2011
Bunkerexhibition #15 – Everymen Bert Haanstra/ Het Bureau by J.J. Voskuil/ Oh Oh Cherso/ RTL, episode 4
Everymen / Alleman by Bert Haanstra, 1964, documentary 80 minutes
The Human Dutch paints a picture of the Dutch and pokes gentle fun at their peculiarities. As in Zoo, Haanstra and cameraman Anton van Munster filmed people as they unwittingly went about their business The basic idea was to show how people behave in specific situation or environment. But as people tend to be self-conscious in the presence of a camera, they concealed the camera in a huge shopping bag and hid their equipment in the shrubs. They built sheds with one way reflecting glass. In this film Haanstra observed the Dutch with compassion and wit and they emerged as people with a sense of sorrow and joy, religion and individualism and, above all, freedom.
Still one of the best Dutch documentaries ever made. See the whole film on you tube! Alleman Talking about Dutch film; overall its fiction films are very flat, while Dutch documentaries are amongst the best in the world. But there are exceptions, check Orlow Seunke an almost forgotten Dutch filmmaker of very interesting fiction films. He moved to Indonesia because of the totally unclear and abject course of the Dutch Film Fund since 1980. Talking Indonesia, also check De stand van de maan, zon, sterren the beautiful documentary triptych by Leonard Retel Helmrich
Michiel van Erp made a contemporary ‘version’ of Everyman in 2017; https://npo.nl/start/serie/dit-zijn-wij_1/afleveringen/seizoen-1, this seven-part documentary series shows today’s Netherlands and its inhabitants in a striking way. Each episode provides a cross-section of Dutch society: from upper class to working-class background, gay, straight, black, white. The Netherlands has many good documentary makers, but according to Kees Hin – he worked intensively as a cameraman with Bert Haanstra – Michiel van Erp is the one who deserves to be called ‘the successor of ’.
article in Dutch by Liliane Waanders:
The Office/ Het Bureau by J.J. Voskuil, 1996, a fragment read aloud
AI says: ‘There is no official English translation of J.J. Voskuil’s novel cycle Het Bureau/ The Office. The monumental work, based on the time of the author at the Meertens Institute, has seven parts and more than 5500 pages.’ Please check the link https://www.the-low-countries.com/article/alice-tetley-paul if you would like to know more about J.J. Voskuil, one of Hanneke’s father, Pieter Marseille and my favorite Dutch writers. I also love reading Louis Couperus and Nescio. Because I didn’t like the voices of the audiobook of Het Bureau, I asked Remco Prins to read a fragment.
Oh Oh Cherso/ RTL, episode 4 of the television series, 2010
Niets Nieuws Onder De Zon
How to Have Sex (2023) by Mollie Manning Walker was highly acclaimed but basically touches the same subject. Since we saw Oh Oh Cherso (2010), 13 years previously -please let us know who the casting director, editor and director were, thank you !- for us How to Have Sex was nothing out of the ordinary. Of course it was more stylish in form, but leaned strongly on the subject nevertheless.
More information of this exhibition
We presented these three completely different works in one exhibition. Room 2 showed Alleman, Room 4, Oh Oh Cherso and in Room 3 we placed a chair with headphones in which you heard a fragment from The Office by J.J. Voskuil, read by Remco Prins, who we think did much better than the voices in the official audiobook.
Pepijn Spijkers, our webdesigner is just telling me that the first smart phone with a camera came out only in 2007, so we are kind of excused not having full documentation of the exhibitions in the past?