Obitaury: Bert Haanstra
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Like Gilbert Adair [obituary of Bert Haanstra, 28 October], I gritted my teeth through most of the "supporting programme" shorts that were screened at art houses in the Fifties and Sixties, writes Timothy Gee. Our recollections differ, though, in the case of Bert Haanstra's documentaries.
His two best-received were The Rival World (1955) and Rembrandt, Painter of Man (1957), both overlooked in his obituary. Both of them contained sequences which remain vividly in the memory more than 40 years later.
The flight of the crop- dusting aircraft through a locust plague, the windscreen wipers totally unable to cope with the debris, provided indelible visual and aural images. But the Rembrandt film was more eloquent still. It concluded with a sequence of the painter's selfportraits, arranged chronologically, dissolving one into the other. There is perhaps no other painter who has left the raw material for such a clear- sighted, unsentimental record of the human face from early manhood to old age. Haanstra made the most of his opportunity. Careful framing and skilled lighting combined to produce this uniquely cinematic version of the ages of man.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments