Willem de Ridder

An ode to multi-talented artist and radio and television producer Wim T. Schippers by absurdist Ronald Snijders. In a cheerfully disruptive manner, Snijders guides the viewer through a richly illustrated overview of Schippers' work, where they meet the man who could both seduce and intentionally bore, confuse, shock, and irritate Dutch television viewers. Many clips of Schippers became legendary, such as Queen Juliana cleaning Brussels sprouts, a naked Phil Bloom reading the newspaper, and the shows featuring Barend Servet and Sjef van Oekel. Schippers wrote the sheepdog play Going to the Dogs and has been the voice of Ernie in Sesamstraat for many years.

The German artist Wolf Vostell and his family moved to a little village in Cáceres (Extremadura/Spain) in the seventies. In the middle of this primitive environment, he founded a contemporary art museum in connection with the local inhabitants, thus turning Malpartida into the first Fluxus village.

The film portrays a group of artists who since the early 1960s have completely disrupted our ideas of what art can be. In large part filmed in Venice in 1990, when many of the original Fluxus artists met to hold a large exhibition almost 30 years after the first highly untraditional Fluxus' performances. Features Eric Andersen, Philip Corner, Dick Higgins, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Ben Vautier, and many others.

The film shows, in an almost motionless camera setting, a frumpy 1960s interior. The viewer sees a dresser with a vase of tulips atop it. Swelling music accompanies the camera as it slowly zooms in on Holland’s national flower. In the carefully constructed staging, it is like a visual sledgehammer when a single petal suddenly comes loose and falls. Then the camera modestly pulls back.