Bas Jan Ader

More than 40 years ago, Bas Jan Ader decided to go on an adventure. In a tiny sailing boat, the Dutchman set sail across the ocean. Nine months later the boat was found adrift at sea. There was no sign of Ader. It’s a story that has always fascinated filmmaker Martijn Blekendaal, not just because of the disappearance itself, but also because of the entire mystery that surrounds it. Blekendaal embarks on an investigation that follows his footsteps to Hollywood. It turns out that, in order to understand what drove this man to his fateful voyage, the filmmaker has to overcome his fear of looking beyond his own horizon. In a whirlwind montage of images jumping from one time, place and person to another, Blekendaal shows us that Bas Jan left behind something more special than just a mystery.

An ode to multi-talented artist and radio and television producer Wim T. Schippers by absurdist Ronald Snijders. In a cheerfully disruptive manner, Snijders guides the viewer through a richly illustrated overview of Schippers' work, where they meet the man who could both seduce and intentionally bore, confuse, shock, and irritate Dutch television viewers. Many clips of Schippers became legendary, such as Queen Juliana cleaning Brussels sprouts, a naked Phil Bloom reading the newspaper, and the shows featuring Barend Servet and Sjef van Oekel. Schippers wrote the sheepdog play Going to the Dogs and has been the voice of Ernie in Sesamstraat for many years.

Bas Jan Ader's first fall film shows him seated on a chair, tumbling from the roof of his two-storey house in the Inland Empire.

Bas Jan Ader rides his bike into a canal in Amsterdam.

Shot in his garage-studio, the camera records Ader painstakingly hoisting a large brick over his shoulder. His figure is harshly lit by two tangles of light bulbs. He drops the brick, crushing one strand of lights. He again lifts the brick, allowing tension to accrue. The climax inevitable—the brick falls and crushes the second set of lights. Here the film abruptly ends, all illumination extinguished.

Untitled (Tea Party) is a short silent film. The camera slowly zooms into a sunlit clearing in a forest where Ader, formally dressed, is crawling towards a large box, propped up by a stick, under which he takes his afternoon tea—in the English style.

1974 Bas Jan Ader video work

This short film is part of a mixed media artwork of the same name, which also included postcards of Ader crying, sent to friends of his, with the title of the work as a caption. The film was initially ten minutes long, and included Ader rubbing his eyes to produce the tears, but was cut down to three and a half minutes. This shorter version captures Ader at his most anguished. His face is framed closely. There is no introduction or conclusion, no reason given and no relief from the anguish that is presented.

One of a series of ‘falls’ by Bas Jan Ader that he recorded on film, this work was filmed in West Kapelle, Holland in 1970.

Bas Jan Ader hangs from the branch of a tall tree, until he loses his grip and falls into a river below.

Jemison adopts and refashions the premise of Bas Jan Ader’s work of the same name. As in the 1970s-era video, a young man clings to a tree branch for a long minute before ultimately falling out of the frame. Jemison’s remake honors the original’s investment in what she calls “the tension between labor, play, and the laws of physics,” but in her hands that material takes up “the complex demands of the performance of masculinity for Black men.”

The life and work of enigmatic Dutch/Californian conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, who in 1975 disappeared under mysterious circumstances at sea in the smallest boat ever to cross the Atlantic. As seen through the eyes of fellow emigrant filmmaker René Daalder, the picture becomes a sweeping overview of contemporary art films as well as an epic saga of the transformative powers of the ocean.