Jan Ketelaars

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?

Images of a woman in evening clothes. She caresses and touches her body and looks at herself in the mirror.

A simple meal of meticulously photographed ingredients with gruesome close-ups.

A man is attacked by all kinds of images from his past.

A man and a woman in a desolate landscape; the camera interrupts their walks until they meet. Then a game of attraction and repulsion sets in; filmed in the typical nervous theatrical style that characterizes the early work of Ketelaars.

Takes the viewer through the periphery of Amsterdam and shows the unadorned appearance of the city.

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.

A live-action animation comprised of brief images (single-frame shots) and dual images about a naked man in a black space. We become extremely aware of his physicality, while the film also carries out an attack on our physical abilities.

'I can't remember the day my dreams started, but I know when my nightmares did.' These are the words of Rodaan Al Galidi, writer, poet, asylum seeker. Years ago, he fled his native Iraq and got locked up for years in various Dutch refugee centres. When his request for asylum is turned down, he goes into hiding in a student room. He keeps poems there that he wrote in Iraq and new, Dutch texts for which he has meanwhile won several awards. Rodaan turns out to be both a charming and melancholy man. He candidly talks about his life, his inspirations and passions.

A model is photographed, but the film camera also comes close to her skin.

A poetic film about a magical-realist painting in the house of an elderly woman. The film, a refined game that plays with the concepts of time, place, and space, was produced under the motto ‘what you see is not what you see.’

In the form of a triptych, three places in three different regions of the Netherlands are associated with each other. In their appearance and the way they are used these newly designed and built environments reflect the efforts of people in contemporary culture. The three selected places include the known spectrum of living, working, relaxing. Each site has an extreme, monomaniac character by a one-sided focus on one of these specific activities. This brings a kind of absurdity to light and a downside of the endeavor.