Close Up

1 May 2018: Jaap Pieters: The Long Gaze

winkelwagenman-jaap-pieters.jpg

Jaap Pieters, the “eye of Amsterdam,” began shooting films in Super8 in 1985. Much of his work concentrates on urban subjects – trams, crossroads, city dwellers and drifters – to which Pieters directs his voyeuristic gaze to capture their everyday existence. Many of his films consist of only one reel of film lasting three minutes and twenty seconds. Pieters’ choice to work with the limits and the specificity of Super8 film radically informs his aesthetics. “It is one reel, and that’s it. This is my unit. . . . And then it’s over for me,” he once explained. 

Bringing Jaap Pieters’ films to London for the first time, this programme embraces the filmmaker’s habit to improvise the order and selection of films based on the setting and atmosphere of the screening. This hour-long, spontaneously selected, programme will include Stringless, Taksimtree and Clear Views and will be followed by a Q&A with Pieters.


Many thanks to Grazia Ingravalle and Jaap Pieters for making this programme possible.