Nothing Lasts Forever

In the fifties, people in England found to their alarm that the remains of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution were rapidly disappearing. In Holland, this was realized only twenty years later during a symposium at the University of Technology in Delft: the semi-science of industrial archaeology was a fact. The preservation of churches and castles is no longer regarded more important than saving an old textile factory or the first cast-iron bridge. The rarer something is, the higher its value. The same goes for buildings from periods gone by. Over the past few years, many company buildings and factories have vanished and suddenly people realized that a familiar link with the past has been broken. Unique monuments of industry and technique are frequently destroyed because their special character is not recognized. The question is which buildings should be selected for preservation. A watertight definition of industrial archaeology has not yet been formulated, and there is a tendency to keep it that way for a while until time will tell where the limits lie.
The film sketches the industrialization in Holland as an underestimated piece of cultural history. Digna Sinke examines the historical development of industrialization, in the course of which archaeologically interesting objects from various periods play a determining role. A steam engine, a railway bridge, a dairy factory, a miner's house, and a power station act as examples of the theme of this documentary. Which possibilities can be devised for the future of these buildings?
The film consists of a concrete, informative part and a poetical part, which lends this documentary a personal line of approach.