Wim Povel

A unique view of the Tour de France cycling race from a Dutch perspective. The film production company Haghe followed the Tour de France for three weeks, with the legendary Dutch participants Wim van Est, Gerrit Voorting, Jan Nolten and Wout Wagtmans.

This short essayistic documentary by Louis van Gasteren is an argument for the industrialised building of homes, in the typically optimistic tone of the post-war reconstruction period. In this film, Van Gasteren makes use of elements of Soviet cinema and the French nouvelle vague. In the ’50s, Rotterdam-based contractor Dura built a factory in the Eemhaven district where prefab components for whole blocks of residential buildings could be produced. Together with architect Ernest Groosman, a proponent of reconstruction architecture, Dura built homes at various locations in the Rotterdam area. The building of these ‘Groosman flats’ is shown at a construction site in Rotterdam’s Lombardijen district, accompanied by cheerful jazz music.