Gerard Holthuis started out as a sculptor and then turned to the moving image at the Vrije Academie in The Hague. He began making films in 1979 and also works for others as a producer, cameraman and editor. For the Filmstad in The Hague, for example, he produced the first series of Filmblikken. Since 1999, Holthuis has been producing films for his own company Filmstad Produkties, including films by Joost Rekveld (#11 MAREY <-> MOIRÉ and #37) and Bart Vegter (FOREST VIEWS and ZWERK).
The films Holthuis made around 1980 have obvious similarities with the work of other students at the Vrije Academie. In I REMEMBER and FICTION, Holthuis filmed two of his major themes (artistic inspiration and the threat of nuclear energy), but without opting for a clear narrative structure. He circled around the themes and tried to reveal their underlying motives.
In his later films, made from the late 1990s onwards, we see a certain return to this process, this time not with charged themes, but rather with essentially visual interpretations of reality, such as the air traffic over Hong Kong in HKG, or the fascinating underwater world in the CARELESS REEF cycle. Once again, Holthuis does not opt for a narrative structure, but rather for an intuitive approach, where it is not so much a question of knowing something as of experiencing it.
7 MOVIES IN DISTRIBUTION
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CARELESS REEF - (CARELESS REEF PART 3)
2006 / 35mm / color / sound / single screen / 8' 00 / 40 € distribution: 35mm |
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ABU KIFFAN - (CARELESS REEF PART 2)
2005 / 35mm / color / sound / single screen / 6' 40 / 42 € distribution: 35mm |
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PREFACE - (CARELESS REEF PART 1)
2005 / 35mm / b&w / sound / single screen / 3' 40 / 29 € distribution: 35mm |
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MARSA ABU GALAWA - (CARELESS REEF PART 4)
2004 / 35mm / color / sound / single screen / 13' 00 / 57 € distribution: 35mm or Digital file on server |
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CITY AT NIGHT (AMS)
2000 / 35mm / b&w / sound / single screen / 9' 30 / 43 € distribution: 35mm |
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THE WEST (SFO)
2000 / 35mm / b&w / sound / single screen / 10' 30 / 46 € distribution: 35mm |
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HONG KONG (HKG)
1999 / 35mm / b&w / sound / single screen / 13' 00 / 57 € distribution: 35mm or DCP on USB stick |