"In Dutch: Highlights of Film from Holland" is a series of free screenings at the Clark, Saturdays at 2:00 p.m. starting July 14th. Offered in conjunction with “NL: A Season of Dutch Arts in the Berkshires,” this survey of “Netherlandish” films explores a variety of national themes and historical situations, and includes two Academy Award-winners for Best Foreign Film. All films are in Dutch with English subtitles, and true to the mature spirit of Dutch culture, this free series of Saturday matinees is decidedly not for children.
July 14: Keetje Tippel. (1975, 104 min.) Paul Verhoeven, best-known of all Dutch directors, mounts the Netherlands’ most lavish historical recreation ever, following a young girl (Monique van der Ven as the title character) as she comes to Amsterdam from the country with her large and impoverished family in 1881, and makes her way into society, high and low, exploiting her beauty and free spirit.
July 21: Character (Karakter.) (1997, 114 min.) Set in Rotterdam in the years after 1900, this Oscar-winning oedipal drama directed by Mike van Diem is adapted from a classic Dutch novel, with a dour but distinctly Dickensian flavor, telling the story of a bailiff father and his lawyer son, severely estranged but locked in life and death struggle.
July 28: Twin Sisters (De Tweeling.) (2002, 137 min.) Two young girls are abruptly separated at their father’s funeral in 1926, and follow different fates when one goes to a well-off family in Holland and the other to a hardscrabble farm in Germany. Three pairs of actresses effectively portray their respective passages through World War II, the Cold War, and beyond -- based on a Dutch bestseller, and Oscar-nominated.
August 4: Antonia’s Line. (1995, 102 min.) This Oscar-winning family saga from Marleen Gorris became an international hit and a feminist rallying point. In her 80s, Antonia reflects on her life in flashback, from World War II onward, telling about the generations of women she raised and sheltered on a communal farm in rural Holland.
August 11: The Vanishing (Spoorloos.) (1988, 106 min.) This chilling psychological mystery was perversely remade in Hollywood by director George Sluizer, but the original remains a revelation, one of the most authentically scary horror films ever made, and no doubt the quietest. A young Dutch couple is headed for vacation in France, when she disappears at a rest stop, and he is haunted by her fate thereafter, until he meets the sinister character who holds the key of knowledge.
August 18: Simon. (2004, 102 min.) Sex and drugs, gay marriage and legal euthanasia, this free-spirited Dutch tragicomedy from Eddy Terstall has it all. Simon is the straight but crooked friend of the gay dentist narrator, and the film follows their friendship in swift and funny fashion, from its heyday in swinging Amsterdam to its surprisingly wise and moving conclusion.
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