Belle van Zuylen - Madame de Charrière

The genesis of BELLE VAN ZUYLEN reveals a great deal about the Dutch film industry. Digna Sinke conceived the idea for a film about the eighteenth-century writer, composer, and avid letter-writer back in the late 1970s. Composer Marius Flothuis asked her why no film had ever been made about this first feminist, who, at the crossroads of Enlightenment and Romanticism, maintained a passionate correspondence with the younger French intellectual Benjamin Constant. Yet, it would take more than a decade before the film could be made, as it faced numerous objections from the male gatekeepers at broadcasters and film funds. The result was both literary and lighthearted: the cast of stage actors were well-suited to the eighteenth-century language, but the staging also feels playful and ironic more than thirty years later. The melodramatic events are observed with curiosity: Belle Van Zuylen is trapped in a barren marriage and has fled to Paris to live. After an initial encounter with Constant, she decides to accompany her husband to Switzerland, where the intellectual love affair with Constant continues. The revision of concepts like Reason and Romanticism transport the film to the present. (Dana Linssen)

In the presence of Digna Sinke and Gerwin Tamsma (Curator).

Digna Sinke (selection): GROETEN UIT ZONNEMAIRE (1972), DE STILLE OCEAAN (1984), BELLE VAN ZUYLEN (1993), Tiengemeten Project (2001–2006), WEEMOED EN WILDERNIS (2010), AFTER THE TONE (2014), UNDER THE SURFACE (2016), BEWAREN / KEEPING & SAVING (2018), ZOET & ZOUT (2019), GRENZEN (2020), HEMELSLEUTEL (2024)