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Een kettingzaag voor het verleden

Documentary, 1997, 66 min.

When the Dutch daily Het Parool revealed that the idiosyncratic filmmaker Louis van Gasteren had liquidated a Jewish refugee in 1943, this was followed by a long trial which Van Gasteren eventually won. In Een kettingzaag voor het verleden (A Chainsaw for the Past) the filmmaker talks for the first time about this subject on camera. The film shows how this dramatic event influenced his work and life, just as the relationship with famous parents - his mother, a celebrated opera-singer, and his father, the famous actor Louis van Gasteren Sr. - was also important to him.
Documentary-maker Ad 's Gravesande interviewed Van Gasteren in his home in Amsterdam, in Echternach (Luxemburg) where he grew up and on Sardinia where he put himself in the shoes of a shepherd. Interviews and archive footage are juxtaposed with fragments from his films. These turn out to be part of the difficult process of coming to terms with his past.

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