Since i am totally ignorant about dutch film, i've made a list of dutch films that i'd like to see:

Het Geheim van Delft (Maurits Binger, 1917)
Een Carmen van het Noorden (Maurits Binger, 1919)
Zeemansvrouwen (Henk Kleinmann, 1930)
De Jantjes (Jaap Speyer, 1934)**
Boefje (Douglas Sirk, 1939)
Dorp aan de rivier (Fons Rademakers, 1958)
Fanfare (Bert Haanstra, 1958)**/*** - 8,5/10
Als twee druppels water (Fons Rademakers, 1963)**
Blue Movie (Wim Verstappen, 1971)***
Dokter Pulder zaait papavers (Bert Haanstra, 1975)
Het Debuut (Nouchka van Brakel, 1977)
Pastorale 1943 (Wim Verstappen, 1978)
Spetters (Paul Verhoeven, 1980)*** - 6/10
De Vierde man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983) - 7,5/10
Dagje naar het strand (Theo van Gogh, 1984)
Paul Chevrolet en de ultieme hallucinatie (Pim de la Parra, 1985)
De Aanslag (Fons Rademakers, 1986)* - 6,5/10
Abel (Alex van Warmerdam, 1986) - 8,5/10
Als in een roes... (Pim de la Parra, 1986)
Een Maand later (Nouchka van Brakel, 1987)
Antonia (Marleen Gorris, 1995)* - 6,5/10
Zusje (Robert Jan Westdijk, 1995) - 7,5/10
Karakter (Mike van Diem, 1997)*
Siberia (Robert Jan Westdijk, 1998) - 6/10
Storm in mijn hoofd (Frans Weisz, 2001)
De Grot (Martin Koolhoven, 2001)
Met grote blijdschap (Lodewijk Crijns, 2001)
Off Screen (Pieter Kuijpers, 2005)
Guernsey (Nanouk Leopold, 2005)
Wolfsbergen (Nanouk Leopold, 2007)

* Won Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film
** Featured in the Canon of Dutch Film
*** Featured in the Top 20 of Best Visited Dutch Films

Updated 26-1-2009

I've got some basic Dutch I need translated. Can you help? (Not that it'll take much effort...)

-film-impressies van het landleven
(film-impressions of the countryside?)

-N.V. "City-Film" den haag
(does N.V. mean anything that you know of?)

Thanks for the help, if you can give it. Might seem simple, but their translations could prove of immense importance to me.

Ok, let me see, i'd be glad to help.

You got the first one about right. I'd translate it as: Film-impressions of country life.

N.V. is "Naamloze Vennootschap" translated into Nameless Company. It's a type of corporation (i think it's this type: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_stock_company ). Den Haag is the dutch name for The Hague. The name "City-Film" Den Haag is seems to be quite popular, it was used for a film rental company, for an actual film made to promote Den Haag and for a distribution company.

Hope this helped you.

Wikipedia doesn't seem to be working. But this could be just the information I need! (I should've connected leven with leben.) I'm doing my writing project on city films and one of the films I'm doing is Als de Halmen Buigen/Quand les epis se courbent/When the Ears of Corn Bend Over, but I cannot find ANYthing on it. I've got a couple of articles in french from the time it was released, and this site has been my only real resource, but otherwise I cannot find anything (in English) on the film other than passing mentions, which usually wrongly name the film's director as Jean Dreville. Nothing very helpful. It's not on IMDb. No mentions in the many massive film resources I've looked through. There's not even a single book on Dutch cinema in my library. But this might be a helpful clue into its production.

Do you know anything about it? You might be my necessary connection to obscure Dutch sources .

I have never heard of that film before. I do not know much about obscure dutch film at all really (you probably know more about it than i do), but then again, i have an advantage being able to read the language. I searched around a bit and i found this source (@ http://www.geheugenvannederland.nl/?/nl/items/FILM01:30 ) and translated it into dutch:

"Documentary in black-and-white in which the picturesque country life is being glamorized. In the film the busy city life is put in contrast with the harmony of humans and nature on the Dutch countryside. Formally speaking director Van Raab uses the vocabulary of avant-garde cinema. But by using specific Dutch thematics the film fully fits in the painting tradition of Ruysdael and other scenery painters from the Golden Age. Remarkable are the close-ups and overview shots which follow each other at high speed. Also remarkable is the image rhyme, the extraordinary camera placement and the backlight with strong Chiaroscuro. Along with that a technical innovation is introduced: cameraman Jean Dréville succeeds in capturing the nuances in clouds using panchromatic film."

That's pretty much all i could find, there really isn't much information about this film indeed.

If you want to know more about Dutch films i probably won't know much about it myself, but i don't mind looking around a bit and translating stuff. Maybe i will learn something in the process.

I can put the film on TPB if you want to see it. Any scraps of info are good here. I ran across in article in Dutch that I thought was talking about the use of the countryside in art, giving only a brief mention of the film, but it's got me thinking about the film's place in the country's larger artistic heritage. This paragraph helps to solidify those views.

Hmmm. Know of any books on Dutch film or Dutch documentary? I'm sure you have access to books I never would, so it's probably not all that helpful for my project. Would be extremely grateful for anything more you find, though.

Can you teach me about Dutch names? What's with all the vans and van ders and so on?

About the books on Dutch film, i never read any books on film so i really can't help you there.


During the time of Napoleon everyone had to register a last name. People then often just used a named that described where they came from/where they live or what they do for a living. "Van" means from "from" and "van der" means "from the" in old Dutch (now it would be "van de" without the "r"). For example, Van der Keuken, meaning from the kitchen, might have been a cook or a dishwasher; Van Vliet means from canal, so this person might have lived next to a canal etc.

So what would Johan van Raab van Canstein mean?
I uploaded the film to TPB. http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4742322

That name is a noble family name (lords and ladies), they often have double names like that. Canstein is a district of a town in West Germany quite close to the Dutch border. Raab is a tributary of the river Donau(Danube?) which goes through Germany/Austria. The name must have come from people that visited or lived in this area.

Thanks for the upload, i will check it out.

Can you give me a precise translation of "Als de halmen buigen"? I am having some trouble deciding how to refer to it.

When the culms bend OR When the stalks bend. I never heard "halmen" refer to anything but the stalks of grain crops (or maybe grasses), not to stalks of plants.

Nice picture. Thank you for the info! I will be interested to hear your thoughts on the film.

You people hesitate to make a decision when someone is harassing me, yet you ban me right away? What is wrong, Jos?

The hesitation wasn't just about someone harassing you (your POV), but about the whole situation. You weren't banned right away, you were warned several times throughout a longer period of time. You made the decision to leave yourself, but you didn't and continued to insult, offend and provoke people.

Oh is that the decision. Kankie and snack continue to harass provoke and insult and disclude me yet you didn't do a darn thing..... It was unbalanced, unfair, and unreasonable. I'm so glad you and lauren don't want have anything to do with me.... Really, Jos, get a fucking life.

don't mess with the Dutch, I guess.

At some point (right now) I am gonna stop giving you reasonable replies and just ignore you. You never listen anyway, or just misinterpret.

Okay. Well, that goes for you too. You never listened when I said there was a problem. Perhaps we could have avoided this. Tata.