Frans Bromet

This year, IDFA will be screening a retrospective of the work of Frans Bromet. The independent-minded filmmaker and interviewer is difficult to categorise, having developed a widely varying style over the years. Alongside his distinctive voice, the most striking characteristics of his work are his active, committed way of filmmaking and the sober camera work.

Bromet’s place within the documentary tradition in the Netherlands is difficult to pin down, as he fits into none of the common categories. Dutch documentaries have traditionally been more of a registration, whereby the filmmaker stays in the background, rather than a plea or an indictment. The ‘Hollandse documentaire school’ [‘Holland Documentary School’] arose in the 1950s, with pioneers such as Bert Haanstra and Herman van der Horst winning a host of awards for their documentaries, characterized by unusual camera positions and visual ‘rhyming’ – linking similar shots with diverse content in the editing process. This school spread across the Netherlands like an oil slick, and gave rise to a period in which the Dutch documentary flourished.

Frans Bromet, who started out on his career in the mid 1960s, paid no heed to this whatsoever. No beautiful shots or aesthetic showing off; this, he said (generalizing somewhat) in an interview is nothing more than affectation on the part of the cameraman. His approach resembled more that of Ed van der Elsken and Roelof Kiers in the 1960s. Van der Elsken was a notable presence in his films, also taking responsibility for the camerawork and the interviews himself. Kiers set himself apart by filming everything in a sober, unadorned manner. Bromet combined these approaches, keeping the images as simple as possible when acting as the cameraman and being clearly present when conducting interviews.

Bromet’s career started with the documentary 1,2,3 Rhapsodie [1,2,3 Rhapsody] (1964), with which five students at the Filmacademie sought to turn the film world upside down. This 1,2,3 group, made up of Rene Daalder, Rem Koolhaas, Samuel Meyering, Jan de Bont and Frans Bromet, took turns to take on the roles of director, actor, scriptwriter, cameraman and sound man for five sketches. Everyone was to master each aspect, and all the aspects were equally important. The film opens with a sketch by Bromet in which Jan de Bont poses as an aviator, angler and motor-scooter rider. Bromet acts in a scene by Koolhaas, in which he is cared for like a baby. The film was almost banned as Rem Koolhaas played a lackey involved in a romance with Queen Elizabeth. After attending the film academy, Koolhaas became an architect, Jan de Bont a cameraman and later director and Meyering, who died two years ago, made a number of films, but then became a successful inventor (of Rolykit and all kinds of computer systems, among others). Rene Daalder cooperated with Bromet on a number of scripts: De Noord 20-29 [North 20-29] and Het Drielandenpunt [The Three-country Point] and quickly moved to Hollywood, where he was visited by Bromet for the documentary Je maintiendrai in Hollywood [I Serve in Hollywood].

Bromet’s style is characterised by a sober way of filming and unmissable presence. His most striking feature, however, is his voice, which has been described as drawling, monotone, slow and nasal. In combination with his cynical, raspingly dry but above all telling observations, this makes his documentaries eminently recognizable. Thom de Graaff, at the time leader of the political party D’66, described this accurately in the documentary series 7 dagen: het lijsttrekkersdebat [7 days: the party leaders’ debate] (2002), which was never broadcast owing to the assassination of politician Pim Fortuyn. Bromet’s closing question to De Graaff is whether he found it a difficult interview, in view of the fact that Paul Rosenmuller of the Groen Links party was not satisfied with his interview and warned everyone not to talk to Bromet. De Graaff burst out laughing and said: ‘You have a voice that is very slow and comes over with some difficulty. At first this is a little confusing, but your questions always provoke an answer.’ As cameraman and interviewer at the same time, Bromet is able in no time to tease all manner of intimate details from his interview subjects, while retaining an awareness of his surroundings. He once said that he kept one eye on the viewfinder to check the subject and the light, while with the other eye observing the surroundings and all the while listening to what the interviewee is saying and thinking up new questions. An extremely demanding working method; questions must be asked at exactly the right moment, particularly as he does not repeat scenes and interviews and does not edit out mistakes. It sometimes seems as if Bromet is deliberately trying to make time by making a great deal of use of filler words such as ‘Oh yes’ and ‘Aha, I see’. A typical example of this is the episode Ria and Tina from the documentary series Verbonden [Committed], in which Bromet exposes couples’ relationships. Only after eighteen years of married life does Ab dare tell his wife Ria that he actually feels himself to be a woman, and since then goes through life as Tina. Ria: ‘Tina was a man’. Bromet: ‘What was Tina’s name then?’ Ria: ‘Ab.’ Bromet: ‘I see’. There is a long silence, which Bromet uses to make a crucial comment: ‘That probably wasn’t the original idea behind your marriage, I would imagine.’ Whereupon Ria lets it all out.

Family plays a significant role in Bromet’s work. He has worked with his daughters and sons-in-law for many years in Bromet & dochters, the production company behind Bromet, and he regularly finds his subjects close to home. In 1972, his own family took part in De Noord 20-29, about the contrast between the original inhabitants of Ilpendam and the newcomers, of which he himself was one. In 1974, he made the film Het drielandenpunt, in which he follows his parents and uncle and aunt – even into bed – during a visit to the 'Drielandenpunt' - Three-country point, where the borders of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands meet. Bromet shows how his Jewish father sets foot on German soil again for the first time in many years. At the beginning of this century, he made the documentary Het water komt [Escaping the Flood], about the threat of flooding in Ilpendam, the village where he lives with his whole family. What follows is an almost hilarious search, with his family, for the promised land, which eventually turns out not to be outside of Ilpendam at all. For Bromet, it is the most normal thing in the world to interview his own family – and the members of that family are well used to father, grandfather, husband or father-in-law Bromet appearing with the camera on his shoulder and asking tricky questions. In fact, he has recently started offering masterclasses in family films. These masterclasses are given as part of a training institute for (young) documentary makers at which he started teaching last year. His aim is to teach families to make a programme themselves; a skill he believes is not taught at the Filmacademie.

In various interviews, Bromet refers to his way of working as committed reportage. He shows his own feelings while filming, and thereby provokes responses. His involvement is only in images and sound; the maker retains a distance to his subject, and Bromet will therefore also not jump in to help out his subject. What he wants to show are small, seemingly simple events from everyday life, which nevertheless contain great drama. Dutch drama; in the intolerant Netherlands, even the tiniest deviation is not tolerated, he has said in an interview. ‘This is a country of little grudges, here it’s all about annoying the neighbours, trying to make the lives of those around you a bit more difficult.’ Large audiences first got to know Bromet’s involvement in Buren [Neighbours], an extremely successful series broadcast on television almost throughout the entire 1990s. The idea arose in 1972 during the making of the documentary De Noord 20-29, which also features quarrelling neighbours. It sat on the shelf for many years before the broadcaster VPRO finally bit and Bromet’s television career took off. He made seventy-five episodes about the most diverse and bizarre feuding neighbours. All in his own inimitable style. Female neighbour: ‘Have you ever been inside his house?’ Bromet: ‘No. Have you?’ Female neighbour: ‘No, you should give it a try. I went over there recently, when the police were here, and closed the door. Just don’t ask how I did it!’ Bromet: ‘How did you do it?’