Weemoed & Wildernis

Since 1996, Digna Sinke has been filming her home turf – the island of Tiengemeten in Haringvliet, in the province of South Holland. She loves the mud, the panorama, the fact that all the roads end at the dike. Every year, she takes her camera, sets it up on a tripod at the same position on the island, and films the same T junction. Every year, it is only the seasons that change, until people from so-called “project groups” are seen cycling around the island.

Tiengemeten, once turned into agricultural land because of its fertile soil, is to be rewilded. The whole island will be turned upside down, and it will no longer be possible to take up a fixed camera position there. The island where Sinke was born has become a development project. The asphalt roads are being torn up, creeks dug, trees torn out and replaced by new ones, dikes raised or demolished.

Digna Sinke follows the changes in the landscape over the course of 13 years, while also looking back at the changes in her own life. Her husband, film producer René Scholten, became terminally ill in this period, making Weemoed & Wildernis (Wistful Wilderness) a poignant, poetic reflection on mutability and transience.