Abstract

Jan Hanlo, and that man I am myself is an impressionistic documentary by BarBara Hanlo about her great-uncle JAN HANLO, a famous Dutch writer and poet in the fifties who died in 1969.

The film seeks to find a subjective entrance to the world of the poet. Guided in the soundtrack by prose and poems of the poet himself, the image retraces places and scenes from his life as if we – the audience – share his experiences.

Jan Hanlo had an incredible eye for detail and he investigated questions nobody would investigate: is a pea as big as a football still a pea? He was the first human being to find out, that wasps can clean your house... Besides this there were his collapses with the world of imperatives – religion, the law, he spent some time in a mental institution – and his longing for the detachment of the absolute youth. The film ends with his stay in Marrakech where to his own surprise he finds a relative freedom within the walls of the city. It is there that he falls in love with a young boy.

The Dutch film press described “Jan Hanlo, en die man ben ik zelf” as a film with taste, exquisite, an intriguing rhythm and a wilful, almost experimental composition.