Fons Rademakers of: Hoe een zondagskind de Nederlandse film uitvond
Short documentary,
2003,
60 min.
When Fons Rademakers made the changeover from the dramatic arts to cinema in the late fifties, making feature films was far from obvious in the Netherlands. In those days, film was tantamount to documentaries, owing to people like Bert Haanstra and Joris Ivens. Rademakers's first film Dorp aan de rivier (1958), however, right away became the first Dutch film to be nominated for an Oscar; just like Rademakers was the first director to be awarded one, for De aanslag (1986). The director, who made his last film in 1989 with The Rose Garden, looks back on his career from his house in Italy. He talks about his friendship with Hugo Claus, who wrote the scripts for five of his eleven feature films, and about his collaboration with people like W.F. Hermans, Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman and his wife and colleague Lili Rademakers.
