Vreemd in de buurt
Netherlands,
2005, 58 min
Shown in 2006
CREDITS
- dir
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Patrick Bisschops
- prod
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Nellie Kamer
- scr
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Patrick Bisschops
- cam
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Wiro Felix
- editor
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JP Luijsterburg
- source
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NPB (Netherlands Public Broadcasting), Sumatralaan 45, 1217 GP Hilversum, Netherlands. FAX: +31-35-6774311. EMAIL: Ineke.woudenberg@omroep.nl.
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COMMENTS
Patrick Bisschops in attendance.
OTHER
Jasper, a stocky, mustachioed man with a graying mullet, climbs to a roost atop his apartment and dispatches one of his pet pigeons. He spots another pigeon flying overhead. “That's not my bird.... It’s a stranger in the neighborhood,” he says. This working-class Transvaal neighborhood in The Hague is in transition: It has seen an influx of Turkish immigrants in recent years and is rife with boarded-up storefronts and urban renewal projects that will further displace longtime residents. Jasper and his fellow pigeon enthusiasts are resentful that the Turkish newcomers have not only appropriated their hobby and encroached on the local bird store but have also brought their own pigeons, known as “tumblers” because they turn in the air. Hostility and mistrust seethe just below a surface civility. An immigrant returns a bird to the store because it can’t walk. The store owner claims, “It was walking when you bought it this morning.” When Jasper and camera crew peek inside his local pub, now owned by Turks, the suspicious owner tells him to leave. Set within the rarefied world of pigeon racing, Bisschops’s remarkable documentary shows a fascinating microcosm of the racial tensions that currently plague the Netherlands and offers the beautiful sight of pigeons in flight as a metaphor for escape.
—Margarita Landazuri
FACTOID #28
A print of Tonight and Every Night, to be shown at the Rita Hayworth tribute in 1972, was stolen out of a truck on its way to the theater.
