The White Umbrella

In 1984–85, Johan van der Keuken took his camera across the globe, from Amsterdam to New York to Hong Kong, ending in Geneva. The object of his investigation was money, in particular the maniacal drive to accumulate it in the era of Thatcherite/Reaganite neoliberalism.

"I am far away on a distant journey through my own city", filmmaker Johan van der Keuken says at the end of his four-hour portrait of Amsterdam. The city is presented as a place where people from all corners of the world live, who all exert their cultural influence on the life in the city. With a motor courier as his central figure, the filmmaker introduces the audience to birds of different feathers. We see diverse cultural expressions, like the house scene, the entry of St. Nicholas and a Ghanese mourning ritual. The binding factor in the film is the concept of 'travelling', in other words Amsterdam as a global village. The camera travels through the film in three ways: over land, over water (canals) and through the air.

It is an autobiographical fiction starring Ivens as an old man who has spent his life trying to "tame the wind and harness the sea" by capturing them on film.

During the celebrations of the bicentenary of the French Revolution, Johan van der Keuken made a film about the revolutionary ideals of equality, liberty and fraternity. Rather than lingering on the festivities, he lingers on the crowds in the metro and on the platform. Amongst them is Philippe, a 23 year old, homeless and with no real job. More than just a comment on the ignorance and contradictions of France at the end of the 1980s, THE MASK is an exchange of views on solitude. Isn’t the question of violence in our democracies firstly that of the real price society pays for the image it would like to show?