Marlies Heuer

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Film of play about the original and witty eighteenth-century writer and academic Lichtenberg.

The film is based on the play Lichtenberg, Scenes on the Threshold of the Modern Age by Cyrille Offermans. While the protagonist Lichtenberg has several things in common with George Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) an experimental physicist and writer of the famous Sudelbücher as well as many no less infamous letters – no attempt has been made at accuracy. Several facts from the life of the historic figure have been incorporated into the character, but the latter remains the brain-child of the writer Offermans. From time to time Lichtenberg quotes writers he could not know, strictly speaking: 19th- and 20th-century authors. These are formulations of ideas emanating from his own work in a natural way.Read More »

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The central character in Rooksporen is a woman who finds herself facing an interrogator. Around these interrogation scenes are scenes in which 26 witnesses (from A to Z) are introduced: first in their houses and then in a space adjacent to the interrogation room. The questioner has an ambiguous identity and function: he directs his questions at the woman and then turns away only listening and watching as a sounding-board, to the witnesses. And the witnesses also have an elusive identity. Who or what they are remains unclear, they exist thanks to the sensuality and/or obscurity of their language. It is also far from clear what the woman is accused of. Most witnesses eventually think she is guilty, but what of remains the question. Read More »

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A man performs infectious playlets for his surroundings.

A court-jester without a king. The protagonist in the film is an actor (René van het Hof) who is acting his life. He is a nuisance, but only for those who have had enough of his play acting or who are ashamed to be around this clown. His wife breaks up with him because she just can’t tolerate the man any more and he seems to accept that in an apparently matter-of-fact way. He leaves the city for a cottage in the countryside. He soon has a new audience. The woman next door and her daughter are curious to make his acquaintance and are at once enthusiastic about the ingenious simplicity of the shows by this nuisance who is not yet a nuisance to them, but a welcome change in there all-too-ordinary life. Read More »