Filming for the Future: The Work of Louis van Gasteren
by Patricia Pisters
Amsterdam University Press, 2016 eISBN: 978-90-485-2957-5 Library of Congress Classification PN1998.3.G375.P57 2016
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Louis Van Gasteren was one of the most prolific filmmakers in the history of the Netherlands, with a resume that includes nearly eighty documentaries and two feature films - to say nothing of artworks and books.
Filming for the Future offers an extended exploration of Van Gasteren's work and audio-visual world. Patricia Pisters introduces us to a filmmaker who always had his camera ready and was relentless in filming a wide range of topics and events of national and international importance. Fascinated by technology, deeply engaged with politics, and intensely occupied by the traumatic effects of war, Van Gasteren assembled an unparalleled record of life in twentieth-century Amsterdam and beyond. Filming for the Future will be an invaluable source of documentation and analysis of one of the key filmmakers of our time.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Patricia Pisters is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Previously she has edited Micropolitics of Media Culture. Reading the Rhizomes of Deleuze and Guattari (2001) and Shooting the Family. Transnational Media and Intercultural Values (2005). She is also an editor for Necsus: European Journal of Media Studies.
REVIEWS
“Finally. An engaged and thoughtful full-on narrative illuminating the work of Holland's preeminent film director, Louis van Gasteren. Patricia Pisters's Filming for the Future is an unflinching and deft rendering of the six decades of van Gasteren's films; the writer giving blood, flesh and story to a complicated and controversial artist's obsessions and aesthetics. Like her subject's work, Pisters eschews cliché and slippery ideas to cement well-wrought and hard earned research that throws bright light onto the times and temperament of van Gasteren's work. Filming for the Future is an essential complement to understanding van Gasteren's life, films and obsessions.”
— Michael Martin, author of Extended Remark: Poems from a Moravian Parking Lot
"Unique attempt to interpret the multifaceted and multilayered oeuvre of the Grand Old Man of Dutch documentary in an all-encompassing treatise. A great achievement!"
— Hans Beerekamp, former film critic and current TV critic, NRC Handelsblad
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Encountering a Prescient Filmmaker
Louis van Gasteren ‘An Ebullient Director Bursting with Ideas’
Selecting from a Vast Non-Linear Spectrum
The Operation- Brown Gold- Across the Sahara
Land, House and City
Housing and Architecture: Constructing and Rebuilding a Post-War Country
All Birds Have Nests- A New Village on New Land- Back to Nagele
The House: History, Memory and Meaning
The House
Dwelling in the City Roots and Resistance
Roots of the City (public art work)
Water, Transport and Technology
Water is Our Element: The Sea as Friend and Enemy
The Stranding- Mayday
Dry Feet below Sea Level: AN Integral Viwe on Water
AOD (public monument)- A Matter of Level- Neeltje Jans (land art project)
Technologies of Transportation: Roads, Phones and Globe-Conscious
Railplan 68- Globe-conscious Material Paintings (art)- Warffum- There is a Phone Call for You
War and Traumas of the Past
Monte Klamott (art project)
Mediated Memories of the Second World War
Return of the Repressed: From KZ-Syndrome to PTSD
How Do You Get It, Why I Am Crying
The Haunting Shadows of Ducker and Dorbeck
A Chainsaw for the Past- the Cloudy Existence of LVG- Hamartía
Sorrows of a Past Never Lived
Roermond’s Sorrow- The Price of Survival
Young Rebels and Doors of Perception
Generations, Existential Roles and Circles of Life before Death
Hand Life Before Death
Stirring Things Up and Psychedelic Escapes
All Rebels
Electronic Brains and Audio-Visual Investigation of Perception
Because my Bike Stood There- Do You Get It 3,4- Out of My Skull- Sunny Implo (art)
Europe, Politics and Multinationals
Sardinia, Evolution of One of the Oldest ‘Homes’ of Humanity
Cordebbu, Salude e Libertade, The Sardonic Smile
Sicco Mansholt and the Emergence and Evolution of the European Union
Changing Tack
Global Capital and Neo-Colonial Wars
Report from Biafra- Report from Karthoum- Multinationals
Coda: Feedback Loops in Time without Final Cut
Joie de Vivre and Disillusions of Life
Nema Aviona Za Zagreb
Cutting and Re-ordering, Temporal Looping and ‘Nema’
Notes
Filmography of Louis van Gasteren
Art Works of Louis van Gasteren
Illustrations
Bibliography
Index
Filming for the Future: The Work of Louis van Gasteren
by Patricia Pisters
Amsterdam University Press, 2016 eISBN: 978-90-485-2957-5
Louis Van Gasteren was one of the most prolific filmmakers in the history of the Netherlands, with a resume that includes nearly eighty documentaries and two feature films - to say nothing of artworks and books.
