Barbara Meter

Directing

Barbara Meter

Born 1939-01-01

Barbara Meter finished the Dutch Film Academy in 1963 and got an MA Film and video at the London School of Printing in 1995. Meter was co-founder of Electric Cinema, in the early 70's a bastion of Dutch experimental cinema. Meter has made many experimental short films, and also some feature films and documentaries. She also worked as a curator of film programs, teacher and free-lance lecturer on film.

Acting credits

No artwork available
NR

a man with a moped and groups of boys (one in particular) are in conflict, which sometimes turns into erotic play.

IJdijk

1965

Home Movies 1971-81 poster
NR

Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years.

Home Movies 1971-81

1985

No artwork available
8.0

A young woman from Amsterdam decides to sell her one year old jeep on the street one day. A passer by on a bike helps her repair and charms her during this process. However, he shows no interest in buying the car.

Jongens, jongens, wat een meid

1965

Retour d'enfance poster
NR

Photos and film footage are edited, damaged, scratched, and painted. The original images are only vaguely recognizable, as if they are already part of our ‘tainted’ memory. The film was made in response to the death of Janis Joplin.

Retour d'enfance

1969

...And a Table poster
NR

A man and a woman sit in front of a window and eat breakfast. Through the window, we see the countryside. During the day, they remain seated at the table. The settings, light, and depth of field change: slowly we learn the vocabulary of the medium. In the final shots, the camera is reflected in the windows, and we see lights being cleared away. The film itself, and not the man and woman at the table, has become the subject of the film.

...And a Table

1971

Joszef Katús's Not Too Fortunate Return to the Land of Rembrandt poster
9.0

The dutchified Hungarian Joszef Katús returns, after a months-long absence, to Amsterdam on 29 April 1966. The arrival of the Provos changed a great deal in the Dutch capital. The film follows Katús, mostly roaming the streets, in a loose documentary style. The events are set against the backdrop of four national occasions - The Queen's Birthday, Labour Day, Liberation Day and Remembrance Day.

Joszef Katús's Not Too Fortunate Return to the Land of Rembrandt

1966

No artwork available
NR

A man and a woman converse wordlessly. An essential film dialogue. The accompanying sound was created by playing a chord from a Mahler symphony through two 'reel-to-reel' tape recorders and editing it.

Songs for Four Hands

1970

Behind the camera

A Touch poster
5.5

A wordless experimental collage of impressions and moods. Grainy fragments of landscapes, flakes whirl in the wind. Fog and mist, shadows of people in the city and by the water… Silhouettes that fade and turn into pure light and shadow until we discern the specks and scratches on the film strip itself. Sometimes, for a fraction of a second, a face, a person. A film as a memory that eludes us.

A Touch

2008

No artwork available
NR

A Young man is interested in the girl next door, but also discovers that he is not insensitive to a boy, with whom he has dress-up parties in the attic and plays in an old bunker in the dunes.

Schermerhoorn

1967

No artwork available
NR

A film by Barbara Meter

Little Stabs

2011

No artwork available
10.0

No synopsis available yet.

An Outsider

1967

Ariadne poster
NR

The constant movement of the wheels, threads, sprockets, feet and hands suggests restlessness, and this is paralleled by the soundtrack. The unknown woman could be Gretchen from Faust, hopelessly in love or Ariadne who gave Theseus the thread to find his way out of labyrinth or perhaps she is one of the fates, weaving destiny… Enlarged from Super-8 to 35mm, the film is very grainy, in itself an homage to the medium of film which is also emphasized by the depiction of all kinds of turning machines, both in image and sound.

Ariadne

2005

Ariadne poster
NR

The constant movement of the wheels, threads, sprockets, feet and hands suggests restlessness, and this is paralleled by the soundtrack. The unknown woman could be Gretchen from Faust, hopelessly in love or Ariadne who gave Theseus the thread to find his way out of labyrinth or perhaps she is one of the fates, weaving destiny… Enlarged from Super-8 to 35mm, the film is very grainy, in itself an homage to the medium of film which is also emphasized by the depiction of all kinds of turning machines, both in image and sound.

