Frank van den Engel

On the idyllic island of Lipari near Sicily a few traditional swordfish hunters are still active. The days are over where these fishermen were self-evidently succeeded by their sons. On board Nino’s ship, the reigning peace is not what it appears to be. The twelve-man crew that mans the small boat is in complete concentration. They peer at the water surface, looking for their prey. While the diesel engine stamps monotonously, the hours pass and we wait patiently. Then an excited noise erupts from the crow’s nest: a swordfish couple has been spotted! Lipari pays homage to an almost extinct profession.

No synopsis available yet.

Despite the financial crisis, prices for contemporary art are going through the roof. The auctions at Christie's and Sotheby's are breaking record after record. The Internet, the growing number of (mega) rich people and globalization have changed the art market beyond recognition. Has contemporary art become a commodity in the hands of the super rich private collectors? This film investivates the ins and outs of the soaring art market and the consequences for artists, dealers, museums and for art history. Featuring artists Jeff Koons, Chuck Close and Adrian Ghenie, top collectors Michael Hort, Thomas Olbricht and Martin Z. Marguiles, and former Christie's NY Chairman Amy Cappellazzo.

The history of the Polygoon cinema newsreel is the recent history of The Netherlands and beyond, narrated by the distinctive voice of Philip Bloemendal. Using numerous clips, various individuals involved recount their contributions to the newsreels.

Portrait of the popular folk singer André Hazes. He was followed for several months by filmmaker John Appel. Love, hope, happiness, sadness, concerts, family, and fans play a major role in his life. Appel filmed Hazes during performances and business meetings, as well as at home with his family and during a vacation in Benidorm. The result is both hilarious and moving at times.

One day, Dutch film maker van der Horst was given her inheritance: 6 square meters, one sixth of a small, wooden house in the Russian countryside where her mother grew up. It was as if life had handed her a card she felt forced to play. She began a journey into the past, back into the childhood of her Russian mother and her five sisters, all of whom struggled with fear, famine and war in Stalin’s Russia; experiences that left them scarred to their very soul. Aliona’s quest into the lives and fate of her family becomes a loving, poignant, and poetic film with Chekhovian characters. Accompanied by the magical animation of acclaimed Italian artist Simone Massi, unimaginable events in the Soviet past are given an immediate charge. Along with the stories of ordinary people living in the small farmhouse, the film maker tells the tale of Soviet terror, immense bravery and a fear that has never left those four walls.

On the idyllic island of Lipari near Sicily a few traditional swordfish hunters are still active. The days are over where these fishermen were self-evidently succeeded by their sons. On board Nino’s ship, the reigning peace is not what it appears to be. The twelve-man crew that mans the small boat is in complete concentration. They peer at the water surface, looking for their prey. While the diesel engine stamps monotonously, the hours pass and we wait patiently. Then an excited noise erupts from the crow’s nest: a swordfish couple has been spotted! Lipari pays homage to an almost extinct profession.

On the idyllic island of Lipari near Sicily a few traditional swordfish hunters are still active. The days are over where these fishermen were self-evidently succeeded by their sons. On board Nino’s ship, the reigning peace is not what it appears to be. The twelve-man crew that mans the small boat is in complete concentration. They peer at the water surface, looking for their prey. While the diesel engine stamps monotonously, the hours pass and we wait patiently. Then an excited noise erupts from the crow’s nest: a swordfish couple has been spotted! Lipari pays homage to an almost extinct profession.

No synopsis available yet.

Despite the financial crisis, prices for contemporary art are going through the roof. The auctions at Christie's and Sotheby's are breaking record after record. The Internet, the growing number of (mega) rich people and globalization have changed the art market beyond recognition. Has contemporary art become a commodity in the hands of the super rich private collectors? This film investivates the ins and outs of the soaring art market and the consequences for artists, dealers, museums and for art history. Featuring artists Jeff Koons, Chuck Close and Adrian Ghenie, top collectors Michael Hort, Thomas Olbricht and Martin Z. Marguiles, and former Christie's NY Chairman Amy Cappellazzo.

The history of the Polygoon cinema newsreel is the recent history of The Netherlands and beyond, narrated by the distinctive voice of Philip Bloemendal. Using numerous clips, various individuals involved recount their contributions to the newsreels.

Portrait of the popular folk singer André Hazes. He was followed for several months by filmmaker John Appel. Love, hope, happiness, sadness, concerts, family, and fans play a major role in his life. Appel filmed Hazes during performances and business meetings, as well as at home with his family and during a vacation in Benidorm. The result is both hilarious and moving at times.

