Dutch Art Today - Film [antikvár]

Foreword Generally speaking, little is known of the naturally modest film productions of the smaller European countries, and in most cases their circulation abroad has been extremely limited. For, as things are today in the world of the film, interest is centred primarily on the contributions of the large companies, which are in a position to have well-organized machinery for circulation and advertisement. All the same, in the past the smaller film-producing countries have played no mean part in the history of cinematography . . . one has only to think of Denmark and Sweden. One might even go so far as to say that where production has remained on a modest scale, the process of industrialization had not gone so far as it has in the case of the large, well-established film industries, and that producers have consequently been able to work in greater freedom and have been less bound to a timetable - a factor which can easily lead to hurried and superficial work. It is precisely in the smaller countries that one still comes across men in the profession who possess something of the intense devotion and technical skill of the former craftsman or of the avant-gardiste of more recent times. Since the last world war these 'silent' makers of films have had a better chance of achieving more general recognition, since they are now able to submit their work to a number of film festivals, where it can appear in the forum of international criticism. As a result, the post-war Dutch film has become more widely known abroad, and in this roundabout way it has also begun to meet with greater appreciation at home. But as recognition has been rather slow in coming, knowledge of the past history of the Dutch film, of the relation between present-day achievements and earlier work and of the size and potentialities of current produc-