Willy Mullens

Film from the collection of EYE (Amsterdam).

Impressions of the city of Bandung, with shots of the pasar (market), the Departments of War and Government Corporations, churches, parks, the residential office, a hospital, staff and service houses of the PTT, the Concordia society, the Chinese neighbourhood, the library and the observatory in Lembang.

Educational film about the symptoms, treatment, and prevention of tuberculosis. Mr van den Heuvel, a cobbler, lives with his wife and two small children in a one-room hovel in a dingy alley. He wants to work, but is usually too tired and is continuously coughing. He ignores the advice of his doctor to go to a health centre. His little daughter, Annetje, is not well either. At school she is listless, never wanting to play with her classmates. A visiting school doctor examines the girl and gives her a note for her parents, advising them to consult their doctor. Father considers this as nonsense.

Documentary about Haarlem.

Documentary about Haarlem.

Documentary about Kampen, one of the oldest Dutch Hanseatic cities, located along the IJssel. We see its most important buildings, including the Hoofdcursus, which is the training building for army officers. Officers from the Indische Leger also trained here.

Documentary film featuring the city of Arnhem and it's surrounding areas.

A 1918 city movie about Utrecht

A street singer manages to work his way up to the position of an opera artist, only to be struck by fate, and return to his life on the street.

The winter of 1917 was extremely cold, with some of the lowest average temperatures in history. The film shows the effects of this cold winter on daily life in the Netherlands. We see, for example, the frozen Hofvijver in The Hague, ice on the beach of Scheveningen, and Volendam being threatened by drifting ice. The severe frost also makes the third Elfstedentocht possible. We see images of the tour and of its winner, Coen de Koning, who poses at ease for the camera during his passage through Hindeloopen. The film also contains a few scenic shots in Hindeloopen of sledge-riding ladies in traditional costume.

Propaganda film about the Dutch Military. Willy Mullens made this film in 1917, when other West-European armies had become numbed by three long years in the trenches. The footage depicts a relatively high-spirited mood, considering how the Dutch military had mobilized but not actually participated in the war. Precisely who it was that needed to be convinced of the solid foundation of Dutch neutrality is shown clearly in a folder that accompanied the screening of this film at the Residentie cinema in The Hague: ‘The purpose of the film is to impress upon the Dutch people (…) that our military forces, with the resources at their disposal, can readily be compared to those of the foreign military forces.’ The term ‘impress upon’ can be taken literally: people needed to be put at ease.

Family Film of the family Van den Bussche. Takes place in the Netherlands, Japan and Indonesia.

'Zandvoort in an uproar! On Saturday morning at roughly 10 o’clock, with beautiful weather and calm seas, a Frenchman sat in a beach chair to gaze upon the magnificent view that the sea always affords, until he slowly began to fall asleep’ So begins a report in the ‘Zandvoortsche Courant’ of July 25, 1905. The article explains how the man was faced with the oncoming tide, and – to the amazement of the audience – took off his trousers to prevent them from being ruined by the saltwater. While trying to escape from the policeman who had rushed to the scene, he jumps into a passing car, and hides out in a small changing cabin. Eventually he's nabbed by the police. Accompanied by a band and a large crowd, he is escorted to the police station. The article ends by saying that ‘Messrs. Alberts Frères’ had staged the whole incident for a film in which two of the most popular genres of that period - the locally-shot film and the chase film – would be combined.