STAD / TOWN (1984)
A town. No Venice, Paris or Amsterdam. An ordinary town. The eight town of the Netherlands. For approximately 154.000 inhabitants a daily, inescapable environment. By the inhabitants ironically called “the most beautiful town of the country”. In not a distant past known as “the woolen town”, its contours marked by dozens of smoking factory chimneys and the spires of church-towers.
These days, only scars bear witness of once flourishing woolen industry and a leading Catholicism, sad remnants of what has gone, painfully exposing the absence.
Battered, guttered, it is a dwelling place “without a heart”, having lost its roots, soulless, it tries to find itself in vain. A town without stars in short, “not worth the detour”.
Special characteristics: none.
A townscape, seeming to ignore itself, being endured by its inhabitants with resignation, failing to draw admiring looks from the traveler.
One day and one night of looking and listening in the urban heart of this town. In search of the character of a neglected environment, which little strikes the imagination.
Town images and sounds, peculiar to Tilburg but at the same time representing a characteristic which all towns to a certain degree have in common. Emotive associations with similar, colorless towns easily present themselves. From a recording point of view of a traveler – who could be the spectator himself- TOWN tries in a stark, contemplative style, to make the atmosphere and mood of an “invisible” town tangible. Through a consistent simplicity the remarkable, the common becomes uncommon. The detached images, in sober black and white, speak for themselves.
Contemplative and suggestive, accented by moments of silence, the sound complements, enlarges the space around the image. Photographic observations and auditive impressions of a town which happens to be our native town, the source of all our later town experiences.
Producer: Pieter Kersten for Cyrene Producties
Sound: Karel Evers and Kees van der Knaap
Festivals and screenings
- 1984 Nederlands Film Festival
- The film is often screened in Tilburg. The City of Tilburg bought the film recently for their archive.