Moniek Toebosch

"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.

Zwartjes' reflections on Beckett, situated between trees.

The actual life and the fiction created by a successful pulp author begin to blend together.

Hes, an uptight and disaffected social worker reaching retirement, discovers a young woman, Anna, in the closet of an acquaintance who has committed suicide. Realizing that she has been kept in the apartment all her life, he moves in and helps her comes to terms with the complexities of the real world.

The central element in this film is formed by the preparation for and execution of a performance. The performance, a parachute jump, is carried out by an artist (Perrenet) and his girlfriend during the opening of an exhibition. As spectators to the performance, which takes place in the artist’s studio, an art dealer and several friends have been invited. The art dealer enters first, followed by Armand, who looks at some paintings made by Zwartjes; they spout the usual ‘gallery nonsense’. The art dealer appears most interested in the girlfriend. ‘My latest creation’ is how Amand introduces her. The guests who arrive thereafter are introduced in short, independent sections.

A musical comedy. One God creates the world, the other destroys the creation and hopes to make a better job of 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.

De Mantel der Liefde is a bizarre, over the top and at times hilarious settling of scores with the Catholic Church, commercial movie culture and 1970's petit bourgeois Dutch culture in general.

Concert for which Toebosch only invited the renowned jazz critic Ruud Koopmans and a photographer. As usual the concert ended dramatically confusing.

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)