In a new IDFA Meets collaboration with Kromme Stad, we revisit Amsterdam’s squatting scene of the late 80s and early 2000s. Bringing together two films and a conversation with special guests, the program returns to questions that remain relevant: what tensions emerge as a city is reshaped by migration, housing shortages and shifting structures of belonging?

Transit Levantkade (1990) and Eigen Krakers Eerst (2003) approach these questions in their own unique way. Following the screenings, Edwin and Michel, the two squatters featured in Eigen Krakers Eerst, will join creative practitioner Monika Stepak for a conversation. All three were active in Amsterdam’s squatting scene for several decades.

The conversation is moderated by Yannesh Meijman, founder of Kromme Stad and director of the docufiction Hotel Mokum (2023).


Films:
Transit Levantkade (Rosemarie Blank, 1990, 1h17min)
A stylised documentary portrait of Amsterdam’s Levantkade. The area transforms from a rough no-man’s-land in the 1980s, where immigrants, urban nomads and squatters found refuge, into a heavily gentrified part of the KNSM-island in the Eastern Docklands. Contemporary footage is interwoven with archival material from 1926, when the same quay served as a departure point for Eastern European emigrants travelling to South America, with Lloyd Hotel as temporary accommodation.

Eigen Krakers Eerst (De Achtste Dag, HUMAN, 2003, 16 min)
Part of HUMAN’s documentary series De Achtste Dag, Eigen Krakers Eerst follows Amsterdam’s squatting movement during a period of housing shortages and newly opened European borders. As foreign workers also turned to squatting due to a lack of affordable housing, tensions emerged within the movement around solidarity, access and belonging. This tv special explores ideals of collective living collided with distrust and a rapidly changing city.