Ben van Lieshout

An introverted young poet struggles with a writer's block and meets a mysterious girl, who reminds him of Monica Vitti.

Orazbaz, who lives in Uzbek, longs to leave his tiny fishing village. He becomes a stowaway on a ship thinking that he will end up in Manhattan. Instead he ends up in Rotterdam and is taken in by a lonely woman, but he is eventually betrayed by her jealous husband.

A bus driver on a regular route in the 'polder' moves into a new house with his wife. They are the first inhabitants of a new estate. At the same time, a homeless man and an woman movie into the driver's bus.

The highway in the Netherlands has a total length of almost 2500 kilometres. There is almost no other country with such an enormous highway density. In this documentary the monumentality, but also the apparent everydayness of our highway is shown. The highway is actually a poorly known arena for a wide range of activities. What does this monumental and almost perfect network say about us?

The idealistic intentions with which the Kola peninsula has been explored since the beginning of the Russian revolution have left deep traces in the landscape and in the minds of people.

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The Russian/Dutch painter Tatyana Yassievich divides her time between St. Petersburg, Amsterdam and Berlin. Director Van Lieshout follows her in these three cities, while she takes pictures and makes notes of everyday public spaces: train stations, blocks of flats, canteens. Subsequently, she paints them in a realistic, yet simplified style and without any people, like stage scenery for the stories that are played out on those locations. 'I don't paint the people themselves, only the public places they pass through in their thousands.' Yassievich works in her studio, sets up an exhibition and tells in voice-over about her work and her ties with the three cities, and particularly about the changes that took place in St. Petersburg after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Between times, the documentary shows the sort of urban landscapes that Yassievich paints, in fixed frames, like moving pictures.

In 1913, polar explorer Fridtjof Nansen took part in an expedition, to open up a regular trade connection between Norway and the interior of Siberia. His fascinating diary, Through Siberia, The Land of the Future, is an important inspiration for Sketches of Siberia, in which elements from Siberia’s past, and present are visualised, focussing on the mighty Yenisey river basin. Within themes such as colonialism, exploitation of mineral resources, and demographic developments i.e. the destiny of native people and the influx of convicts and exiles, we search for the human dimension balancing precariously amid the influences from outside. Nansen’s observations and considerations at the time, are mirrored in a present day context.

Filmmaker Ben van Lieshout was inspired by the work from Sergei Prokoedin-Gorski (1863-1944), inventor of the color photography in Russia.

Every year, a train with doctors and equipment on board travels through the remote, sparsely populated areas of Kazakhstan. The Salamatty Kazakhstan (Healthy Kazakhstan) operates non-stop for 8 months and is open every day. Local residents can consult doctors for examination and diagnosis.

This short film provides a nerve-wracking and revealing view of a very Dutch phenomenon, the drive-in sex spot. The camera usually looks through the windscreen of a moving car and shows the locations from a man’s perspective.

There are areas in the Netherlands between city and country that planners and local legislation barely seem to affect. These are the frayed ends of the city, sometimes dismal, sometimes downright snug, with wrecker's yards, horse meadows, caravan shelters and mobile fish and chips stands. Sometimes there are still some small green plots, but usually these pieces of Holland lie jammed between the advancing infrastructure, like railways, motorways or an airport runway. Ben van Lieshout searched these remarkable places and the people on these 'enclaves', as passers-by, inhabitants or self-employed persons.

Short highly stylised film about a controversial location. Mainly shot at night in an observant style, the film shows the highs and lows of shopping mall Hoog Catharijne and the adjacent train station area. The concrete jungle with desolate nooks, tunnels and arcades seems to lead its own life under the pulsating neon light. Gradually, the constructed surroundings emerge as a versatile, battered organism, used in a continuous, contrasting and bizarre way by junks and cleaners, travellers and shoppers.