RONGWRONG FOUNDATION
The Rongwrong Foundation is an initiative of Anna Abrahams and Jan Frederik Groot. The name happens to coincide with the title of the magazine Rongwrong that appeared precisely once in the 1910s.
Since 1989, Rongwrong produces films about cultural and social subjects, publications on media and art theory and installations in which the audience is invited to play an active role.
FILMOGRAPHY Anna Abrahams and Jan-Frederik Groot
selection of films
7 Peaks, 2012, 35mm, 23'
A film about humans’ drive to climb to the top of a mountain if they find themselves at its foot. Will the summit provide a clearer picture of our complicated existence? Do angels fly there? Or do you have to battle dragons?
Desert 79°, 2010, 35mm, 19'
Three stammering reports by polar travellers, filmed in various tints of white. (Best international experimental film Cortopotere 2010, Grand Prix 25FPS Zagreb 2010)
DIY, 2009, 16mm, 8'
A home movie of the filmmakers' family building a studio, shot with a classic wind-up camera, combined with quiet shots of an anonymous urban landscape.
5 Walks – Hercynia Silva, 2008, 35mm, 15'
The horror and grandeur of the last remnants of Northern European primary forest conjure up a history of hunting, fleeing and meetings with magical creatures. (First prize Asolo Art Film Festival 2008)
Null X, 2004, 35mm, 6’
Film about the contemporary built-environment, structured around the number 8
Cadavre Exquis, 2004, 16mm, 36 min. Cadavre Exquis introduces five experimental filmmakers, thereby showing the different aspects of experimental cinema in the Netherlands. With Lonnie van Brummelen, Gerard Holthuis, Jeroen Eisinga, Joost Rekveld and Henri Plaat.
Rowing, 2003, 35mm, 1 min. Animated film loop of a rower, made with a self made pinhole camera. The frozen images are timeless, the journey eternal. Made for an exhibition of our work in the science museum NEMO in Amsterdam.
0°, 2003, 10 min, An inquiry into the zero degree of filmmaking. The European landscape is captured in a series of film sequences. The kernel of the project is a set of sharply defined rules: the position of the camera and the arrangement of the shots are determined by geodesical and mathematical principles.
Resort, 2002, 15 min. A series of film images of two centres for asylum seekers in the North of the Netherlands. Our aim is to preserve for posterity the reality of the asylum seekers’ center. There is no judgement. Dry images show life in the asylum seekers’ centers, where people spend most of their time waiting. (Dutch Pavillion Architecture Biennale di Venezia, Best documentary Iowa Filmfest)
Machine Eye, 2000, 12 min. A quest for the perfect image of the demolishing of the late modern apartment district the Bijlmermeer in Amsterdam South-East. In our work we feel akin to the surveyor: the camera is a measuring instrument, and the filmmaker an engineer who builds his own pinhole filmcamera.
Grave in the Tropics, 1998, 45 min. A documentary whodunit that sketches relations between white plantation owners, the Dutch authorities and the black inhabitants of the rural districts of Curacao at the turn of the 20th century. Who killed the assistant manager of the ostrich farmer on the Choloma estate on the evening of Wednesday 27 August 1913, and why?
Notes from the Underground, 1998, 30 min. Group portrait of five Dutch independent filmmakers who make wayward and valuable films. The film consists of a relay race of five studio visits: Cyrus Frisch, Karel Doing, Frans Zwartjes and Victor Nieuwenhuys and Maartje Seyferth pass on the bolex camera to each other.
Sotsgorod. Cities for Utopia, 1995, 92 min. This feature length documentary tells how the Soviet Union invited Western specialists during the Twenties and Thirties to co-operate on the design of completely new cities in the Urals and Siberia. These socialist cities, 'sotsgorods' for short, had to be constructed at high speed to house the future miners and foundry workers of the Russian hinterland. Filled with ideals and eager for adventure, modern architects from Holland, Germany, Switserland and Austria headed for the future workers' paradise. A few years later most of them returned. Without photos or drawings and without stories... What had happened to them? Had they built any cities at all?
