Books
Books and publications on film, literature, visual culture and the histories that connect them.
Jan Cremer
Jan Cremer de Onverbiddelijke is a biographical graphic novel written by Ruud den Drijver about Cremer’s early years in Paris in the 1950s and New York in the 1960s, his literary breakthrough and his encounter with Jayne Mansfield. The book combines a dramatic, poetic story with a documentary portrait of the man behind the phenomenon.
Circus Bloteman
In Circus Bloteman, Ruud den Drijver chronicles the life of Wim Verstappen, pioneer of the Dutch film new wave and one of the country’s most productive filmmakers of the 1970s. For this biography, he draws on conversations with Verstappen and Pim de la Parra, diaries, interviews and the testimony of people who knew him.
Baron Jack
Baron Jack is Ruud den Drijver’s biography of Jack Gimberg, better known as John Van Dreelen, the first Dutch Hollywood actor after the Second World War. From London and Broadway to film and television in the United States, Gimberg built an international career playing aristocrats, spies, scientists and Hollywood’s favourite Nazi officers.
Soft Soap on the Silkscreen
Soft Soap on the Silkscreen revisits a period in which the novel seemed to disappear, cinema lost its bearings and their shared dream began to change shape. Through the attempted film adaptation of Willem Elsschot’s Lijmen/Het Been, Ruud den Drijver reflects on the changing relationship between novel and film.
Analyses aan de montagetafel
A Scorpio Press film publication from the Stichting Filmproject archive.