Sunday, July 24, 2005

07.24.05 SFJFF: Erik Van Loon

What is a towering, blonde, aryan-as-anything man in a cowboy hat and a tight blue woman's sweater vest doing at the SF Jewish Film Festival? This should have a great punchline but it doesn't--it just has an answer. He is Erik Van Loon. He is here all the way from Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and he is my official partner-in-crime for the festival. As one of the local filmmakers here, I feel I owe it to all the folks who have been so kind to me in other cities, to make our visiting filmmakers feel welcome...and really, it's selfish, because meeting these extraordinary people from all over the world is the one of the highlights of "festival life" for me. Check out what Erik has contributed to the fest:
We expand our festival's scope this year with renowned Dutch artist Erik van Loon's ineffably haunting 11-hour film installation A Victim's Perspective...
...This past January marked the 60th anniversary of the Death March from Auschwitz: as the Russians advanced on the German lines, the 60,000 remaining prisoners at Auschwitz were forced to walk 40 miles in the bitter Polish winter under the most brutal circumstances to an evacuation station, where they would be transported to German camps away from the front. Some 20,000 are thought to have perished along this path. On the anniversary in 2005, van Loon, with a camera mounted to his body, walked this same route.

WOW.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

erik von loon or erik van loon

Dear Liz,

I am still Dutch. I dont' say that I hate Germans but it is really better that you change my name in erik van loon.