Dore Smit

In a fragmented, non-chronological series of images, a grand villa in Bloemendaal becomes the silent witness to the lives of two generations between 1900 and its demolition in 1950. Without dialogue, the film moves through moments of birth, love, adultery, violence and death, allowing the history of the house and its inhabitants to emerge through memory-like fragments.

A gang of city children is secretly practicing to enter a musical competition. All of them plunder their parents' supplies in order to build their own stage and amplifiers. Baffled by these unexplained thefts, the parents decide to hold a meeting as their suspicions turn to a group of camper folks living across from their flat. The tables are turned when the residents take a camping holiday of their own and end up being mistrusted by the locals as much as they themselves did their own neighbors. Meanwhile, the children's gang meets a rival group of kids who are planning to enter the same competition.

As years pass, the Craets-Goldeweyn family must cope with the disappearance of the familiar and the inescapable new that imposes itself.

When the police picks up a suspicious man carrying a knife, he appears to be suffering from amnesia. They send him to a special hospital to put him under observation. There, the man begins regain snippets of memory and starts to do some investigating of his own. Unfortunately, he also appears to be suffering from hallucinations which hinder his progress.

Ben van Rooyen buys a kris at an antique auction in Amsterdam. He suspects it is a genuine Matamaram Kris, a sacred kris with secret powers. This is confirmed by Professor Smit of the Tropical Institute. Because such a kris is of great value to the family to whom it belongs, Ben, together with his younger brother Mark, wants to go to Indonesia to find the owner. But Ben is not the only one interested in the kris.