De platte jungle

The museum for film and the art of the moving image in the Netherlands. Visit the exhibition or cinema and discover our collection with more than 50.000 films.

Eye Filmmuseum

7 February Eye is closed

Eye Filmmuseum seen across the river IJ © Marcus Koppen

Eye Filmmuseum, © Marcus Koppen

campaign image Eye Classics

still from Silent Running (Douglas Trumbull, US 1971)

still Silent Running (Douglas Trumbull, US 1971)

poster De platte jungle (Johan van der Keuken, NL 1978)

still from De platte jungle (Johan van der Keuken, NL 1978)

still De platte jungle (Johan van der Keuken, NL 1978)

header Karel Doing: Phytography + In Vivo

Cinema Ecologica: header Fantastic Planet + Pumzi

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Is there hope for humanity? Perhaps, if botanist Freeman Lowell can succeed in keeping the last trees and crops that could be saved alive in greenhouses in space. Douglas Trumbull’s eco science fiction from 1972 became a cult hit with a serious, urgent message.

Botanist Freeman Lowell is flying to the Rings of Saturn in a stolen spaceship, with the last trees and gardens from planet Earth on board. Will he succeed in saving botanical life from Earth?

Silent Running

Karel Doing makes fabulous images on a layer of emulsion using flowers and leaves. After giving a workshop earlier this afternoon, where the participants collaborated on two animations made using plants from the immediate surroundings of Eye, the results are shown during this in-depth lecture featuring Doing’s short phytographic films and Doing’s latest film In Vivo, with live music by Gareth Davis.

Karel Doing gives a film lecture on phytography, illustrated by short films and the results of a workshop he will be giving this afternoon in Eye. This involves recording traces of plants on the film’s emulsion using plant sap, outside in the sunlight. The evening will close with Karel Doing’s latest film, In Vivo. Preceded by three short films:

Karel Doing: Phytography + In Vivo

An aggressive race of blue alien giants the Traags keep humans as pets in this surreal animation. The humanoid Oms revolt and create their own living space for themselves on their own planet. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. Preceded by: Pumzi, the first Kenyan SF film.

In a distant future on the planet Ygam, the Traags, blue, emotionless super aliens, keep humanoids called Oms as pets in a master-slave relationship. The narrator Terr, an Om child that has escaped, starts a revolt with other Oms and together they manage to start a new life on another planet. La planète sauvage (Fantastic Planet) positions humanity as the slaves, as pets they serve the cruel Traags, a race that considers itself the masters. Smart cooperation and solidarity help the Oms liberate themselves, thereby providing a valuable lesson to the Traags: repression elicits uncontrollable opposition. Psychedelic score
 Director René Laloux and artist/animator/co-scriptwriter Roland Topor adapted Stefan Wul’s SF novel 'Oms en série', a bewildering, surreal parable about humanity’s future. Topor’s cut-out animations depict strange, cosmic landscapes and astounding creatures in a cold universe. The score features psychedelic jazz (Alain Goraguer) that elevates viewers from their quotidian existences to the supernatural SF experience in which humanity is no longer the measure of all things. Pumzi (Wanuri Kahiu, KE 2009, 21’) Fantastic Planet will be screened along with Pumzi, the very first Kenyan SF film is set in East Africa 35 years after the end of World War III. The earth is dry, the soil is poisoned and there is no water. People live in a high-tech underground city, no one is allowed outside. Nature solely exists in a virtual museum, dreams are suppressed with medication. A young woman ignores the ban and plants a cutting from a tree in the desert that she feeds with her own bodily fluids, providing it with shade – a sign of hope in a barren world.

Fantastic Planet + Pumzi

exclusiveScreeningsInEye

This documentary about the increasingly busy Waddenzee area of islands and tidal flats is still on the money, paying attention – as it does – to environmental issues, bird populations and fish stocks, and people who’s work depends on the Waddenzee, such as fishermen and worm collectors.

Johan van der Keuken filmed the fauna, flora and inhabitants of the Wadden Sea which he refers to as a ‘flat jungle’, recording how life has changed in the area. The soundtrack consists of free jazz compositions by Willem Breuker, whom he had worked with before.Johan van der Keuken had the following to say about this film: ‘De Platte Jungle has a long-term structure that aims to link the miniscule and the gigantic: plaice larvae with nuclear power stations. In between, an impression develops of our warped relations with mother nature and how we mess about with it’.
Screening as part of the Cinema Ecologica programme.

Eye Classics means a reunion with great directors from all over the world. Think of Hitchcock, Truffaut, Fellini. But don't forget Fons Rademakers, Wim Verstappen and Adriaan Ditvoorst. And then there's Hou Hsiao-hsien, Kurosawa, Ozu, Ang Lee and Tarkovski...

Eye Classics

Cinema Ecologica

With a film lecture and the results of this afternoon’s botanic film workshop

De platte jungle

Johan van der Keuken / NL, 1978 / 90 min.

This documentary about the increasingly busy Waddenzee area of islands and tidal flats is still on the money, paying attention – as it does – to environmental issues, bird populations and fish stocks, and people who’s work depends on the Waddenzee, such as fishermen and worm collectors.

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