Movies: Moniek Toebosch

In a monumental building a group of scientists submit women to obscure experiments in which sexuality and cruelty constantly merge into one another. "Pentimento" is an art-historical term for a hidden image underneath the actual image giving an indic...

The actual life and the fiction created by a successful pulp author begin to blend together....

"The Great Magician" - A portrait of Frans Zwartjes (1927-2017), sometimes called 'the most important experimental filmmaker of his time' by the American essayist Susan Sontag....

Frans Zwartjes' two visions of womanhood in Behind Your Walls have all the febrile frustration associated with his previous work. Flesh looks like crisp paper about to be despoiled, a torpid heat reduces movement to fidgets and hesitations. - MIFF...

An experimental film by Dutch filmmaker Frans Zwartjes....

Set on the landing and the stairs of Zwartjes’ new house, then still empty, in The Hague. The filmmaker suggests a mysterious and complex space by using a ‘floating’ camera to film a number of crawling, creeping personages. (MUBI)...

Hes, an uptight and disaffected social worker reaching retirement, discovers a young woman, Anna, in the closet of an acquaintance who has committed suicide. Realizing that she has been kept in the apartment all her life, he moves in and helps her co...

De Mantel der Liefde is a bizarre, over the top and at times hilarious settling of scores with the Catholic Church, commercial movie culture and 1970's petit bourgeois Dutch culture in general....

An experimental look at the sexual life of a couple....

Zwartjes made many films without dialogue or sound. The music can however be very important. Zwartjes composes it himself, sometimes together with his brother Rudolf and Lodewijk de Boer. Audition is a fine example of a Zwartjes film with an importan...

Film shot entirely in the open air with women walking around a garden, life-sized photos in the grass and people at the table. A film from the series Home Sweet Home....

Two girls nestle beside each other on a couch and try desperately to conceal their mutual craving. Sexuality is suggested through the weird rhythm of the film's editing and the tactile quality of the images. - MIFF...

Spectator is one of the early masterpieces by Zwartjes. The film explicitly shows one of Frans Zwartjes’ main themes: the relationship between husband and wife. It is a relationship that is strongly marked by power and domination, sexual attraction a...

Three women, wear makeup or masks, having a meal....

Zwartjes' reflections on Beckett, situated between trees....