Short fiction film in the 1960s

After World War II, the Dutch government came up with subsidies for film for the first time. In the 1946 state budget, a sum of fl. 145,000 (now roughly worth €700,000) was set aside for short films.

Still from A Sunday on the Island of the Grande Jatte (NL, Frans Weisz, 1965)

short documentaries

Initially, it was mainly documentary filmmakers who benefited from the subsidy. They saw their applications honoured with filmmakers like Herman van der Horst and Bert Haanstra raising the short documentary to a higher level with awards at Cannes and Berlin and, in 1960, an Oscar for Haanstra's Glas.

The scheme would become known as the Fund for Short Cultural and Artistic Films and was financed by funds from the Ministry of Education, Arts and Sciences (later the Ministry of Culture, Recreation and Social Work). From 1956, applications were assessed by a committee of the Arts Council.

Fiction

While the generation of Haanstra, Van der Horst, Charles Huguenot van der Linden and Max de Haas still dominated the list of applicants in the 1950s, this changed from the 1960s onwards. Increasingly, young filmmakers also appealed to the fund. In the early 1960s, for instance, money was given to, among others, Een zondag by Johan van der Keuken, De wereld van een ogenblik by Roeland Kerbosch and Een hagedis teveel, made by a group of Leiden students (under the name the Nederlandse Studenten Filmindustrie). Director of the latter film was maths and physics student Paul Verhoeven, who would also receive financial support for one of his next films - Feest from 1963.

Een hagedis teveel was also screened at the student film festival Cinestud, organised for the first time at Amsterdam's Kriterion film theatre in 1960.

At that festival, the first film by a student of the newly founded Dutch Film Academy was also screened. Rob du Mée had this first with Moreelse Park (1959). The lead role in the film was played by Frans Weisz, who was the first student to graduate from the academy.

The new wave

Initially, another barricade was erected. In 1962, it was ruled that young filmmakers could not claim the fund. They were advised to first gain a few more years of experience on the job. But this regulation did not last long and in 1964 it was decided that they could apply again.

From then on, short films became the trademark of the new generation of filmmakers, of 'the first wave' as the first batch of film academy graduates is sometimes called. The list of makers of short films reads like a who's who of Dutch cinema: Frans Weisz with Een zondag op het eiland van de Grande Jatte, Adriaan Ditvoorst with Ik kom wat later naar Madra, Nouchka van Brakel with De baby in de boom, Ruud van Hemert with Flinkevleugel and Paul Driessen's 1972 animated film Het verhaal van kleine yoghurt. Even Pim de la Parra and Wim Verstappen got over their objections to subsidies and, with support from the fund, produced a number of short films for their company Scorpio Films, such as Aaah... Tamara by Pim de la Parra and Schermerhoorn by Mattijn Seip.

stepping stone

For some of these up-and-coming filmmakers, the short film was a stepping stone to directing a feature-length film.

They saw the short film as a training opportunity where they could gain experience or develop themes. This gives the body of short films made in this the 1960s and early 1970s a varied, not very homogeneous character. Some films tell a completed story based on a short anecdote or gimmick, in others it can be seen that the maker is already focusing on other plans. The films seem to be preliminary studies for larger projects and mostly have feature-worthy themes as their subject matter. And while certainly not all the films are equally successful, the talent of a number of directors is already clearly recognisable.

The highlight here is Adriaan Ditvoorst's Ik kom wat later naar Madra. The film was praised at home and abroad and seen as the Dutch example of the nouvelle vague. In 2007, Ik kom wat later naar Madra was included in the Canon of Dutch Cinema as one of sixteen films.

Poster for the Dag van de korte film ('Day of the short film'), held on October 5, 1975.

Day of the Short Film - The Hague, October 5, 1975

This 'Short Film Day' was organised on the initiative of the Government Information Service (RVD), which operated a large film library of short films.

Left to right: Samuel Meyering, Rem Koolhaas, Frans Bromet, René Daalder en Jan de Bont.

Samuel Meyering, Rem Koolhaas, Frans Bromet, René Daalder, Jan de Bont.
(c) Frans Bromet

Dutch Film Academy

In its first few months, the academy offered only two subjects: ‘Film trade’ and ‘screenplay writing and script technique’.