Filming for the Future offers an extended exploration of Van Gasteren's work and audio-visual world. Patricia Pisters introduces us to a filmmaker who always had his camera ready and was relentless in filming a wide range of topics and events of national and international importance. Fascinated by technology, deeply engaged with politics, and intensely occupied by the traumatic effects of war, Van Gasteren assembled an unparalleled record of life in twentieth-century Amsterdam and beyond. Filming for the Future will be an invaluable source of documentation and analysis of one of the key filmmakers of our time.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Patricia Pisters is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Previously she has edited Micropolitics of Media Culture. Reading the Rhizomes of Deleuze and Guattari (2001) and Shooting the Family. Transnational Media and Intercultural Values (2005). She is also an editor for Necsus: European Journal of Media Studies.
REVIEWS
“Finally. An engaged and thoughtful full-on narrative illuminating the work of Holland's preeminent film director, Louis van Gasteren. Patricia Pisters's Filming for the Future is an unflinching and deft rendering of the six decades of van Gasteren's films; the writer giving blood, flesh and story to a complicated and controversial artist's obsessions and aesthetics. Like her subject's work, Pisters eschews cliché and slippery ideas to cement well-wrought and hard earned research that throws bright light onto the times and temperament of van Gasteren's work. Filming for the Future is an essential complement to understanding van Gasteren's life, films and obsessions.”
— Michael Martin, author of Extended Remark: Poems from a Moravian Parking Lot
"Unique attempt to interpret the multifaceted and multilayered oeuvre of the Grand Old Man of Dutch documentary in an all-encompassing treatise. A great achievement!"
— Hans Beerekamp, former film critic and current TV critic, NRC Handelsblad
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Encountering a Prescient Filmmaker
Louis van Gasteren ‘An Ebullient Director Bursting with Ideas’
Selecting from a Vast Non-Linear Spectrum
The Operation- Brown Gold- Across the Sahara
Land, House and City
Housing and Architecture: Constructing and Rebuilding a Post-War Country
All Birds Have Nests- A New Village on New Land- Back to Nagele
The House: History, Memory and Meaning
The House
Dwelling in the City Roots and Resistance
Roots of the City (public art work)
Water, Transport and Technology
Water is Our Element: The Sea as Friend and Enemy
The Stranding- Mayday
Dry Feet below Sea Level: AN Integral Viwe on Water
AOD (public monument)- A Matter of Level- Neeltje Jans (land art project)
Technologies of Transportation: Roads, Phones and Globe-Conscious
Railplan 68- Globe-conscious Material Paintings (art)- Warffum- There is a Phone Call for You
War and Traumas of the Past
Monte Klamott (art project)
Mediated Memories of the Second World War
Return of the Repressed: From KZ-Syndrome to PTSD
How Do You Get It, Why I Am Crying
The Haunting Shadows of Ducker and Dorbeck
A Chainsaw for the Past- the Cloudy Existence of LVG- Hamartía
Sorrows of a Past Never Lived
Roermond’s Sorrow- The Price of Survival
Young Rebels and Doors of Perception
Generations, Existential Roles and Circles of Life before Death
Hand Life Before Death
Stirring Things Up and Psychedelic Escapes
All Rebels
Electronic Brains and Audio-Visual Investigation of Perception
Because my Bike Stood There- Do You Get It 3,4- Out of My Skull- Sunny Implo (art)
Europe, Politics and Multinationals
Sardinia, Evolution of One of the Oldest ‘Homes’ of Humanity
Cordebbu, Salude e Libertade, The Sardonic Smile
Sicco Mansholt and the Emergence and Evolution of the European Union
Changing Tack
Global Capital and Neo-Colonial Wars
Report from Biafra- Report from Karthoum- Multinationals
Coda: Feedback Loops in Time without Final Cut
Joie de Vivre and Disillusions of Life
Nema Aviona Za Zagreb
Cutting and Re-ordering, Temporal Looping and ‘Nema’
Notes
Filmography of Louis van Gasteren
Art Works of Louis van Gasteren
Illustrations
Bibliography
Index
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC