25 years Highlights of the Lowlands Offscreen Activities
André Hazes – She Believes in Me André Hazes – Zij gelooft in mij John Appel
The Netherlands, 1999 video, color, 88 min Director: John Appel Photography: Erik van Empel Screenplay: Jan Eilander, Michael Peterson Editing: Teun Pfeil Sound: Alex Booy, Hugo Helmond Production: Frank van den Engel for Zeppers Film & TV Screening Copy: Zeppers Film & TV Involved TV Channel: NPS
John Appel:
Radio Daniëlle (1987) Johnny Meijer (1993) Vredenhof (1997) Little Lithuania (1997) Trench of Death (1999) The Promised Land (2000) Senegal Surplace (2003) The Last Victory (2003) Holland in Speeches (2004) There Goes My Heart (2005) The Last Honour (2005) Trainer (2007) The Player (2009) Wrong Time Wrong Place (2012) a.o.
André Hazes (1951-2004) was one of the most popular interpreters of the Dutch levenslied, a sentimental subgenre of pop music similar to the German schlager. For more than 20 years, he sang his hits to packed stadiums. For this documentary, filmmaker John Appel closely followed the singer for a number of months at the height of his fame. He attended performances and studio recordings, accompanied Hazes to the cramped house in Amsterdam where the singer spent his childhood and observed the man with his wife and two children in their spacious abode on the water. After all these years, Hazes still gets stage fright: he is not easily satisfied and not really self-confident. What should have been the high point in his career, a performance in the gigantic Plaza de Toros arena in the Spanish city of Benidorm, turns into disappointment: only a few hundred visitors show up for the show. The constant pressure takes its toll, and at a certain point, even Hazes’s third marriage is on the verge of collapse. It is clear that a big house is no guarantee for happiness, nor is the wall adorned with gold records. Ultimately, the lyrics of Hazes’s songs, which often deal with loneliness and unrequited love, ring true.
Boris Ryzhy Aliona van der Horst
The Netherlands, 2008 video, color / b&w, 59 min Director: Aliona van der Horst Photography: Aliona van der Horst, Maasja Ooms Screenplay: Aliona van der Horst Editing: Maasja Ooms Sound: Aliona van der Horst Music: Harry de Wit Production: Frank van den Engel for Zeppers Film & TV World Sales: NPO/RNW Sales Screening Copy: Zeppers Film & TV Involved TV Channel: VPRO
Aliona van der Horst:
The Lady with the White Hat (1997) After the Spring of ‘68 (2001) The Hermitage Dwellers (2004) Water Children (2011)
Aliona van der Horst & Maasja Ooms: Voices of Bam (2006)
Awards: Silver Wolf Award for Best Film IDFA, Best Feature Documentary Award Edinburgh International Film Festival, Dutch Filmcritics Award at the Dutch Film Festival, Jury Award International Festival of Art Films in Montreal
On the streets of the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, people have little interest in the past. Or could it be director Aliona van der Horst’s camera that puts off the former neighbors of the Russian poet Boris Ryzhy? In any case, when Van der Horst and Ryzhy’s sister come knocking at their doors they cannot recall the promising young man seven years after his death – he committed suicide in 2001 at the age of 26. But this is precisely what brings the filmmaker closer to Ryzhy. Both his life and poems were determined by the closed, distrustful character of the dismal industrial city, where crime has flourished since the democratization of Russia. Apart from Ryzhy’s sister, the film introduces his wife and their son, who is now 15. But the chief resource Van der Horst has at her disposal is Ryzhy himself. Sometimes warmhearted, other times blunt, he recites his work on old sound recordings while we watch the subjects of his poems: his bleak hometown, his crumbling neighborhood and the residents he both admired and reviled. We see Ryzhy in old video footage walking these same streets, a melancholy smile on his face. For a brief moment, he is brought back to life.
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