Reformation

Reformeren

  • Jeanette Groenendaal
  • Netherlands
  • 2011
  • 82 min
  • World Premiere
  • Paradocs
At the age of seven, director Jeanette Groenendaal moved to a deeply religious village. It was the 1970s, and the girl's arrival from the big city of Utrecht provoked fear in the hearts of the inhabitants of the small hamlet in the Dutch Bible Belt. They saw her as an "alien" and a "city whore," and treated her accordingly. The teacher at her strict Calvinist school called her the "Devil's daughter" and the whole class repeated his words. Thirty-eight years later, Groenendaal (\i Dutch Cocaine Factory\i0 , 2007) returns to the village to film a personal study of the scapegoat mechanism. She sets up a complex performance/film project in the village, staging tableaux performances based on the frozen images from her memories of this emotionally charged location. This stylized autobiography is more than a personal therapy session or a documentary about a fundamentalist community. It returns to the past, not out of revenge or a need to judge, but to investigate the roots of a past that is returning to the present, with the contemporary outpouring of religion, conservatism, xenophobia, and judgmental moral standards. Workshopped at IDFA 2009, Groenendaal had the public contribute their thoughts and feelings to the creation of the film.

Credits

  • 82 min
  • color / black and white
  • video
  • Spoken languages: Dutch, English
  • Subtitles in: Arabic, English
Director
Jeanette Groenendaal
Production
Jeanette Groenendaal for G-netwerk
Cinematography
Jeanette Groenendaal
Editing
Jeanette Groenendaal, Zoot Derks
Sound
Jeanette Groenendaal

Share this film

Print this page

IDFA history

This website uses cookies.

By using cookies we can measure how our site is used, how it can be further improved and to personalize the content of online advertisements.

Read
 here everything about our cookie policy. If you choose to decline, we only place functional and analytical cookies