Paul de Nooijer

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This is a film, that was a picture. What’s the difference? Photography takes time away, film adds time.

Two men in chairs by the open hearth; photos move in front of their heads.

In a domestic setting, two men in suits with rather glassy and listless facial expressions sit at a table with two mocha cakes on it. A classic slapstick element in an experimental setting.

First of three versions of Transformation by Holding Time, films with the duration of one film reel in which the screen is gradually filled with Polaroids, made in one shot from one angle, without editing. In this version, the film camera registers the filmmaker who is on a moor taking Polaroid pictures of the film camera.

Two men in a shop window paint each other.

Touring Holland by Bicycle shows a group of people sitting around a table. After a short time, they stand up and start running around the table, faster and faster until you have the idea that you are in a carousel.

Menno de Nooijer had previously collaborated on Paul's films, but this one marks the launch of a directors' team that lasts until today. Two man stick their heads through a decor, photographs revolve around their heads. Unfettered reflection on their own work, the basic assumption being a quote from 18th-century writer Horace Walpole, which also appears in other titles of their films: 'Nobody had informed me that at one view - I should see a palace, a town, a fortified city, - temples on high places […]'. In 1989, this film was granted the jury award at the Holland Animation Film Festival. (filmcommission.nl)

To mark his ninetieth birthday, EYE has restored Zwartjes’ very first film, originally shot on Super-8 and long thought lost. Zwartjes started his career as a violinist and visual artist. He took photographs, made music and built instruments – but only really broke through with his equally craftsmanlike films.

Short film about two men in a car