Comedy is notorious for its tendency to get lost in translation and while it’s entirely possible that Jos Stelling’s 1999 tragicomic farce, NO TRAINS NO PLANES will have Dutch audiences rolling in the aisles, the film’s strange brand of surreal sentimental slapstick will likely leave British viewers cold.
Jos Stelling’s third film examines the painting of Rembrandt as he moves to Amsterdam in the latter part of his life. An extended study in light and composition, the film pursues Rembrandt’s – and Stelling’s – search for ideal representation of the world.
Part of the 31st Cambridge Film Festival’s retrospective on the Dutch film director Jos Stelling, THE ILLUSIONIST (1984) sets the spectator straight away into an oneiric world in pure Fellinian vein.
Jos Stelling: filmmaker, cinema owner, visionary. Although popular on the festival circuit, none of his films have achieved distribution in the UK. Stelling was a special guest at the Cambridge Film Festival 2011, and Dorian Stone had the opportunity to interview him.
DUSKA is a succinct distillation of Jos Stelling’s cinema, examining how, fundamentally, people communicate.
