Synopsis
Alternating between personal and more reflective elements is characteristic of Johan van der Keuken’s films. At the beginning of The Long Holiday, his doctor tells him that he does not have long to live due to prostate cancer. For the filmmaker and his wife Nosh van der Lely, this news is a stimulus to travel the world, as they have been doing all their lives. Van der Keuken spends the rest of his precious time looking and listening, and filming on both a small digital video camera and on 35mm film. He visits meditating monks in Bhutan, he goes to the Sahel to film children, and wanders around among the inhabitants of the favelas in Brazil. He intersperses these travel scenes with still lives of objects he has collected over the course of his life. In his poetic voice-over, Van der Keuken talks about himself and about life. He will keep on filming until the end, “because as long as I can make an image, I’m alive.” The result is a powerful “road-air-movie,” and an ode to life on earth.