Programme 4

Several of Frans van de Staak’s films are based on poetry as verbal material.

In Tien gedichten…, the actor Donald de Marcas recites ten texts by Hubert K. Poot, a Dutch “farmer poet” from the early 18th century. Poot’s poetry —baroque, contrived and yet idyllic at the same time— is reflected in countryside scenes similar to those in which the writer lived. The recital by Marcas, the gesturing nature of his poses and the numerous elements of the set around him that interfere with the landscape update the texts in an unpredictable way that is not without humour.

Frans van de Staak worked with the experimental writer Gerrit Kouwenaar for the first time on Windschaduw (he would do so again two years later, on Ongedaan gedaan). The poems appear written on-screen in the latter, but Windschaduw has the poet’s voice reciting two of his poems in off. The verses by Kouwenaar, somewhere between the everyday and the extraordinary, accompany actions by the only two characters in the film: a man and a woman who meet and go their separate ways in rooms whose windows overlook bright exteriors.