TIENGEMETEN, THE WEBSITE
The website on Tiengemeten exists since December 2003. I developed it together with Fred Inklaar, and Gridline did the programme planning. All the work of developing the website takes up three large folders. The most relevant material about the realisation of the project is put in one folder; pictures are put in another one together with a print out of the corresponding database, and the correspondence of the project is put in the third one. They are in cabinet D, next to eight other Tiengemeten folders concerning the film. Then there are another five ring binders with pictures and there is a pile of articles and policy objectives of 50 centimetres high. This pile lies on cabinet VI.
Why? Yes why. I sometimes wonder about that myself. Of course there is a simple answer: it is part of the film's research and this has to be done systematically. The more complicated answer is that Tiengemeten is part of the landscape of my youth: Anna Jacobapolder. Some (Dutch) people will vaguely remember the ferry between Anna Jacobapolder and Zijpe, which was delayed every now and then, when there was a thick fog or a storm. In those days the world to me was still very disordered, incomprehensible and full of secrets. In winter there would be hunters walking across the fields at "Bruuntjes Kreke" (a creek), and therefore you could just be shot by accident. Or there was that one day when our house had suddenly submerged under water. These things could just happen anytime. Perhaps I'm only trying to banish inexplicable facts through classification, in order to find out that of course the next inexplicable fact is hidden behind the first.
Only the other day I wondered, if perhaps I ought to edit another film about Tiengemeten, in addition to the real movie about Tiengemeten (it must be ready somewhere in 2006), using the same material. A kind of personal diary covering those same ten years. About all the unsuccessful projects, about dreams and imagination, about the incomprehensible notion of life (and death). Well, who knows? Perhaps when I have the time.
(I wrote this in 2004. And yes, I did. I made that film. See Tiengemeten and the time)