Films by Ed van der Elsken

Ed van der Elsken was the enfant terrible of Dutch photography, and has left an indelible impression on the photographic arts in the Netherlands. His work is characterised by his highly individual way of working and his personal style – instinctive and unconventional – as well as his intense involvement with his subjects. He was not interested in sophisticated art photography; he was not striving for the observational photographer’s ‘perfect shot’; rather, he immersed himself entirely in a reality that he then photographed in his own highly intuitive way. He created dynamic images drenched in atmosphere and typified more by visual impact and great personal involvement than by technical or formal perfection.

Van der Elsken moved to Paris aged 25 where he photographed life on the streets: drunks, drifters, students. He connected with a group of displaced bohemians caught up in Paris’ exuberant nightlife. Van der Elsken keenly photographed life as it appeared in front of his camera, and his photographs attracted the attention of curators at MoMA and the Art Institute in Chicago. These photographs were brought together in his first photography book Een liefdesgeschiedenis in Saint Germain des Prés that was published in 1956 and became an international success. The photo book remained an important medium for Van der Elsken throughout the years that followed, even as he went on to also discover film as a means of expression.

Like the twenty-plus photography books he went on to produce in his lifetime, films enabled him to place images alongside one another, to create sequences, to allow the imagined space between the frames to speak and add their own commentary. Sound is also an important element in his films. Not only in the form of the commentary he speaks himself and the music he adds, but also through the short conversations he has while shooting, and the film’s ambient sound. His characteristic voice is an integral part of the film; for Van der Elsken, the microphone was the audio equivalent of the camera.

Their camerawork, framing and editing, as well as their curious, headstrong gaze led to recognition of the fascinating, innovative nature of Van der Elsken’s films during his lifetime. Nevertheless, his films remained less well-known while he was alive than his photographs and photo books. Among the reasons for this was that many of his films were commissioned by broadcasters or other clients, and so were often not seen as independent productions. There were also technical or practical reasons, such as the fact that film was often shown on television using a ‘double tape’ system, with the images and audio on separate media, which made these films unsuitable for screening in cinemas.

The films Van der Elsken shot on 8mm were also unsuitable for showing on the big screen. The films were therefore seen only sporadically – a situation that persisted until after his death in 1990, when interest in his films took off. Films still held by his family were passed to Eye Filmmuseum, prompting Eye to preserve these films and make them available through an extensive retrospective.

Efforts by broadcasters, museums and publishers resulted in many of his films appearing on DVD in the 2000s, although these were not always made using the best original material; this has inevitably resulted in many of these films now circulating in poor quality on YouTube. To make the films of Ed van der Elsken widely available in the best possible way, Eye and Van der Elsken’s heirs decided that it is time for the films to be released online in the highest possible quality through Eye’s own digital platform, Eye Film Player.

The selection of films that can now be seen on Eye Film Player was made in consultation with Van der Elsken’s heirs. Van der Elsken’s most important films can now be seen in new digital masters taken from the most original source material and given a painstaking colour correction. These digital masters also allow the films to be screened digitally on the big screen in cinemas. The selection of films, both feature-length and shorts, reveals Van der Elsken’s filmmaking in all its facets.

He made lyrical reportages about cycling through Amsterdam, and about hands that tell the story of a life from cradle to grave. He filmed the artist Karel Appel and former director of the Stedelijk Museum Willem Sandberg, who brought the innovative new art of the early ’60s to Amsterdam. Appel and Sandberg enabled Van der Elsken to express his affinity with this new art in his films.

Van der Elsken is a chronicler of his time – not only post-war Paris, but above all also the Amsterdam of the 1970s and ’80s. His gaze was unguardedly subjective and far removed from commercial or lofty artistic considerations, preferring to candidly present reality as it appeared in front of his camera.

Yet Van der Elsken’s most significant films are perhaps those in which the boundaries between private person and photographer seem to dissolve. In these films photography, film and their author blur together almost to the point of becoming indistinguishable. These are autobiographical films. From 1963’s Welkom in het leven, lieve kleine to his final film Bye (1990), Van der Elsken turned his camera on his family and himself. In these films he ‘celebrates’ life, love and – in Avonturen op het land (1980) – outdoor living, having swapped the city for the countryside in the early 1970s. In his own words: