Dutch director Oeke Hoogendijk (whose new feature My Rembrandt is a world premiere in IDFA’s Masters) is continuing her long association with Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, she told Business Doc Europe at IDFA.
The filmmaker is beginning work on a new documentary which will chronicle “Operation Nightwatch,” the project now under way to restore Rembrandt’s most famous painting The Night Watch (1642). This is being called “the largest and most elaborate public art restoration” in history.
“I’ve already started,” Hoogendijk stated of the project which will tie her for yet longer to the Rijksmuseum. She doesn’t know yet how long the film will take or what kind of controversies the restoration might cause. Whatever happens, she will be there with her camera at all the crucial moments.
The director spent around 10 years working on her epic 2014 film, The New Rijksmuseum – The Film, which chronicled the renovation of the museum – and the battles behind the scenes between museum administrators, architects, city authorities and Amsterdam’s army of cyclists.
The museum staff therefore regard Hoogendijk almost as family. “Everybody knows me. I feel at home and I have great access,” she said. “I do have a difficulty in leaving people and places. I am hanging around a little bit more.”
During the making of My Rembrandt (sold by Cinephil and world-premiering in Masters), Hoogendijk spent time with the Duke of Buccleuch at his home, Drumlanrig Castle. The Duke is the owner of one of the filmmaker’s favourite Rembrandt paintings, of an old woman reading. “When you went to breakfast, you would pass that room (with the Rembrandt) and I would always make a little bow. I couldn’t just walk by it!”
Seeing the painting in a domestic setting felt “more normal” to Hoogendijk than seeing it in a gallery.
“We tend to forget that in the old days, all the paintings were like that. They were in private houses. There were no museums in the 17th Century,” the director said of the idea of Rembrandt paintings worth tens of millions of dollars remaining in private ownership. “When we come to Drumlanrig Castle, it’s like going into a time machine. It’s a historical experience… Going into a museum with hundreds of people and having to move your way around is artificial, but that’s the way it is now.”
The Duke is expected at IDFA this weekend for the premiere of the documentary.
The director is also making a film about her mother, who is now 93 and who survived the Holocaust. “She survived the persecution, and her father and brother were killed in Auschwitz. She survived Westerbork, the transit camps and Theresienstadt,” Hoogendijk explains. “It (the new documentary) is not actually about the war because there have been so many films about the war. I always say it is about how to live on a daily basis after the war.” The film is well advanced and will be completed shortly.
Hoogendijk is also making a documentary titled Licht (Light), about radical German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.
