De as van Phoenix

On 26 November 2009, a transit warehouse in Amsterdam-Noord burnt to the ground. With it, the personal belongings of hundreds of renters went up in smoke. What remains are the memories. John Appel put a number of victims in front of a green screen and asked them about the things they lost forever: from furniture and an old-timer, restored with great effort and a lot of money, to a guitar signed by U2, historical sound recordings and personal mementoes of family and childhood. In the background, the bemoaned objects are seen one last time, before the sea of flames irretrievably consumes them one last time and the director mercilessly shows how he found them as silent witnesses among the rubble. The irony - but also the consolation - lies in the fact that the strong memories give the regretted objects a new life. Commissioned by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, to launch the Dutch Documentary Collection, which compiles highlights from the work of Dutch documentary-makers in a DVD box.