Amsterdam Global Village
Johan Van der Keuken
1996 - 245 min - 35 mm - Couleur - Pays-Bas

'I always thought that life was 777 stories at the same time". Johan Van der Keuken cites this quote from poet Bert Schierbeek in the closing credits of his four hour personal encounter with the city that forms his home base. "Amsterdam Global Village" gathers people's stories in a way that confirms the late poet's observation ; the city's diversity, as well as the simultaneous existence of the different worlds it embraces, are captured by Van der Keuken in a tireless effort to discover the unknown and reevaluate the familiar.
Mastering his camera as never before, he moves freely and spontaneously, yet ver precisely, through the mondern city. In a continuous movement over its waters, its roads and through the air, he stops to picture the annual rituals and cultural events that excite the Dutch : the arrival of Santa Claus, the "anarchistic" celebration of Queens Day, the old and new forms of music that vibrate in the city. Yet "Amsterdam Global Village" escapes the folkloristic trap entirely as it show that in the midst of the typical Dutch, so many cultures come together that the typical becomes indeed more and more hard to define.
Touching upon larger human themes of all ages, those of love, making love, life and death, war and global movement, it makes us aware of what the filmmker formulates in the unique text he offer us: "I am far away on a distant journey through my own city. I know that life is a dream."