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DREAMING OF HOLLAND
a documentary by Peter Delpeut synopsis
In the nineteenth century, Holland was inundated with artists from abroad. They visited a country that was, in their eyes, very exotic. They registered what they saw in paintings that sold like hot cakes abroad. In his book Dromen van Holland. Buitenlandse kunstenaars schilderen Holland 1800-1914, Hans Kraan documents the phenomenon in detail. Whenever film maker Peter Delpeut browsed through the book, he was surprised by the exotic aspect of this 19th-century Holland. ‘Is this where I live?’ he asked himself. ‘Is this the country where I want to live? And could this Holland be my dream, too, a century later?’
Armed with these questions and Hans Kraan’s book, Delpeut goes on a journey in his own country, along routes and sites that were popular with artists in the nineteenth century: Dordrecht, Rotterdam, Katwijk, the bulb fields, Amsterdam, Zaandam. In and around those locations he tries to re-discover the atmosphere and the images as they were once painted. Much has since vanished. But very often the image the painters created, never existed: their Holland was a dream country. It turns out that these painters are not the only people who dream up their own Holland. The present inhabitants, too, use their own imagination when they look at the Dutch landscape. The film gradually turns into a portrait of the ‘typical’ Dutch landscape and the many dreams that can be projected upon it.
‘What doesn’t exist, you have to dream. And what does exist, you have to want to see,’ says Delpeut at the end of his film. ‘There, somewhere between dream and reality, Holland lies waiting for whoever wants to wake her with a kiss. That was already the case in the 19th century. And it’s no different now. Time does not exist for those who like to dream..’
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