One day, Dutch film maker van der Horst was given her inheritance: 6 square meters, one sixth of a small, wooden house in the Russian countryside where her mother grew up. It was as if life had handed her a card she felt forced to play. She began a journey into the past, back into the childhood of her Russian mother and her five sisters, all of whom struggled with fear, famine and war in Stalin’s Russia; experiences that left them scarred to their very soul. Aliona’s quest into the lives and fate of her family becomes a loving, poignant, and poetic film with Chekhovian characters. Accompanied by the magical animation of acclaimed Italian artist Simone Massi, unimaginable events in the Soviet past are given an immediate charge. Along with the stories of ordinary people living in the small farmhouse, the film maker tells the tale of Soviet terror, immense bravery and a fear that has never left those four walls.

Two Dutch filmmakers travel to the Iranian city of Bam to chronicle the aftermath of a December 2006 earthquake that claimed 43,000 lives and left 60,000 homeless. Survivors reflect on the catastrophe in voice-over narration that's accompanied by images of a wrecked metropolis fighting to pull itself back together. The gripping documentary received its North American premiere at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.

The slogan “Meet the icons of modern art” needs to be scraped off the glass wall of the Stedelijk, Amsterdam’s modern art museum. Because precisely who the icons of modern art are is very much the question. Who gets to decide? And who loses out? In 2019, as director Sarah Vos started shooting her documentary, more than 90 percent of art at the Stedelijk was made by white men. That’s got to change, the museum’s director Rein Wolfs believes. But this is easier said than done—so much becomes clear when Vos follows Wolfs and his team as they strive for greater diversity in the collection, as well as among their staff.

What would happen with you if only you know the truth, and people won’t believe you? If the government decides to prosecute you and you have to plea for your own innocence without having the evidence? Peter Putker’s wife Durdana lost her life while sailing along the coast of Colombia. And although Peter states from the very beginning that they were attacked by pirates, the local authorities do not buy in his innocence. For them, he is the one who murdered his own wife. Problem is: only Peter himself was there and truly knows what happens. The Colombian authorities assign the case to the Dutch court. What happens when only you know the truth and any evidence supporting your innocence is lacking?

Robert van Gulik (1910–1967) served as a diplomat, collected Chinese lutes and invented Judge Dee, yet his own country barely remembers him. Rob Rombout travels from the Netherlands to Indonesia, Japan, the United States and China, through diaries, archives and the people van Gulik still haunts. Somewhere between biography and detective story, the man and his hero merge.

As a film about fertility, Water Children is an ode to womanhood and the body Filmmaker Aliona van der Horst followed the trail of the unconventional Dutch-Japanese pianist and artist Tomoko Mukaiyama who made a huge work of art on the theme of womanhood and fertility. She created a cathedral-like space out of twelve thousand white silk dresses in which visitors, as in a ritual, roamed around and fell silent. And where people confessed intimate details about children who were or were not born, about sexuality and life-choices. This resulted in a majestic epic about motherhood, miscarriages and menopause. In a visual and poetic way, the film penetrates into what is probably still one of the greatest of taboos, menstruation, and, as a consequence, touches upon universal themes around life and death.

The Gert & Hermien Story shows the rise and fall of one of the most popular singing duos in Dutch history: Gert & Hermien Timmerman. Their career has seen great heights and deep valleys. Their personal lives, which were marked by scandals, were always widely covered in the tabloids. Daughter Sandra, along with some other intimates and confidants of Gert and Hermien, is our guide in the unlikely story of her narcissistic, manipulative father and driven mother.

Man is busy, busy, busy. Until we lie down flat on our backs for a while, in the dunes, in a farmyard, beside a fire engine, in the park or on the banks of a canal. Watching the bank of clouds drifting by or the planes forming persisting contrails in the sky, daydreams, outpourings and contemplations inevitably bubble up. With the sky as a mirror for prostrate man and with the lying man as a mirror for the viewer, this documentary draws a loving portrait of human beings briefly making contact with themselves.

In 1990, the beheaded body of a young woman was found in a Rotterdam canal. The body remained unidentified until 2008, when new DNA techniques revealed that the victim was the American model Melissa Halstead. A joint investigation by the Rotterdam cold case unit and their colleagues in the United Kingdom led to John Sweeney. Sweeney is known to have a tumultuous relationship with Halstead – as evidenced by the many lurid drawings he made during their time together in Amsterdam.

