Flikker

As a young man, Rob de Vries displayed an early interest in filmmaking with his 8mm camera, and in male love. In the late seventies, he left Rotterdam for the then dazzling city of Amsterdam, where the young gay movement grew explosively. Along with all sorts of artists and militant gays, he travelled across the country to protest against homophobia. And he captured everything on film. Sometimes in a documentary style, sometimes he opted for fiction, as in his short films about coming out or the queer-bashing theme. Incorporating this historical footage and his own stories, De Vries leads us through a fascinating private life, portraying an important period in gay emancipation in the seventies and eighties, a time when people in the Netherlands were still only mildly tolerant towards gays. The film starts with De Vries' first steps in cinema (atmospheric images of a Rotterdam bridge in the style of Joris Ivens), followed by his own wedding film and images of performances by artists with colourful names like Het Valse Nichtenkoor and Tedje en de flikkers.