Main Programme  

In 1991, French best-selling author Houellebecq wrote “To Stay Alive” - a thought-provoking essay on insanity, survival, and art. In the essay he urges poets who are weary of life to “return to the origin; that is, to suffering.” Reading the work, the godfather of punk rock Iggy Pop immediately recognized his own struggle as a young artist, when he too was close to insanity. Director Erik Lieshout made the text into manifest signed by both artists and world’s loners. He filmed Houellebecq in his grandparents’ kitchen and visited the people with psychiatric disorders whose life stories inspired the essay. From his sundrenched garden in Miami, Iggy Pop reads from Michel Houellebecq’s “To Stay Alive”. Pop speaks to us directly through Houellebecq’s defiant, impassioned words, which call on us to break our chains and go on the attack, even if solitude is the price we pay for it.

Awards

Biografilm Festival – Best Film Unipol Award; Life Tales Award, 2017
Eurodok – Public prize, 2017

Erik Lieshout                      

Erik Lieshout (b. 1961) is a Dutch film, television and commercial director. He made his mark with a documentary movie “Journey to the End of the Night” (1986) based on the novel with the same name written by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. He continued to perpetuate literature with a documentary film of Paris based author Willem Frederik Hermans. Jules Deedler acts in his laudry commercial for the television of Netherlands.

Arno Hagers

Editing and sound director Arno Hagers works for Netherland’s broadcast company “VPRO”. Beside films made with Erik Lieshout and Reiner van Brummeln, he directed “The potato eaters” – a movie about the snack-bar where one family has been baking French fries for more than 55 years.

Reinier van Brummelen

Reiner van Brummelen (b.1961) studied in Hague. During his lighting work for VPRO-TV children’s programs, he was noticed by Peter Greenaway. Together with him, Reiner van Brummelen worked as cinematographer and lightning artist.

Filmography

Last Words (Derniers Mots, 2008)