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You are here: Home Life in Blogs & photos A tale of two Netherlands

06/03/2009A tale of two Netherlands

Viewing the 1963 documentary Alleman as part of his Dutch lesson, Graham Jackson finds himself on a trip into the Dutch psyche…

Arriving at my Dutch class in Deventer last week, it was to my pleasant surprise that our tutor wheeled in an old fashioned (though typical for a school) TV and video set.  

In an instant I was back in the mid 1990s at secondary school; fond memories of lessons enlivened by watching woefully produced and badly recorded programmes.  Apologies for the whimsical digression into nostalgia but…

The subject of this lesson certainly lived up to such recollections of the past.  Our viewing for the afternoon was the 1963 documentary Alleman, directed by Bert Haanstra and narrated by the renowned writer Simon Carmiggelt.  Thus, I and the rest of the class were transported back to an earlier rendering of modern Netherlands, one which was fundamentally the blueprint for the nation we inhabit today.  It became apparent that this was a subtly constructed montage of the day to day workings of a country.  This was also a country re-inventing itself from the foundations upwards and re-discovering its routines, ideals, interests and purpose.  The documentary conveys a land of innocence and purity, a society unshackled and attempting to submerge the horrors of its recent past.

Introduction to Alleman (in Dutch)


In bringing together two iconic figures of Dutch culture, this alone ensures its value as an intuitive historical artefact.  Yet is there more to be unearthed than merely a fleeting cultural interest?  Focusing on themes of the everyday, the film’s qualities provide a fascinating entry into educating the viewer about the Dutch psyche.

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