The mystery of the author of the 1937 cult novel Ali and Nino - a recently-rediscovered Romeo and Juliet of the Caucasus - is explored in Alias Kurban Saïd. Renowned Dutch documaker Jos de Putter travels from Azerbaijan to Austria to the U.S., chasing down who wrote the book under the pseudonym Kurban Saïd.

The once-exiled brewer John Christian Kavakure returns to conflict-scarred Burundi to fulfil his old dream: a brewery that frees Burundians from dependence on multinational Heineken. With locally brewed banana beer, made according to his grandmother’s special recipe.

An intimate portrait of the Dutch filmmaker George Sluizer, best-known for The Vanishing (1988).

Five lively kids use art to escape from the Mandela Park township in Cape Town, South Africa.

Russian Poet Boris Ryzhy was handsome, talented and famous. So why did he end his own life at the age of 26? A quest to find the answer takes the filmmaker to the notorious neighbourhood in the cold industrial city of Yekaterinenburg where Boris grew up...

With his grainy women's portraits, Gerard Fieret (1924-2009) managed to antagonize the entire late sixties establishment. In his mouse-infested studio he photographed his semi-or wholly undressed models as well as himself. His photographic work is increasingly recognised by collectors and museums. This documentary film by Frank van den Engel was shot during the final two years of his life. The camera shows Fieret alternately lucid and confused, stubborn and cooperative, accusing all and bemoaning his physical decline. (Summary from WorldCat)

For four seasons, lone wolf Eddy van Wessel travels along the Ukrainian front lines. Now that the Netherlands' most awarded war photographer is in the twilight of his successful career, he wants to take the ultimate photo one more time, the image that summarizes the entire conflict and that makes all the struggles, traumas and setbacks he has endured worthwhile.

A top executive who can't bear to regard himself as a loser, even after nearly dying in the New York marathon; a woman unable to cope with the loss of her wealthy status after her divorce; and an ambitious financial couple confronted with their unresolved family matters. Every Sunday, in their upper class Bloemendaal church, the cutting sermons of reverend Ad van Nieuwpoort shake their faith and existence to the core. What drives people to be crushed by the weight of their ambitions?

A family must come to grips with the suicide of their eldest son. What drove the outwardly relaxed and happy Arie to his deed? For two years we follow his younger brother Gijs, mother Denise and father Arjan while they try to turn despair into meaning.

This film is a triptych with three stories, involving three characters. They live in different parts of Europe: Western Europe -Catalonia (Spain); Eastern Europe -Lithuania; and in the new Europe -Georgia (Akhazia). They have experienced, in different parts of the 20Th century, civil wars and dictatorships. They share the same fate: they stayed where they were born. This film is about people who decide to do nothing in times of war, oppression and occupation. They choose a life amidst the ruins of their past. Even when this choice leads to loneliness: living a dream, not a reality. Alone, between the graves of their loved ones, they spend their last days. They have frozen their lives by protecting themselves from the outside world.

Mentally exhausted Ukrainian soldiers spend a few weeks away from the frontline before returning to war. In this psychological limbo, their reflections reveal how deeply the war has changed them, leaving scars they will carry for life.

Portrait of a traditional youth dance group from Grozny, Chechnya, on tour in Europe. Images of daily life in ruined Grozny combined with poetic visuals of performances. The art of survival.

A political essay on the absurd dilemmas presented by asylum policies. In a classroom, migrants’ illusions are dashed against the rocks of European arrogance.

The documentary closely portrays three patients who are being treated with Electro Convulsion Therapy (ECT) for their depression or psychosis.

In the heart of the Eurasian continent, the ancient center of the world where the Silk Road connected China to Europe, the circus is a deeply rooted cultural phenomenon. This film focuses on two circus artists, whose lifelong friendship under the dictatorship in Uzbekistan is affected by the differing political choices they make under the dictatorshop in Uzbekistan.

In the heart of the Eurasian continent, the ancient center of the world where the Silk Road connected China to Europe, the circus is a deeply rooted cultural phenomenon. This film focuses on two circus artists, whose lifelong friendship under the dictatorship in Uzbekistan is affected by the differing political choices they make under the dictatorshop in Uzbekistan.

The oldest primate laboratory in the world, located in the enchanting former Soviet republic of Abkhazia, was virtually destroyed during its struggle for independence from Georgia. But the lab workers refuse to give up their lab and have come up with a new idea to restore it to its former pride and glory. With the help of their renowned former director Professor Lapin they hope to put their institute back on the map. The Lost Colony follows their efforts, made with boundless confidence and unwavering hope, against all odds.