Lucebert, tijd en afscheid

The third work in the programme, LUCEBERT, TIME AND FAREWELL, is made up of three short films. In my early years as a filmmaker, I was greatly influenced by the Dutch poet and painter Lucebert. I had attended film school in Paris from 1956 to 1958, but in the early sixties I was still making the transition from photography to film. Lucebert's far-reaching insights pointed the way. I made LUCEBERT, POET-PAINTER in 1962, using black-and-white material. I went on to make A FILM FOR LUCEBERT in 1966 and it was released in early 1967. Colour is the leitmotiv and a political element was also added: it is a film for an artist about the world. When we visited Lucebert and his wife Tony in April this year, the idea was born to make a third film. But in May Lucebert died and my reaction to his death is incorporated in IF YOU KNOW WHERE I AM, TRY AND FIND ME. The film, the title of which is taken from one of the poems he left, was shot entirely in Lucebert's studio, a space that is filled with his work from recent years. A space that has become frozen, petrified, arrested momentum - but also serves to re-evoke someone's presence. IF YOU KNOW WHERE AM, TRY AND FIND ME of course links up with the earlier Lucebert films. I have compiled them into a new entity that exploits the tension between changing and standing still over a period of 32 years. Johan van der Keuken