dutch pearls

Dutch sex films and the consequences

The Sixties brought new ideas to film. In France we had the Nouvelle Vague, in Germany we saw die Neue Deutsche Welle and in the Netherlands it was called Nieuwe Golf. These films didn't attract many people. Therefore filmmakers looked for other topics to gain a wider audience. The production company Scorpio by Pim de la Parra and Wim Verstappen combined sex with artistic themes. The film Blue Movie was their first big success. Paul Verhoeven's Turks fruit was a successor. The so called "sex wave" declined around 1975 but was followed by controversial films by filmmakers like Frans Zwartjes, Ian Kerkhof and Cyrus Frisch.
The little retrospective will show seven films which will give an overview to an interested audience. The programme was supported by the Netherlands Filmmuseum.

Following films will we show:

12th Oct., 10 pm, Brotfabrik
Türkische Früchte/Turks fruit
1973, 112 Min., Paul Verhoeven, Kam: Jan de Bont, mit Rutger Hauer, Monique van de Ven, German
Cheeky film version of the novel by Jan Wolkers was nominated for the foreign-language Oscar and was director Paul Verhoeven's Hollywood breakthrough. Artist has a turbulent affair with a young woman (played by Monique van de Ven) who dies of a brain tumour. One of the most successful Dutch films ever (reaching an audience of 3.5 million).
Paul Verhoeven (1938) graduated in maths and physics before deciding to enter the Film Academy. Since then, he has directed documentaries, several major internationally successful features and has worked for television. He has been living and working in the United States since 1986.

13th Oct., 10 pm, Brotfabrik
Body Love
1977, 90 Min., Lasse Braun, Musik: Klaus Schulze, English

14th Oct., 10 pm, Brotfabrik and
17th Oct., 7:30 pm, Kino Arsenal
Pentimento
1979, 73 Min., Frans Zwartjes, mit Ronald Beer, Babeth, Moniek Toebosch, no dialogue
Second full-length feature by Zwartjes in which people are mishandled and killed in and around a empty building, while a festive meal is also taking place.
Frans Zwartjes (1927), a musician, violin maker, graphic artist, painter and sculptor has been intensively involved with film since 1968, also as a teacher.

15th Oct., 10 pm, Brotfabrik
Pruimenbloesem
1982, 68 Min., Willem van Batenburg, mit Diane de Koning, Tanja Overeem, Dutch with only a little dialogue
First Dutch porn film is set in the Betuwe region and is about a promiscuous woman who is married to a jealous old man and has an unquenchable thirst for sex. Pruimenbloesem was made under a pseudonym by the owner of a sex cinema in Utrecht.
Willem van Batenburg (1943) ran a sex cinema in Utrecht after being rejected by the Film Academy. He directed and wrote several porn movies.

16th Oct., 10 pm, Brotfabrik
Venus in Furs
1994, 70 Min., Victor E. Nieuwenhuijs, Maartje Seyferth, Drehbuch: Ian Kerkhof, Victor E. Nieuwenhuijs, Maartje Seyferth, Cam: Victor E. Nieuwenhuijs, mit Hilt de Vos, English UT
Feature based on the novel 'Venus im Pelz', written in 1869 by the Austrian novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who described masochism for the first time in this work. The film tells the story of a young man who has a classical SM relationship with a beautiful young woman. He is the slave and she is a severe mistress. She does not act from conviction, but from love. The black & white shots of imposing classical architecture and extreme close ups of naked bodies give the film an unreal and timeless mood. VENUS IN VURS comprises three linked time and story levels in which reality and illusion are interwoven.

17th Oct., 10 pm, Brotfabrik
Shabondama Elegy
1999, 80 Min., Ian Kerkhof, mit Thom Hoffmann, Mai Hoshino, English
Experimental feature set in Tokyo about the extreme and passionate love between the crook Jack (Thom Hoffman) and the 20-year-old porn starlet Keiko. Just out of jail, Jack is afraid for his life because both the police and a Yakusa boss want to kill him. He goes into hiding with Keiko, a porn star (played by a well-known Japanese porn star) whom he met in a bar. Shabondama Elegy was entirely shot with digital cameras and breaks through the conventions of conventional genres. The film is a mixture of fiction, documentary, crime thriller, cult and porn films. During shooting in Tokyo Thom Hoffman and actress Mai Hoshino lived together in an apartment. For 24 hours a day, two digital cameras recorded their lives. The footage was used for the film.

18th Oct., 10 pm, Brotfabrik
Forgive Me
2001, 83 Min., Cyrus Frisch, mit Ellen Ten Damme, Sylvia Kristel, Nico, Chiquita, Dutch with German UT
Selling himself to the devil (he quotes Murnau's Faust), Cyrus Frisch goes even further in Vergeef me on the path of controversy than in his previous work - this time in the ambitious form of a feature. He develops a dialectic between himself as provocateur, theatre-maker, scriptwriter of people's lives and protagonist in his own film. He penetrates the lives of `outsiders' he has come across in the street: the alcoholic Peter who visits prostitutes and his psychotic alcoholic ex-girlfriend Chiquita, her ex-boyfriend who is suffering from a rare disease, the wheelchair-bound heroin addict Achmed, a woman whose daughter has been killed by a junk and Astrid, who dreams of a career as a singer. Frisch started filming brutal scenes with these physically and/or mentally handicapped people, whose dignity is given away or taken away. When a first edited report screened at the IDFA only evoked positive reactions, he decided to carry on. Frisch provokes questions about the morality of (his) filming, and at the same time the morality of the viewer who is thrown back and forth between disgust and fascination for that disgust, but still keeps on looking.