Pim Zwier

In Metamorphosis, filmmaker and media artist Pim Zwier chooses a highly original form to depict the life and work of the German artist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), whose study of insects laid the foundations of entomology. Her most important work revolved around the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies: she recorded the process in beautiful prints and engravings and was the first to draw the insects in combination with the plant on which they live.

Never a Dull Moment is a film based on the photography and autobiography of Sam Waagenaar. The autobiography sketches a life filled with surprising turns by a bon-vivant who loved traveling and who – apparently without planning in advance – successfully rolled from one job to another. With the title of his unpublished autobiography Never a Dull Moment, Sam Waagenaar also provided a striking and succinct description of his own life. In the 1930s and 1940s, he was publicity manager for MGM, operetta singer in France and correspondent and actor in Hollywood. As war correspondent, he was present at the liberation of Paris and Auschwitz. From those years on, he developed in photography and from 1946 he travelled the whole world as a journalist/photographer. The life story of Sam Waagenaar provides an insight into how he looked at the world and how he experienced a series of events in the 20th century.

From the translucent golden eggs of the Tibetan bearded vulture to those of the British guillemot with their Jackson Pollock-like splashes, German ornithologist Max Schönwetter (1874-1961) collected them all. He devoted his life to oology, the study of birds’ eggs. But while Schönwetter created order in his world of eggs, chaos broke out in the world around him on the eve of the Second World War.

Documentary about the work of Albert Hahn.

Inspired by his ideals, architect Han van Loghem travelled to Siberia in the mid 1920s. The Soviet Union was in need of specialists to help design and construct completely new cities and mining and metallurgical centres in the Urals and Siberia. And socially engaged architects from Western Europe headed to the first workers’ state in the world so that they could bring their new architectural ideas to life. Builders Of The Future shows how for van Loghem, the journey to Siberia was also a quest for personal and professional fulfilment, which he was lacking in the Netherlands. Van Loghem's personal journey had its repercussions his relationship with his wife, Berthe Neumeijer, who had initially planned to stay in the Netherlands but then followed him to Siberia in an attempt to save their marriage.

In a meadow a man walks with his lawnmower. The first preparations are made to take a photograph of a cow. Jolanda 23 is a short observing documentary about cow photography The visual report of all the actions that lead to achieving an ideal of beauty.

Fun, rhythmic animated series of animal photos. Gradually it becomes apparent that these are not innocent shots.

‘Jumped from Suspension Bridge and lived, the true story of Sarah Ann’. Sarah Ann Henley miraculously survived the 250 feet drop after jumping off the Clifton Suspension Bridge in 1885. Her Victorian skirt, inflated by the wind, acted as a parachute. A tale told by contrasting three detailed newspaper articles with a sober use of image.

Insight into the life and work of Piet Mondriaan on the eve of his departure for New York. A voiceover quotes Mondriaan's letters to his American friend Harry Holtzman while the camera explores the artist's groundbreaking abstractions.

Film by Pim Zwier

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