Marleen Gorris, the Oscar-winning director of Antonia’s Line, has an intriguing new project and this time, it’s not a movie, she tells Geoffrey Macnab
Gorris has just signed up for a two year stint as artistic, commercial and animation consultant at the Dutch Film Fund, overseeing a hefty budget of €3 million for development and production. She is succeeding Ate de Jong. The position carries real power. Working closely with Film Fund boss Doreen Boonekamp, Gorris will be able to back the projects she believes in without having to refer to committees. Alongside Gorris, Frank Peijnenburg (formerly of A-Film) has been appointed to do a similar job for arthouse film.
Speaking to the Daily Tiger, Gorris explains why she took on a job that will inevitably cut into the time she can devote to her own projects. “Like every other filmmaker, I have lots and lots of plans,” Gorris notes of her own feature film projects. “Half of the time, they fall through.”
She said that the Film Fund was fully aware that she was a working filmmaker. “As a film fund or any other subsidising body, it’s a matter of whether you take people from the field or people who are strangers to the subject. You always have to sort out what’s best for quality.” Gorris adds that she is looking forward to the challenge “of something new”. She said that she relished “working with writers and developing projects from a very early stage.”
Asked whether it would feel uncomfortable dealing with applications from filmmakers she knows personally, Gorris said this shouldn’t be an issue. “Because during the past years I’ve worked abroad most of the time, I am practically the only filmmaker in Holland who doesn’t know a lot of people! That’s really not the first thing that comes to mind. Of course, you always have to take care to judge the projects on their merits and not so much on the fact that you happen to know people.”
Gorris’s next directorial assignment will be on a four-part TV drama, Rembrandt and I, about Rembrandt’s life and works. She will be directing the EO-backed series and has scripted one of the episodes. This will shoot at the end of the year. As for her feature films, having seen her project Heaven & Earth postponed at the last moment, she will put these on hold. “I will be working on Film Fund business,” she says.