Once Upon Amsterdam

A deep exploration into the historical, cultural, political and musical elements that created the genre, featuring present-day conversations with music legends.

This Traveltalks entry looks at the sights, sounds, people, and art masterpieces in the capital of the Netherlands.

Artist Chris Berens finds his inspiration in his own magical inner world. The animals and creatures that play a major role in his imagination also populate the landscapes he creates with his special painting technique. It results in scenes that are both enchanting and ominous.

We get up, go to work, eat and go to bed. Is our life about daily rituals or is there a deeper, more inscrutable meaning of life? Kjeld lives surrounded by nature in his small house and soon becomes a father. He seeks satisfaction in the simplicity of life in nature. Anna is a young artist looking for answers in her poetry and music. A philosophical documentary essay in which the search for the core of life is central. How should we live if there are no answers anywhere?

Kim and Bob have been inseparable since childhood. Does puberty end their friendship?

In 1917, French artist Marcel Duchamp declared everyday objects as art. A provocative act that sparked a heated, still topical discussion around the question: what is art? Since then, that question has been asked time and time again. To the artist and to the viewer. If everything is possible and everything is allowed, how do you remember what art is? Director Ditteke Mensink spent two years at De Ateliers: the breeding ground for top talent in the visual arts. Her stay ended in a harsh confrontation with herself, the young artists and modern visual arts.

Virgin School follows the emotional and physical journey of 26-year-old virgin James as he embarks on a unique four-month course for sexually inexperienced men in Amsterdam

Documentary about four maffia-like friends based in Amsterdam.

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

An exciting video tour of Amsterdam.

This documentary, set in the Lower East End of Vancouver's downtown core, is a pretty honest account of life on the streets in urban Canada. It is aimed at educating high school kids on the dangers of addiction to hard drugs and is the brainchild of a group of city police officers who videotape their interactions with local homeless personalities.

In Amsterdam-Zuidoost, residents built vegetable gardens in their deserted, dangerous inner garden. While gardening, they not only tackle their own problems, but also those of the neighborhood. In Venserpolder, a neighborhood in Amsterdam-Zuidoost, residential block 10 is built around a courtyard. For years, that garden has been considered too dangerous because of criminal activities and it is deserted. Until the residents, mostly single mothers, decide to create vegetable gardens. Meli, Talita, Gilma and Maureen rarely came out before and hardly knew of the other's existence. Now they meet in the garden.

Hugo Chavez was a colourful, unpredictable folk hero who was beloved by his nation’s working class. He was elected president of Venezuela in 1998, and proved to be a tough, quixotic opponent to the power structure that wanted to depose him. When he was forcibly removed from office on 11 April 2002, two independent filmmakers were inside the presidential palace.

In the late 1990s, some officers at Vancouver Police Department made a documentary film (THROUGH A BLUE LENS) about the everyday lives of six drug addicts in Vancouver's skid row, the Downtown Eastside. TEARS FOR APRIL reintroduces us to these six people; with footage shot over a period of nearly ten years, it continues their biography.

Two heroin-addicted couples lead hard and stressful lives on the streets of New York.

A documentary about three men in the criminal environment of Amsterdam as they deal with unemployment, probation, and divorce.

Johan van der Keuken went against the grain in 1980: from Amsterdam (on April 30 with the coronation riots and squatting actions) via Paris, southern France and Italy to Egypt. He made his personal travelogue in three parts for VPRO television. Later, he fused the three parts into one long movie.

21st century legal prostitution through the frank stories of Amsterdam red-light district sex workers at a time when tighter regulation threatens their livelihood.

Pak Mokum Terug is the name of a group of Amsterdam activists that refuse to accept that the basic right to housing no longer appears to apply. The group’s name means “Take Back Amsterdam,” Mokum being the traditional nickname for a capital city in which today, for more and more people, a home is becoming unaffordable. Against this background, Hotel Mokum reports on the squatting of a dilapidated hotel in the city center, narrated in the voice of a fictitious activist.

Nigella returns for a very special Christmas treat when she travels to Amsterdam to enjoy the festive season in the Venice of the North.