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Johan van der Keuken (4 April 1938 – 7 January 2001) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker, author, and photographer. In a career that spanned 42 years, Van der Keuken produced 55 documentary films, six of which won eight awards. He also wrote nine books on photography and films, his field of interest. For all his efforts, he received seven awards for his life work, and one other for photography.

The films of van der Keuken stretch the boundaries of both documentary and narrative fiction. Rejecting the traditional documentary format as too restrictive, he uses fictional techniques to depict content drawn from real life, resulting in a uniquely personal style that is at once daring yet engaging.

Cogent, complex, and classically composed, the documentaries of Johan van der Keuken reveal his life-long curiosity about the ever-changing and its inhabitants. His films stretch the boundaries of both documentary and narrative fiction, resulting in a uniquely personal style that is as daring as it is compassionate.

Critic Dave Kehr of The New York Times has called van der Keuken arguably Europe s most important documentary filmmaker, and this selection of highly acclaimed films reveals why.

14 x DVD | NTSC | 95.3 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Nederlands (some Interlingue, English)
Subtitles: English, Francais (some Nederlands, Espanol)
Genre: Documentary

Volume 1 is a 9-film, 3-DVD set that includes I Love $ (1986), a provocative take on international banking, Lucebert: Time and Farewell, a triptych of film portraits of Dutch poet and painter Lucebert, and Face Value, a fascinating look at humanity and cultural diversity in Europe through cartography of faces.

Volume 2 is a 9-film, 3-DVD set that features Amsterdam Global Village, an epic portrait of van der Keuken’s hometown and the people who live there, and To Sang Fotostudio, a heartwarming chronicle of Mr. To Sang’s unique photo studio that caters to an international crowd. Also included is Thierry Nouel’s documentary Johan van der Keuken, which won the Audience Award at the Split International Film Festival.

Volume 3 is a 16-film, 3-DVD set that features work from van der Keuken s early to mid-career, including The White Castle, which interweaves images of the Spanish tourist mecca Formentara, a community center in Columbus, Ohio, and factories in the Netherlands to vividly illustrate the alienation that modern economics produces around the world.

Volume 4 is a 8-film, 3-DVD set that spotlights work from this legendary filmmaker s mid-career, including The Flat Jungle, a feature-length documentary about the Wadden Sea wetlands, Southbound, a complex chronicle of a trip from Amsterdam to Egypt, and The Palestinians, a documentary shot in Lebanon in 1975 just before the civil war.

The fifth and final volume of this collection focuses on death and dying, as van der Keuken continues to make films after learning he is terminally ill. The Long Holiday (2000), winner of the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlin Film Festival, follows the director and his wife as they travel the globe during their last years together. Last Words: My Sister Yoka (1998) is the director's tribute to his sister (Joke in Dutch), who speaks to the camera just days before she dies of cancer.

As an addendum to that film, the director's stepson, Stijn van Santen, made Last Words (2002), a short film about van der Keuken during his final days. Despite the melancholy subject matter, this two-disc set serves as a summary and final statement on van der Keuken's philosophy about life and art.