Trying to describe oneself is a movie about representation. How it is possible, through film, to describe oneself and describe others. With the camera as mirror and third eye. At first, a collage-like combination of letter-writing, investigation and journey, something between documentary and feature film. Finally, a portrait of Boris Lehman from 1989 to 1995, part II of BABEL.
Following in the footsteps of his uncle, this film documents the last days of Johan van der Keuken.
During the shooting of this film, four long interviews were recorded by Thierry Nouel, marking out the different stages of the life and work of the Dutch director. Johan van der Keuken analyzes the relationships between art and reality, morality and the political, gives his conception of exchanges and conflicts between interiority and the outside world. He explains with precision this research which goes at all to the intimate, and which did not progress without rejections and moments of doubt. Shortly before his death, he had reviewed this document and wanted it to be shown as such, in its unedited state.
Last Words: My Sister Yoka (1998) is the director's tribute to his sister, who speaks to the camera just days before she dies of cancer.
Johan van der Keuken (4 April 1938 – 7 January 2001) was a Dutch documentary filmmaker, author, and photographer. In a career that spanned 42 years, Van der Keuken produced 55 documentary films, six of which won eight awards. He also wrote nine books on photography and films, his field of interest. For all his efforts, he received seven awards for his life work, and one other for photography.
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