Netherlands,
1998, 51 min
Shown in 1999
CREDITS
- dir
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Johan van der Keuken
- prod
-
Pieter van Huystee
- scr
-
Johan van der Keuken
- cam
-
Johan van der Keuken
- editor
-
Menno Boerema
- source
-
ldéale Audience, 6, rue de I\'Agent Bailly, 75009 Paris, France. FAX: 33-1-5320-1401
-
COMMENTS
Shown with Filmmaker’s Holiday. Johan van der Keuken appeared in person to receive the 1999 recipient of the Persistence of Vision Award.
OTHER
Dutch photographer and filmmaker Johan van der Keuken has suggested that while a photograph is memory, film always occurs in the present. By affectionately turning his cameras on his family as well as on his own creative process, he reveals the link between reflection and observation that permeates all his work. In his most recent video, the deeply moving Last Words—My Sister Yoka, van der Keuken and his wife visit his sister a few days before she dies of cancer and record their conversations. “The talks were about the purpose of life... transmitting experience and insight... and also about our relationship at home, our conflicts and our coming together again.” While the impetus for the film was the timelessness of faces (the majority of the video depicts Yoka speaking with unrelenting honesty directly to the camera), it is very much about the present—the moment of coming to terms with death—and memory—what we leave behind.
—Kathy Geritz
FACTOID #173
Though he starred in an Opening Night film (1967’s How I Won the War), lent his image and songs to 1968’s Festival entry Yellow Submarine and was scheduled to appear at the 1971 Festival with wife Yoko for an evening of their short films, John Lennon never attended the SFIFF.
