Christian Manders

Zwartjes made many films without dialogue or sound. The music can however be very important. Zwartjes composes it himself, sometimes together with his brother Rudolf and Lodewijk de Boer. Audition is a fine example of a Zwartjes film with an important soundtrack. It is a visual improvisation of cinematography and acting. There is hardly a ‘story line’. A man and a woman watch another woman singing, predominantly in exciting black and white images.

A man and his female helper lather a blindfolded woman's naked body with various foodstuffs.

Zwartjes' reflections on Beckett, situated between trees.

An experimental film by Dutch filmmaker Frans Zwartjes.

Two boys in the Fairytale Forest steal a broom from a maintenance vehicle. They run to the Fairytale Museum where they find a book with the story of Hugo. As soon as they start reading, the film begins. We see the young Hugo van den Loonsche Duynen in 1796. He robs a rich man. The oldest of the Bokkerijders chases him and asks if he really wants to learn the trade. After a few years, Hugo becomes one of the best and most notorious of the Bokkerijders. Then a successor must be found for the oldest. The battle is between Hugo and another Bokkerijder, Lodewijck, and is settled in Villa Volta in Hugo's favor. When he grabs the silver from the Villa, a ghost appears and curses him. He is banished to his own house and will only find peace when someone with a clear conscience enters his home.

Spectator is one of the early masterpieces by Zwartjes. The film explicitly shows one of Frans Zwartjes’ main themes: the relationship between husband and wife. It is a relationship that is strongly marked by power and domination, sexual attraction and repulsion. It manifests itself in humiliation and abuse (such Pentimento), but also in cool eroticism or natural physicality. Zwartjes’ goal is not to explain or designate this relationship. Rather it is the subject that Zwartjes uses to describe his world. In an article on Zwartjes, filmmaker and student George Schouten compares Zwartjes to the Italian writer Alberto Moravia. For both, sex is their way of dealing with reality. It is the subject by which they define their world. And for Zwartjes, it is also the subject with which he can display and develop his cinematic talent. (eyefilm.nl)

An experimental look at the sexual life of a couple.