the economic principles behind the organisation of the film industry that best describe the Anglo-Saxon model, we show how the Dutch experience differed in scale, but not in type. To investigate the reasons for this, we examine the idea that film consumption in the Netherlands was constrained through the operation of informal institutional pressures. In particular, we investigate the influence that the vertical stratification of Dutch society into distinct religious and ideological strands may have had on the filmgoing appetites of the Dutch people. A further investigation looks at the combination of exhibitors and distributors into a single industry cartel and its impact upon prices and cinema building. The paper concludes that a complex mixture of cultural, economic, institutional, and social factors were at play, causing the Dutch people to be an outlier as far as film provision and consumption was concerned.

View the label before you view the movie: A field experiment into the impact of Portion size and Guideline Daily Amounts labelling on soft drinks in cinemas

BackgroundLarge soft drink sizes increase consumption, and thereby contribute to obesity. Portion size labelling may help consumers to select more appropriate food portions. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of portion size and caloric Guidelines for Daily Amounts (GDA) labelling on consumers' portion size choices and consumption of regular soft drinks.MethodsA field experiment that took place on two subsequent evenings in a Dutch cinema. Participants (n = 101) were asked to select one of five different portion sizes of a soft drink. Consumers were provided with either portion size and caloric GDA labelling (experimental condition) or with millilitre information (control condition).ResultsLabelling neither stimulated participants to choose small portion sizes (OR = .75, p = .61, CI: .25 - 2.25), nor did labelling dissuade participants to choose large portion sizes (OR = .51, p = .36, CI: .12 - 2.15).ConclusionsPortion size and caloric GDA labelling were found to have no effect on soft drink intake. Further research among a larger group of participants combined with pricing strategies is required. The results of this study are relevant for the current public health debate on food labelling.

Nascent ventures competing for start-up capital: Matching reputations and investors

Although nascent ventures have not yet developed a performance-based reputation, the individual reputations of their founders, based on the performance of their earlier ventures, can function as important signals to investors. Selection system theory distinguishes between different types of reputations as well as different types of investors, in order to analyze how particular types of reputations affect the investment behavior of particular types of investors. The empirical setting of this paper is the Dutch film industry, in which we study the impact of different types of reputations of producers and directors on the investment decisions of the three main investors.