Screening: Transit Levantkade / Job en de Hollandse Vrijstaat, 17:00 - 19:00
Shifting Spaces will screen two very special cult-documentaries: Transit Levantkade en Job en de Hollandse Vrijstaat. Both are about the topic of outsiders within (Dutch) culture and the squat culture of the late eighties and early nineties. Transit Levantkade and Job en de Hollandse Vrijstaat are made by Rosemarie Blank, who has been active as a film director and documentary maker since the early eighties.
Transit Levantkade:
Stylised documentary portrait of the Amsterdam Levantkade area and the 'urban nomads' who in the late eighties sought refuge in this no-man's-land now cleared. The film tells the story of the Levantkade, a quay in Amsterdam's old doc area. In the twenties Levantkade was a gateway for Eastern European emigrants on their way to South America. In the eighties Levantkade became a haven for drop-outs, for foreigners and for homeless people who lived here on a different planet until the police came to clear the area for the wreckers. The film shows these 'urban indians' in documentary form, interspersed with archive material about immigrants, dating from 1926.
(75 minutes)
Job en de Hollandse Vrijstaat:
The film documents a personal memory. In 1988 I met a quietly eccentric man, who lived in the occupied Conradstreet in Amsterdam. More than 100 squatters lived there, mostly artists. Job was in my eyes the most authentic of them all. After the Conradstreet was dramatically cleared by the police the squatters left. Only Job stayed behind as if nothing had happened. After the buildings were pulled down he survived under the most bizarre conditions, apparently oblivious to time and space, but Job seemed to see something in stones and wood splinters that no-one else could see. One day he left and was never seen again.
(47 minutes)
For those who can not make it to the first screening. The movies will be presented again on the 13th of April.