Frank van Reemst

Marion Bloem - A 70 Year-Old Girl

After the death of her husband Ivan, writer Marion Bloem must rebuild her life. While painting, she processes her pain and grief, as she has not yet found the words to put her emotions on paper. Later, the poems come, and after a long inner process, she writes a book. A film about love, loss, and the transformative power of creativity.

Creating things is the best

People who create explore, and get to know themselves and others better. In this cinematographic essay, Rolf Orthel looks for the meaning of creating, with reality or the memory of it as a starting point and a train journey as a meandering ribbon through the film. We see the first musical steps of primary school children and youngsters at Jeugdtheaterschool Zuid-Oost. We see what talent does to you when a conservatory student practices for his graduation, when someone paints a remarkable self-portrait or when Konvooi creates a thrilling play. This is high-level creation which makes you wonder how on earth it is possible that you can suddenly be enchanted and moved. The conclusion of Orthel’s search? Creating things is the best.

Berliner Tagebuch

‘Where I am, I don’t want to stay. I want to stay where I’ve never been.’ Filmmaker Rosemarie Blank was born in Berlin, but has lived in various other places in the world. After returning to her native city, she wondered what it’s like for other people to live outside their motherland. In this diary, she interviews people whom she literally met in the street: her Kurdish newsvendor, who apart from his busy trade has a second job with the German railways, a Lebanese hairdresser, a Turkish furniture seller. They talk about melancholy, longing, the struggle for existence and against discrimination and they show how they lead their daily life. The encounters are larded with observing shots of multicultural Berlin, particularly where diversity is most visible: the subway.

Me and My Parents - My Parents and I

In 1975, his graduation year at the Film Academy, director Gerrit van Elst captured his relationship with his father and mother and how they opposed their only child’s decision to go and study in faraway Amsterdam. Twenty-nine years later, he and his camera crew are back at his - now seriously infirm - parents. For this film, Van Elst cross-edited the footage of then and now. A revealing observation of growing old and approaching death.