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THE DETOUR |
Sigma Pictures, Lotus Film, Lichtspiel Filmproduktion.
Prod: Matthijs van Heijningen, Erich Lackner; Co-prod: Wulf-Ernst Hoffer; Dir/Scr: Frouke Fokkema; Ph: Wolfgang Simon; Prod des: Wilbert van Dorp; Cost des: Dinorah Iorio; Ed: August Verschueren.
With Tamar van den Dop (Joana de Vries), Joachim Bissmeier (Thomas Bernhard), Jan Decleir (Johan de Vries), Willeke van Ammelrooy (Lousy de Vries), Thom Hoffman (Camille Kleber), Peer Mascini (Luc de Koning).
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Among the titles are the first two films by future Oscar-winner Marleen Gorris: De stilte rond Christine M (A Question of Silence, 1982) and Gebroken spiegels (Broken Mirrors, 1984); Nouchka van Brakel´s erotic comedy Een maand later (Changing Places, 1987); a couple of ground-breaking gay films (Lieve jongens/Dear Boys in 1981; and Voor een verloren soldaat/For a Lost Soldier in 1992); two of British director Sally Potter´s most distinctive movies, Orlando (1992) and The Tango Lesson (1997); and last year´s hit children´s film, De bal (The Ball).
“It´s the story of a quest for
identity. The girl tries to find
herself through a father figure”
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Many were co-productions and all were a struggle to put together, admits van Heijningen, who recently moved his production base from the countryside a half-hour outside Amsterdam (two hours during rush hour) to a magnificent canal house on the Singel, which combines living quarters and production offices and which is currently in the process of being renovated from basement to attic.
But things have, he concedes, become a little easier since the new tax incentives were introduced by the Dutch Ministry of Finance at the beginning of last year (see Preview 41, page 36). At present, there is some controversy in the Netherlands about the way in which the incentives have been used to fund English-language films with little or no Dutch ‘content´. But this is not, nor has ever been, van Heijningen´s way: a canny businessman, he has embraced the new legislation and adapted it to the kind of film-making in which he has always specialised.
Only connect: Tamar van den Dop as Joana, the young Dutch woman who establishes a relationship with Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (Joachim Bissmeier)
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Thus the turn of the millennium sees Sigma with four films in various stages of development - the highest number since the early nineties. In addition to The Detour, there is The Island of the Mapmaker´s Wife, an English-language movie about a love affair conducted around the negotiations for a valuable 17th-century map, which will be directed by UCLA graduate Michie Gleason; Dutch comedy-drama The Black Meteor, about a young African soccer genius who arrives in the quintessentially Dutch small town of Almelo in 1958, to be directed by Guido Peters (who previously helmed the hit Ciske de rat/Ciske the Rat for van Heijningen in 1984); and The Friendship, a new film from another van Heijningen protégée, Nouchka van Brakel.
“It´s nice that, with the tax money, we have been able to make one art picture, two local pictures and one American co-production in which we have a majority stake,” he says, gesturing expansively with his trade-mark cigar. “Otherwise, we would never have been able to get these projects together.”
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