The Tradition of the Lonely Wandering Eye. The Films of Johan van der Keuken

However many cinéma vérité elements his documentaries contain, Johan van der Keuken has never made a secret of the fact that the ‘truth' of his films is not the universal truth, but quite emphatically his own. Wether in his early portraits of artists and socially committed documentaries from the sixties, or his recent international portraits of the age, the reality he records is always tinged by his subjective photographic eye, his playful use of the frame and of camera angles, his selection of characters and subjects and his way of editing. This applies to every film-maker to some extent, but more to Van der Keuken in the sense that he appears more manifestly as a participant in his films.