My mother painting set for upcoming short film
For an upcoming short film about the life of some immigrants and refugees in Antwerp my mother is drawing the set background! She has done an amazing job with some huge drawings.
The film will be shown in September on a public square in Antwerp and after that it will be available on Youtube.
Great first reactions and reviews of the film
We had a week with some amazing reviews of the film in Dutch newspapers. Translated they sound like this:
"Funny, endearing and moving portrait of the fantastic Etgar Keret" - de Volkskrant
"Amazing documentary" - Het Parool
"Funny and mercilessly beautiful. Keeps hopping around in my head." - Micha Wertheim, comedian
"Original, imaginatively crafted documentary." - De VPRO Gids
"Playful and original. Really cool." -Henk van Straten, writer
"Funny and upbeat, but ultimately on a bed of the Holocaust past and the tough Middle Eastern reality." -De Groene Amsterdammer
"Wondrous documentary about a writer who promotes life." -Alma Mathijsen, writer
"Brilliant." -Nooit Meer Slapen, radio show
"Afterwards, you're guaranteed to feel happy. Really happy. And you want to read Etgar Keret's books." -Jaap Robben, writer
Sold-out first screenings!
We had three sold-out screenings in a row now and I'm really happy with all the positive responses! Etgar flies back to Tel Aviv today with his son Lev and wife Shira. We will stay in the Low Countries with our cardboard Fatso (drawn by our animator Nina Gantz and cut out by Maartje Smits).
Music by Peter Vandrie & Orel Tamuz
When we were filming our documentary Etgar Keret: Based on a True Story in Tel Aviv, I saw a guy that I still knew from Amsterdam sitting on a bench. It was Peter Vandrie, an amazing musician, who had just moved there with his Israeli girlfriend. We had a beer and I told him about our film about Etgar Keret. 'What? Keret? That's my favourite writer!' he said. 'Let me make the music for your film with my friend (who's also an amazing musician) Orel!' So they did, worked very hard on their funky tunes and the music fits the film really well! Peter will even come to Amsterdam to do a short live show at Het Ketelhuis. So don't miss it and make sure you buy your tickets fast here: http://www.ketelhuis.nl/…/ketelhuis-forum-etgar-keret-…/2057
Trailer for Etgar Keret: Based on a True Story
And there it is, finally, after a few years of work: the trailer for the documentary on Etgar Keret!
Like our Facebook-page for Etgar Keret: Based on a True Story
Follow this link and like our page for updates!
Ammodo KNAW Awards 2017
Acht wetenschappers winnen om het jaar een Ammodo KNAW Award. Dit jaar vroegen ze me om een film te maken voor de uitreiking. Het werd een 'Ode aan de nieuwsgierigheid'.
‘Het was als een droom'
Onlangs ontdekte ik pas voor het eerst dat het niet zo heel lang geleden gebruikelijk was om mensen tentoon te stellen. Ieder land met een koloniaal rijk - vrijwel heel West-Europa dus - deed hier aan mee, zodat de burgers eindelijk eens met eigen ogen konden aanschouwen wat voor mensen er zich bevonden in hun koloniën. Zo werden er op de Wereldtentoonstelling van Amsterdam in 1883 tientallen ‘inboorlingen' uit Suriname in een grote tent op het Museumplein tentoongesteld en was er ook een Indonesische kampong inclusief bewoners nagebouwd. In Parijs was er onder andere een ‘village nègre’ te bewonderen en in Manchester kon je in de dierentuin bijvoorbeeld naar de kannibalen kijken. Maar ook in de Verenigde Staten en Japan was dit een populair fenomeen.
Nog verbaasder was ik toen ik er achter kwam dat dit nog tot ver in de 20e eeuw gebeurde. In 1958 vond de Wereldtentoonstelling in Brussel plaats en daar werd nog een ‘authentiek congolees dorp’ neergezet. Dit dorp schijnt gesloten te zijn nadat bezoekers van de tentoonstelling de bewoners van het dorp gingen voeren.
In de korte documentaire die ik maak voor de website Mindshakes ga ik op zoek naar de bewoners van het dorp. Allereerst vertrek ik naar Rimouski in Québec, Canada, waar Jean Kabuta woont. Jean werd in 1958 van Congo naar Brussel gehaald om met zijn koor op de Wereldexpositie te zingen.
‘Het was als een droom’, zei hij over zijn aankomst in Brussel. ‘Het was werkelijk fantastisch.’ ‘Het is pas decennia later dat ik mij toch een beetje geëxploiteerd gevoeld heb. Wij werden daar niet naar toe gehaald omdat wij zo mooi konden zingen. Wij werden daar naar toe gehaald zodat de Belgen konden laten zien wat zij van ons Congolezen konden maken.'
