Kees Hin

A short documentary film by Kees Hin about the late dutch filmmaker Frans van de Staak.

In a Dutch village, an eighty-year-old widow is murdered. The perverted modus operandi turns the crime into a national media event. It made the authorities decide to set up one of the first large-scale DNA investigations in the country. The men who were interrogated and investigated by the police are interrogated once again for the film and have to describe the dramatic events and try to put their feelings into words.

He was always busy making the absolute painting, one of Jaap Hillenius' sons says about his father. The artist who was killed in a car accident in 1999 steadily built, averse to conventions and trends, an autonomous oeuvre, indefatigably looking for the ultimate beauty. In daily life, he did so too; the artist wore out a throng of girlfriends, although in a sense he stayed faithful to both his wife and his only muse. He did not have the time to be a real father. 'With my father in the train with a Nuts bar', is the best childhood memory his sons have of him. Kees Hin tries to get closer to this complex man, who imputed a profoundly melancholic soul to himself, like the writer Marcel Proust, whom he admired so deeply. In three films, that play on the screen alongside each other and alternately appear in the foreground, via interviews - with people like his wife, his muse and his sons - and archive footage, we get to know more about his daily (emotional) life, his work and ideas.

During the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2002, Leo Hannewijk (festival director Film by the Sea) approached filmmaker and producer Digna Sinke with the idea of asking several film makers to make short films based on poems about the province of Zeeland. It would offer an opportunity to investigate the limits of the medium film and, just like poetry, not to focus on the story but to tackle universal and grander themes through mood and form. In the end, eight short films were realized, by eight different filmmakers. The films are connected by intermezzi, aerial shots of the Zeeland coasts. Poems of the Sea is a stirring and surprising portrayal of Zeeland. Filled with desires and passion.

The importance of the Atelier as a meeting and working-place for independent or beginning filmmakers is highlighted in Last days of Studio Frans van de Staak a necrology of his films by Kees Hin (2002), which focuses mainly on Van de Staak's non-naturalistic style of directing actors.

Third part of a triptych by filmmaker Kees Hin about the late Frans van de Staak.

Residents of the same street in Haarlem, and acquaintances and relatives of Kees Hin, together tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood, each in fifteen words.

Residents of the same street in Haarlem, and acquaintances and relatives of Kees Hin, together tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood, each in fifteen words.