MIJN LANDBOUWBELANG

A film by Frank van Valderen, Hans van Hezik, Levon Lois and Michiel Ubels

2021 | 68 mins | Digital Video | Color | 25fps

It was five years in the making, this documentary about one of the last squatters' strongholds in the Netherlands: the Landbouwbelang in Maastricht. A film about living together in a closed community. A community that develops its own codes and rules through trial and error, balancing between individual freedom and collective harmony, but remains dependent on the good will of the society of which it is a part.

The film is also a metaphor for the struggles of filmmaker Frank van Valderen, whose life was completely taken over by the turbulent production of this documentary.

Artist Statement

My name is Frank van Valderen, artist and filmmaker. With the help of Maastricht production platform Video Power, in 2016 I started working on a documentary about the Landbouwbelang, the largest squat in Maastricht. What started as a film about current events, its struggle for survival, turned into an increasingly ambitious project to show the entire Landbouwbelang in all its aspects. Who are the residents, how do they live together, how does the decision-making process run?  Starting in 2019, I received help from AV specialist Levon Lois. She was a huge addition to the project, both technically and in terms of content, and together we made many visits to the Landbouwbelang. What remained a difficult problem was finding an overarching storyline. Despite my experience as an editor, I did not succeed in putting together interesting montages about the Landbouwbelang. We then enlisted the help of filmmaker and artist Michiel Ubels. During our conversations we saw that the life of the residents in the Landbouwbelang has parallels with the work on this documentary and with my own life. This became the thread. I myself was the missing link.  Hans van Hezik, my producer at Video Power, chose to help with filming and interviews as well. So the four of us embarked on a much more personal journey of discovery into what the Landbouwbelang is. A film that also forced us as creators to step outside of our comfort zone. The editing was largely created by Michiel, who with his sense of tension, uncomfortable situations and humor was able to make a choice from all the footage of the past years. 

TEMP: Interview text and/or video.