Mirror of Holland

Spiegel van Holland

Netherlands

1950

10 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

Dutch

Currently 4.2/5 Stars.
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SCR Bert Haanstra, Koen van Os

MUSIC Max Vredenburg

Cannes (In Competition): Best Short Film, Melbourne (In Poetic Style)

Synopsis

In 1950 Haanstra made Mirror of Holland, combining his talent as a filmmaker with his eye as a painter. Holding the camera upside down, he filmed images of Holland reflected in water. The effect is strange and delightful. It astonished critics and the public alike. Mirror of Holland was Haanstra’s first success abroad. It was shown at the Cannes film festival, and won a Golden Palm. —Official site

Director

Bert Haanstra

Bert Haanstra (31 May 1916 – 23 October 1997) was a Dutch film and documentary director. Haanstra was born in the town of Holten and became a professional filmmaker in 1947. He won international acclaim with his short documentary Spiegel van Holland / Mirror of Holland, for which he received the Grand Prix du court métrage at the Cannes-festival of 1951. During the fifties he made six films for Shell, among others The Rival World (1955) on insects spreading deadly diseases and how to fight them. In 1958 his documentary Glass, a filming improvisation made in a glass factory, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. He directed several fiction films. Fanfare, a comedy situated in a small Dutch village, is still the Netherlands’ second most popular film ever (measured at the box office), only surpassed by Paul Verhoevens Turkish Delight. Abroad however, Fanfare was hardly noticed. In several shorts and in long documentaries like Alleman / The Human Dutch and Stem van het… read more

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Samuel Andrade

6Jun13

★★★★ simple but so effective. sometimes, 'looking down' is the best way to see above anyone else.

bennievermeer

29May12

Composed entirely of reflections in water, the film has the quality of a moving painting which gets increasingly abstract as the images are distorted by ripples. Its visual poetry is simply timeless. http://www.brnrd.net/blog/archive/2010/09/23/mirror-of-holland

Vyr

6Jan12

i've never been more enraptured by a short film.

Anton Williams likes this

Kamran

19Nov10

simplicity. Just watched this four times in a row, the third time along with the Grateful Dead's 'Ripple', and the fourth time with Pink Floyd's Cluster One then Cirrus Minor - so peaceful. A spectacular achievement, especially the shots between 2:45 and 3:20... I could watch those 35 seconds over and over and over again for days.