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 I 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. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)