Work-In-Progress by Rob Rombout
“Amsterdam Stories USA”
A work-in-progress presentation
by Rob Rombout.
“Amsterdam Stories USA” is a road movie and mosaic portrayal of the little-known America following the migratory flow of the past through sixteen North American towns, sites, and populated places, all of them called “Amsterdam” or “New Amsterdam”. Each little Amsterdam, embedded within a network of landscapes and encounters, is a different, unique story that progressively weaves an imaginary map of provincial America. From East to West, from New York (formerly New Amsterdam) to California, two filmmakers of Dutch descent, Rob Rombout and Rogier van Eck, establish a panorama of Middle America via a gallery of sixteen tableaux. While tracing that single name “Amsterdam” across the map, they poetically examine the hinterlands of the USA, a little known America. This filmic immersion into the livelihoods and landscapes of a complex country is a new adventure: sometimes solemn, offbeat and touching.
Rob Rombout (Amsterdam, 1953) is a Dutch documentary film maker living in Belgium, who made a number of documentaries between 1985-2010, including Nord Express (1990), Les passagers de l’Alsace (2002) and Amsterdam via Amsterdam (2004). Since 1988 he has been lecturing documentary at educational institutions in Belgium and France and has been giving documentary workshops and lectures in at various places in Europe, South America, North America, the Middle East and Asia. Rob Rombout is vice-president of the Belgian committee of the French author association SCAM.
Special Formula:Programme:
* project story (20 min, English)
* excerpt screening (10 min, English)
* documentary photo presentation (10 min)
* excerpt screening of Rob Rombout’s earlier documentary “Amsterdam via Amsterdam”
(10 min, Arabic subtitles)
