Met Eric de Kuyper als rug en spilfiguur heeft de Nijmeegse school in 1986 al vier films afgeleverd: Casta Diva, Naughty Boys, Mathilde (van Emile Poppe) en A Strange Love Affair (samen met Paul Verstraten). Constanten zijn dat deze films heel snel zijn gemaakt, met weinig geld, dat er gretig uit films in wordt geciteerd, dat ze in zwart-wit zijn en dat ze andere visuele en auditieve prikkels uitsturen dan de doorsnee speelfilm. Een bloemlezing uit de Kuypers mijmeringen.

“The thing that writing teaches you, which is probably the thing I’ve discovered that I know best about, is the mastery of form. And each discipline is really an exercise in understanding what is allowable in the structure of that particular form. Screenplay writing has curves and you have to write for the curves of the story.”

It is Khleifi’s achievement to have embodied certain aspects of Palestinian women’s lives in film. He is careful to let the strengths of Farah and Sahar emerge slowly, even if at a pace that risks losing the film the larger audience it deserves. He deliberately disappoints the expectations engendered in us by the commercial film (plot, suspense, drama), in favor of a representational idiom more innovative and – because of its congruence with its anomalous and eccentric material – more authentic.

Van 1970 tot 1986 verschenen in het dagblad Süddeutsche Zeitung wekelijks Frieda Grafe’s Filmtips, korte commentaren op het filmaanbod in München, vaak slechts één zin per film. Sabzian selecteerde en vertaalde acht Filmtips.

Film is something in which you are continually shown something, isn’t it? People who watch films each understand the images from their own point of view, translating them into their own time.