DE MINDER GELUKKIGE TERUGKEER VAN JOSZEF KATUS NAAR HET LAND VAN REMBRANDT
(“The Unfortunate Joszef Katus Returns To The Land Of Rembrandt”)
Production: NL, 1966
Director: Wim Verstappen
Category: New Wave/Counter-Culture
The first collaboration between director Verstappen and producer Pim de la Parra, also regarded as the first major film of the Dutch new wave. A mixture of drama and political documentary, the film depicts the last week in the life of a mysterious man, Joszef, who returns to Amsterdam from East Berlin on April 29, 1966. He is being followed, blatantly, by a shadowy figure in a trenchcoat. Joszef sells fake LSD and attends protests by Dutch counterculture group Provo, founded in 1965 by Robert Jasper Grootveld, an anti-smoking activist, Roel van Duyn and Rob Stolk. Van Duyn, an anarchist heavily influenced by Dada and the Marquis de Sade, was the group’s theorist. Provo’s main aim was to provoke violent reaction from authorities, by non-violent means. Verstappen’s camera follows Joszef, capturing Provo happenings and the essence of 60s Amsterdam, until the unfortunate man is found dead (seemingly by suicide) on May 5. De Minder Gelukkige Terugkeer Van Joszef Katus Naar Het Land Van Rembrandt features cinematography by future action director Jan de Bont, and numbers amongst its cast Mattijn Seip, who as a director produced some of the first films of the Amsterdam homosexual underground, including Ijdijk and Schemerhoorn (both 1966). 1966/67 also produced the four ironic Sad Movies by Wim Vander Linden, regarded as a Provo film-maker, in collaboration with Fluxus artist Willem de Ridder. These included Tulips and Rape, which remains a provocative example of sex, perversion and blasphemy, as a nun is viciously violated in a forest. Wim Verstappen’s biggest success would be Blue Movie (1971), a breakthrough softcore sex film in Holland.
Posted by Captain Nightshade
