The Mask is a film about the legacies of revolutionary ideals and a portrait of solitude and societal false selves, moving centrifugally around the life of Philippe, a homeless 23-year old man in Paris, during the festivities thrown for the bicentenary of the French Revolution over the month of June 1989. Through exchanges with the young man, and observation of the structures around him, the film captures the ambiguities of the real image, that “leads us astray, away from the marks and markers of the documentary,” as van der Keuken wrote of the film in 1995.
Born in Amsterdam in 1938, Johan van der Keuken was a Dutch documentary filmmaker and photographer who published several successful photo books and over 55 films across a 40-year period, approaching the complexities and injustices of migration, disability, representation, work, housing, language and beauty through speculative and associative forms. Van der Keuken’s cinema lives off the tension between ethics and aesthetics, between a radical commitment to the world and a distinct attention to form.
Presented in collaboration with Open City Documentary Festival. From October 2024 to February 2025, Sabzian and CINEMATEK organised a complete retrospective of van der Keuken’s films. As part of this, Sabzian published a special issue featuring a compilation of writing by Van der Keuken alongside a collection of texts about his work and a complete annotated filmography of his films.
Still courtesy © Estate of Johan van der Keuken
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