The Dutch photographer and
filmmaker Johan van der Keuken died on January 7, 2001 at the age of 62. Some
critics described Van der Keuken as the film son of Joris Ivens, which does
not do credit to the two filmmakers' individuality. At an early age Van der
Keuken impressed people with his first book of photographs, after which he began
his film studies in Paris in 1956 at the IDHEC (Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques),
the College of Cinematography. The early work already betrays the strong powers
of observation and the free idiom of his pictures. At the end of the sixties
he befriended Joris Ivens and they began to appreciate each other's work. Ivens'
support for the as yet insecure Van der Keuken undoubtedly inspired a lot of
confidence in him. '…that old giant Ivens, whom I owed and still owe very
much', Van der Keuken wrote. The radical political commitment of the sixties,
the passion for film and compassion for each world citizen, wherever he was,
united them. Both were film nomads, used the world as their setting. But the
associative pictures and diary style of Van der Keuken was rather influenced
by jazz improvisation, the Dutch Fifties Poets and Nouvelle Vague than by Ivens'
'Cinema de Papa'. Johan van der Keuken achieved international recognition with
an extensive film oeuvre. In 1988 he made the film images shot in the Netherlands,
forming the beginning of UNE HISTOIRE DE VENT. After viewing the first rushes
Ivens asked him to film the pictures of the wind and the lashing sail arms with
even more force.
He who looks at the two men's last films - UNE HISTOIRE DE VENT and THE LONG
HOLIDAY - sees how vision, method of working and passion come together at the
end of their lives. Ivens and Van der Keuken were only able to make these films
with the creative assistance, in symbiosis, of their wives Marceline Loridan-Ivens
and Nosh van der Lely respectively. The two films are global air-road movies
in which Ivens and Van der Keuken, with their death in sight, are looking for
contemplative images and reflect on their respective film oeuvres. Both found
answers in oriental culture and religion as well as in the casual and everyday
gestures of nameless people, who were given a voice, an image and a name. Their
last pictures demonstrate the metaphysical power of nature, an extremely Dutch
as well as universal theme - in Ivens' film the rising wind in the Chinese desert
and in Van der Keuken's film the thin images of waves and boats on a Dutch river,
both with music of wind instruments resounding with the breathing of human beings
and the earth.