Is Heaven Blue?

The premières of four of their new films: Is Heaven Blue?, Bye Bye, Corona 2020 and Winter, in the presence of Paul, Menno and Françoise de Nooijer. The programme is completed by the short films Transformation by Holding Time – Muse and How to Make a New York Cake. In addition, the book Is Heaven Blue? (published by Voetnoot), a wide-ranging overview of the impressive film oeuvre of Paul, Menno, and Françoise de Nooijer – the result of fifty years of filmmaking – will be presented.

The new films are all connected to the concept of ‘farewells’. In Winter, a naked man disappears into a winter landscape. The tragicomic Bye Bye shows that it’s not easy to say goodbye. In Is Heaven Blue?, the previous motifs are given a dramatic new twist; loose ends are tied up; the cycle is complete. Illustrated by more than 3,500 film stills from 101 films, the book Is Heaven Blue? presents an extensive chronological overview of the makers’ oeuvre.

Paul de Nooijer is an idiosyncratic pioneer of creative photography and experimental film in the Netherlands. His work is personal and experimental, alienating but also funny. He frequently collaborates with other artists from his circle as well as his wife Françoise, his model and producer. Their son Menno has played a role in the photographs and films from an early age, and the pair then naturally went on to work together since 1989. For the De Nooijers, these films and the monumental retrospective book represent the completion and culmination of a project on a grand scale.

In his introduction, film expert and author Peter Delpeut will give an intense, lively impression of the work and working methods of these three protagonists and their unique cooperation both in front of and behind the camera. Simona Monizza, Eye's curator experimental film, will shed light on the relationship between the filmmakers and the filmmuseum.