Heddy Honigmann: Direct Address
September 25–October
6, 2003
Heddy
Honigmann’s films are distinguished by their beautifully composed
images and elegant structures, but what makes the Dutch filmmaker’s
work unique is the manner in which she gains access to the farthest
reaches of her subjects’ souls. Honigmann assesses the human
condition using objects, poetry, and music to open the floodgates
of memories and stories of such far-flung people as cab drivers
from Lima, Bosnian widows, peacekeepers from around the world, and
illegal immigrants in Paris.
An endlessly curious offscreen presence,
Honigmann teases out the complex, astonishingly resilient, and
often funny aspects of people’s
amazing lives. Her questions are direct and compassionate but persistent—like
those of an old, dear friend. Her fiction features and shorts, while
less well-known, are characterized by the same complex yet straightforward
presentation of images and emotions buried beneath the surface of
quotidian existence as are her documentaries, and are no less afraid
of dealing with taboo subject matter.
Organized by Jytte Jensen, Associate Curator,
Department of Film and Media. This exhibition is made possible
by The Netherland-America
Foundation and Holland Film. Additional support is provided by Ideale
Audience, Paris, and the Consulate General of The Netherlands in
New York. The Museum is grateful to Pieter van Huystee Film, Amsterdam,
for allowing MoMA to host the world premiere of Dame la mano. Special
thanks go to The Cutting Room and Stolichnaya Vodka.
. 1996. The Netherlands. Directed
by Heddy Honigmann. The erotic poetry of Brazil’s celebrated
poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade inspires senior citizens in Rio
de Janeiro to share recollections
of their own youthful experiences. Frank and funny memories of passion
and sexual adventure combine with the pervasive sensuality of the
city of Rio, and the film becomes a taboo-breaking ode to physical
love. Courtesy First Run/Icarus Films, New York. In Portuguese with
English subtitles. 76 min.
. 1990. The Netherlands.
Directed by Heddy Honigmann. With Lou Lou Rhemrev, Saskia Temmink.
Four women, four monologues: the temptress, the shy girl, the belligerent
girl, and the dreamer. Four ironic approaches to getting your man.
In Dutch with English subtitles. 15 min.
. 1995. The Netherlands. Directed by Heddy Honigmann.
With Johanna ter Steege, Guy van Sande. A contemporary close-up of
the amour fou between two lovers whose love is not meant to be but
whose indefatigable wills try to overcome the obstacles of reality.
In Dutch with English subtitles. 114 min.
. 2000. The Netherlands. Directed by Heddy
Honigmann. The filmmaker’s contemplation of the Eighth Commandment
takes the viewer from the relative innocuousness of purse stealing
and fare dodging to violent street crime and the horror of the missing
people from Argentina’s “dirty war.” In Dutch with
English subtitles. 55 min.
. 2001. The Netherlands. Directed by Heddy Honigmann. In 1992,
during the Bosnian war, 80
percent of the men living in a small village in the hills surrounding
Sarajevo were massacred. This moving film commemorates these neighbors,
hunters, soccer players, carpenters, husbands, and sons through their
widows’ and families’ testimonies. In Serbo-Croatian
with English subtitles. 50 min.
. 2003. The
Netherlands. Directed by Heddy Honigmann. Every Sunday night, a
restaurant in New Jersey
is transformed into “La Esquina Habanera,” where exiled
Cubans gather to sweat, applaud, and play the most sensual of all
dance music, the rumba. The film’s characters tell their tales
of exile and describe the Sunday nights as providing them with their
zest for life—the rhythm of the drums giving them the feeling
of “almost Cuba.” World premiere. In Spanish with English
subtitles. 120 min.
. 1993. The Netherlands.
Directed by Heddy Honigmann. An unusual road-movie-cum-spiritual-journey
about the art of survival of the teachers, economists, actors, secret-service
agents, and housewives of Lima who drive taxis in order to earn a
little extra in the face of Peru’s disastrous economic situation.
A panorama of human spirit and ingenuity. In Spanish with English
subtitles. 80 min.
. 1999. The Netherlands. Directed by
Heddy Honigmann. Patsy Cline’s ballad “Crazy,” among a number of other
songs that brought solace to Dutch U.N. soldiers during their peacekeeping
missions, triggers reminiscences of the soldiers’ experiences
in battlefields in Korea, Lebanon, Cambodia, Rwanda, former Yugoslavia,
and of the fall of Srebrenica in 1995. Poignant and heartshattering,
the film is a personal journey inside the lives of these veterans.
In Dutch and Serb with English subtitles. 97 min.
. 1997. The Netherlands. Directed by Heddy Honigmann.
Algerian, Malian, and Romanian musicians
tell their stories of war and exile in this high-spirited yet melancholy
film about the lives of illegal immigrants who play music in the
tunnels of the Paris Métro. Courtesy First Run/Icarus Films.
In French and Spanish with English subtitles. 108 min.
. 1988. The
Netherlands. Written and directed by Heddy Honigmann. With Joop
Admiraal, Marten Klein. A
sensitive approach to a rare screen topic: Alzheimer’s disease.
Mixing memory and present time, Honigmann allows the viewer to inhabit
the protagonist’s history and mind. In English and Dutch, English
subtitles. 112 min.
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