Ariadne

2005

Loutron poster
NR

A day in the life of an old Ottoman bath with the bath itself as the main character -- from dawn till dusk, where the light, the mirroring in the water and the visitors figure alongside the protagonist .

Loutron

2009

No artwork available
NR

An image of early twentieth century Germany rises from a collage of family photographs and landscapes. Meter used the photo albums of her parents, who had to flee Hitler's Germany. The shots alternately exude warmth and detachment.

Appearances

2000

No artwork available
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“Convalescing, when you don't have to participate in the world. Time to read, to dream, to look - the blue, the light of the television, the blue, the book, the patterns the light, the blue. Time to appreciate how much that really is.”

Convalescing

2000

No artwork available
NR

A meditation on the concept of waiting and the internal emotional life of women relegated to that role.

Penelope

1994

Offices poster
NR

Short film by Barbara Meter.

Offices

2003

No artwork available
NR

A rhythmical montage made from old photographs and films in which past and present merge.

Stretto

2005

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Nachtlicht

2022

No artwork available
NR

Observations shot from a docking ship.

Quay

2003

No artwork available
NR

In this activist film, Barbara Meter and Trilby Fairfax explore how the images of beautiful, young women in the media affect the way women view themselves.

One Hundred Insults a Day

1978

No artwork available
NR

In this activist film, Barbara Meter and Trilby Fairfax explore how the images of beautiful, young women in the media affect the way women view themselves.

One Hundred Insults a Day

1978

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Aap, Noot, Mies

1963

No artwork available
2.0

A short film with shots of sculptures by Anneke Walvoort. The materiality of film plays an important role: visible grain, flashes of colour, unexpected camera movements.

Sculptures for a Windless Space

1995

In Passing - The Party poster
NR

The film has elements of documentary, narrative and avant-garde. In a big house a party is taking place. People arrive and greet each other-encounters, some dancing, flirtations, a moment of drama. The camera is looking while slowly approaching the lit windows as if someone wanting to take part.

In Passing - The Party

1985

No artwork available
NR

People embarking on a small boat - the bustle and confusion of it. A walk and a song. A villiage square, men with coffee, women with children, and old man by himself. A painterly use of film grain.

No boats ever sail in the mountains

2002

Departure on Arrival poster
NR

An attempt to communicate the feeling of evaporation, of disappearing and slipping away of the fragile material which is called time.

Departure on Arrival

1996

Up to the Sky and Much Much More poster
NR

In her recent film Up to the Sky and Much Much More, Meter uses letters sent to her by her father during World War II to provide the film's narration, while interviews with her mother expand on his opposition to fascism — as well as to constraints of any kind, including the bonds of family — and his eventual conscription to the Eastern front. Remarkably, her father's epistolary accounts of his daily life as a soldier also include fantastical watercolour illustrations of his travels, which Meter incorporates to movingly amplify the emotional resonance of a father-daughter bond made fraught by distance and war.

Up to the Sky and Much Much More

2015

No artwork available
NR

A film by Barbara Meter

Familie Nasdalko aan zee

1969

Whether or not you believe poster
NR

They can be seen in the whole of Greece: the small and humble buildings along the roadside dedicated to a saint. Often a burning candle illuminates the colourful interior. Most of them are erected to the memory of a beloved, killed in a car accident, others because someone has been miraculously saved. They are the evidence of a daily devotion and are called 'proskynitaria' or 'ikonismata'. The older ones many have been built becuase somebody had a significant dream on the spot, or to indicate the place of a former church or perhaps to protect the entrance of a house against ill luck. Each 'proskynitari' has its own story. This documentary tells us some of these stories and shows an importnat aspect of how the Greek people deal with death and what role religion plays in everyday life.

Whether or not you believe

2007