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A man and his female helper lather a blindfolded woman's naked body with various foodstuffs.
Frans Zwartjes and his wife explore their new home, and the sexual tension they've brought with them to it.
In a monumental building a group of scientists submit women to obscure experiments in which sexuality and cruelty constantly merge into one another. "Pentimento" is an art-historical term for a hidden image underneath the actual image giving an indication of how the latter evolved to its current state.
Film in three parts. A man and a woman, Trix Zwartjes and Lodewijk de Boer (Zwartjes’s regular actors) circle around each other in a house and outside at the water side. They attract and reject each other.
Zwartjes made many films without dialogue or sound. The music can however be very important. Zwartjes composes it himself, sometimes together with his brother Rudolf and Lodewijk de Boer. Audition is a fine example of a Zwartjes film with an important soundtrack. It is a visual improvisation of cinematography and acting. There is hardly a ‘story line’. A man and a woman watch another woman singing, predominantly in exciting black and white images.
Spectator is one of the early masterpieces by Zwartjes. The film explicitly shows one of Frans Zwartjes’ main themes: the relationship between husband and wife. It is a relationship that is strongly marked by power and domination, sexual attraction and repulsion. It manifests itself in humiliation and abuse (such Pentimento), but also in cool eroticism or natural physicality. Zwartjes’ goal is not to explain or designate this relationship. Rather it is the subject that Zwartjes uses to describe his world. In an article on Zwartjes, filmmaker and student George Schouten compares Zwartjes to the Italian writer Alberto Moravia. For both, sex is their way of dealing with reality. It is the subject by which they define their world. And for Zwartjes, it is also the subject with which he can display and develop his cinematic talent. (eyefilm.nl)
"The Great Magician" - A portrait of Frans Zwartjes (1927-2017), sometimes called 'the most important experimental filmmaker of his time' by the American essayist Susan Sontag.
Set on the landing and the stairs of Zwartjes’ new house, then still empty, in The Hague. The filmmaker suggests a mysterious and complex space by using a ‘floating’ camera to film a number of crawling, creeping personages. (MUBI)
A strangely-dressed man reaches for some sorbet and then eats it; A playful, expertly-edited excercise from Zwartjes.
An experimental look at the sexual life of a couple.
Medea is a woman who seeks revenge when her husband leaves her for another woman. With her heart filled with anger and pain, she devises a plan to punish those who have wronged her.
Frans Zwartjes' two visions of womanhood in Behind Your Walls have all the febrile frustration associated with his previous work. Flesh looks like crisp paper about to be despoiled, a torpid heat reduces movement to fidgets and hesitations. - MIFF
A woman plays with a bird as the camera's gaze is drawn to her legs.
First full-length experimental feature by filmmaker Zwartjes about an actress, played by Willeke van Ammelrooy, who during the whole film, in continuously changes moods, is busy in her room. Eventually, she is made an offer by telephone. But what offer does the actress get?
A man in drag sits on a couch holding a fan. The wallpaper behind him is floral patterned. Although the man does little more than looking around and waving his fan, Zwartjes created enormous tension.
First film by Paul de Nooijer, in collaboration with his artistic father Frans Zwartjes. Moving Stills shows a series of photographs by Françoise de Nooijer, which are joined, by means of editing and colour effects, and turned into a moving picture. The erotic image gets an explosive charge. (filmcommission.nl)
An experimental film by Dutch filmmaker Frans Zwartjes.
Two girls nestle beside each other on a couch and try desperately to conceal their mutual craving. Sexuality is suggested through the weird rhythm of the film's editing and the tactile quality of the images. - MIFF
An experimental short from Dutch filmmaker Frans Zwartjes.
A selection of never-before-seen cinema sketches by Zwartjes, compiled by Stanley Schtinter with music from Zwartjes' record Tapes I.
Frans Zwartjes
Frans Zwartjes (*Alkmaar, 1927) is a film maker, musician, violin maker, artist and sculptor. In the late 1960's he became well known with films showing grotesquely dressed up actors involved in little power-mad sexual games. Hysterics and cruelty are his regular topics. Susan Sontag called Zwartjes "the most important contemporary experimental film maker". Zwartjes made over fifty films. Pentimento (1979), Living (1971) and Ín Extremo (1981) seem to be his best known films. Director Ruud Monster's documentary The Great Wizard portrays Zwartjes as a self-conscious artist who comments on the world in a farcical way. The film was partly shot at Zwartjes's home, while he was composing.
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