Het was een zeer interessant gesprek over de koloniale blik, die toen zo alomtegenwoordig was, en die zelfs nu nog soms de kop op steekt.
Special Screening of Oriental Odyssey
Tomorrow there will be a special screening of 'Oriental Odyssey'. My main character, Mattho Mandersloot is from Diemen and he is nominated for the Diemen-sportsman-of-the-year! Big applause.
More information here
Drawings
I'm making a lot of sketches for what has to become an animation in the documentary on Etgar Keret. Bought a box of charcoal, paper and started drawing some kind of storyboard. Feels good!
Doker Film Festival
Had a blast at Doker Film Festival! Got some really nice reactions and the audience was very interested and engaged. Also I brought my sister with me! Check her website here. She makes the best crazy costumes ever.
Moskva
Tomorrow I'm flying to Moscow for a weekend to present 'Oriental Odyssey' at Moscow International Documentary Film Festival. Very proud. If you have any recommendations for this city, please email them!
Stella Foundation
Just made this video for Jaehoon Cho, who has a very ambitious plan to cycle from Kilimanjaro to Cape of Good Hope in order to fight depression in Korea. With amazing drone shots by Maarten Van Rouveroy. More information on www.stellafoundation.com
Researching the German Grandpa Gang
This weekend I drove to the beautiful German region of Sauerland near Dortmund with my friend Thomas Rietstra, who speaks German really well. We had a meeting with judge Horst-Werner Herkenberg who told us about his famous case ten years ago: the case of the Grandpa Gang (or in German: Die Opa-Bande). Three elderly men robbed banks in this lovely neighbourhood for over a decade and stole more than a million Euro's. 'Sie hatten keine Nerven...' the judge said about them...
More news soon.
Interview with one of the best interviewers on earth
Photo: Ryan McGinley for The New York Times
I am listening a lot to NPR's Fresh Air these days and I am always amazed by how well Terry Gross manages to do interviews with such a wide range of different people. No matter the subject, it seems, it always ends up interesting.
Susan Burton did a really nice piece on her in the NY Times and what struck me most was how a typical work day would look for her:
"On a typical day, Gross is at the office from 8:45 to 5:45. She and her husband, Francis Davis, who is a music critic, will go out for dinner (not fancy places: ‘‘We like diners and delis’’), and then Gross will continue working at home, preparing for the next day’s interview in the living room. She clarifies her thoughts first thing in the morning in the shower. That’s when she asks herself: What do I care about? What in all of this research is meaningful? It’s important to be away from her notes when she does this. She emerges from the shower with her ‘‘major destination points.’’ Then she goes to her office and refers back to her notes — sheafs of facts; dog-eared, marked-up books — for the details. Then she does the interview. And then she is inundated by the other daily tasks of running a radio show. The next day, she does it all again."
She did an interview with Etgar Keret - subject of my next documentary - as well, listen to it here.
Filming Etgar Keret in Amsterdam
We were filming for our documentary on writer Etgar Keret again! The film location was the lovely Café Américain in Amsterdam and we tried to recreate the exact same image as we made with Ira Glass in J's Pizza, New York. The actor on the lower right (Steef Cuijpers, a very funny Dutch actor/comedian) is playing a diamond smuggler, who Etgar once mistook for his German publisher. It all looks really great and I can't wait to film in his hometown Tel Aviv.
R.I.P. Oliver Sacks
Last weekend neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks died at the age of 82. His book The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat is amazing and inspired me to make a documentary on a boy with no short term memory: Forever 19. The book consists of stories about people with their brain damaged or who have a brain disease. The stories are all as bizarre as if they were fictional stories: people who can't recognise faces or objects, whose limbs have become alien or shout involuntary obscenities. There are also the fascinating stories about 'idiot savants', people who are dismissed as retarded, but who are extremely good in maths or dates in the past. When reading it you have the strange sensation of not being sure what it is that makes a human being a human being.
Another De Speld-author 'Smartest Human Being' in the Netherlands
There is this trivia game on tv, called De Slimste Mens, which has been won by an author of satirical magazine De Speld for the second year in a row. Congrats Diederik Smit, writer of this one for example:
Designing 1000 Book Covers by Hand
Belgian Writer and friend Frederik Willem Daem wanted to design his own book cover, by writing down his name and the book title on all the 1000 copies of his book. I filmed him the entire day while he was working on it. It took him 12 long hours to complete this crazy job.
