Sluizer Speaks

Residents, police and the municipal government of the Dutch city of Enschede face loss, guilt and responsibility as they grapple with the May 2000 explosion of a fireworks depot that wipes a working-class suburb off the map.

Freek de Jonge intends to stage one last magnificent show, to once again draw in the crowd. The performance of his life, in which he confronts various painful events, descending to the depths of his soul. This way he hopes to rekindle the drive of thirty years ago: has he done things right, will he be able to make up for the times he failed as a man and as an artist?

“When I do my suicide for you, I hope you’ll miss me too,” Herman Brood sang in “Rock ‘n’ Roll Junkie” – just one of many announcements of his own death Brood worked into his songs. It’s a subject Brood, who jumped off the roof of the Amsterdam Hilton 15 years ago, often sang about. In Unknown Brood, a whole range of people look back on the rock and roller’s turbulent life, including fellow musicians, his manager, a former girlfriend, photographer Anton Corbijn, Brood’s wife and their daughter. Video footage shot by Brood himself and never seen before is intercut with a rich collection of archive material, including a humorous clip of Brood barking the Dutch national anthem. His sister Beppie Brood stresses her brother’s split personality: on the one hand the shy, vulnerable man wary of other people, and on the other the one who played Herman Brood – an extravagant, hedonistic junkie and rock and roll star.

Tom and Ajani are outsiders in their small conservative village in The Netherlands. Together, they dream of freedom and a new life as film students in Amsterdam, where their relationship no longer has to be a secret. When they finally leave their old life in the countryside behind, they are confronted with the norms and social constructs of the big city that turn out to be completely different than what they imagined. While Ajani thrives in the Amsterdam queer scene, Tom struggles to find his place, putting a strain on their now public relationship. In this new world, freed from always being hated for who they are, who will they become?

The Rectum Raiders are a Turbo Glam-Metal band who have been together since their early teenage years. Now years later when a grown-up life with responsibilities and full-time jobs come peaking around the corner they give themselves one final shot to get their big breakthrough as a band and fulfill their childhood dreams.

The Bi Issue follows poet and activist Zaïre Krieger in her search for what it means to be bi, in identity, love, and faith. While working on a poetry collection about this inner struggle, Zaïre balances between worlds, each wanting to claim a different part of her. Among her friends, at work, in the ballroom scene, with her mother, and in church, everywhere, different rules and expectations apply. But what happens when these worlds collide, and parts of herself are no longer accepted?