The Long Holiday
(De grote vakantie)
Screening on Film
Directed by Johan van der Keuken.
The Netherlands, 2000, 35mm, color, 142 min.
Dutch, Nepalese and Bhutanese with English subtitles.
The Netherlands, 2000, 35mm, color, 142 min.
Dutch, Nepalese and Bhutanese with English subtitles.
This deeply personal and moving film begins with the filmmaker learning he has prostate cancer and only a few years to live. It ends with the hopeful prospect of reprieve, thanks to an alternative therapy discovered in New York. In the interim, experimenting with different Eastern and Western approaches to his illness, van der Keuken and his wife Noshka do what they have always done: travel and film. They return to locales from earlier works while continuing to track the pulse of life—amongst children in a village in Burkina Faso and slum dwellers in Rio de Janeiro—and in the process create some of the most compelling images of a long career.