Simultaneous City, 1994, 7 min. Experimental film about the impossibility to meet the 'unknown' when you travel. With the growing uniformity of the world - the same TV programmes, the same buildings, the same food - culture shock is replaced by a shocking familiarity. Cities are as anonymous and interchangeable as hotel bedrooms.
The Future will be Magnificent, 1992, 15 and 11 min. Two short films in which Hendrik Pieter Berlage (1856-1934), the godfather of Modern Dutch Architecture, returns to the world to examine what has become of his legacy. He visits the new building of the State Academy of the Arts in Amsterdam, designed by Koen van Velsen, and strolls through a social housing project in Rotterdam, designed by Mecanoo architects.
Building the Van Nelle Factories, 1991, 26 min. (co-director Vincent Verweij) This documentary tells how in Rotterdam, between 1917 and 1932 the Van Nelle Factories, one of the first examples of modern architecture, designed by Brinkman and Van der Vlugt, came into existence. The original highly inflammable filmstock of the construction had been lying in a storage room of the factories for sixty years. It had never before been edited.
Energies, 1990, 55 min. A documentary about the exhibition with this name at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. With: Frank Stella, Robert Wilson, Peter Struycken, Rem Koolhaas, Issey Miyake, Gary Hill, Rob Scholte and Luciano Fabro.
The Rongwrong Foundation is an initiative of Anna Abrahams and Jan Frederik Groot. The name happens to coincide with the title of the magazine Rongwrong that appeared precisely once in the 1910s.
Since 1989, Rongwrong produces films about cultural and social subjects, publications on media and art theory and installations in which the audience is invited to play an active role.
FILMOGRAPHY Anna Abrahams and Jan-Frederik Groot
selection of films
7 Peaks, 2012, 35mm, 23'
A film about humans’ drive to climb to the top of a mountain if they find themselves at its foot. Will the summit provide a clearer picture of our complicated existence? Do angels fly there? Or do you have to battle dragons?
Desert 79°, 2010, 35mm, 19'
Three stammering reports by polar travellers, filmed in various tints of white. (Best international experimental film Cortopotere 2010, Grand Prix 25FPS Zagreb 2010)
DIY, 2009, 16mm, 8'
A home movie of the filmmakers' family building a studio, shot with a classic wind-up camera, combined with quiet shots of an anonymous urban landscape.
5 Walks – Hercynia Silva, 2008, 35mm, 15'
The horror and grandeur of the last remnants of Northern European primary forest conjure up a history of hunting, fleeing and meetings with magical creatures. (First prize Asolo Art Film Festival 2008)
Null X, 2004, 35mm, 6’
Film about the contemporary built-environment, structured around the number 8
Cadavre Exquis, 2004, 16mm, 36 min. Cadavre Exquis introduces five experimental filmmakers, thereby showing the different aspects of experimental cinema in the Netherlands. With Lonnie van Brummelen, Gerard Holthuis, Jeroen Eisinga, Joost Rekveld and Henri Plaat.
Rowing, 2003, 35mm, 1 min. Animated film loop of a rower, made with a self made pinhole camera. The frozen images are timeless, the journey eternal. Made for an exhibition of our work in the science museum NEMO in Amsterdam.
0°, 2003, 10 min, An inquiry into the zero degree of filmmaking. The European landscape is captured in a series of film sequences. The kernel of the project is a set of sharply defined rules: the position of the camera and the arrangement of the shots are determined by geodesical and mathematical principles.
Resort, 2002, 15 min. A series of film images of two centres for asylum seekers in the North of the Netherlands. Our aim is to preserve for posterity the reality of the asylum seekers’ center. There is no judgement. Dry images show life in the asylum seekers’ centers, where people spend most of their time waiting. (Dutch Pavillion Architecture Biennale di Venezia, Best documentary Iowa Filmfest)
Machine Eye, 2000, 12 min. A quest for the perfect image of the demolishing of the late modern apartment district the Bijlmermeer in Amsterdam South-East. In our work we feel akin to the surveyor: the camera is a measuring instrument, and the filmmaker an engineer who builds his own pinhole filmcamera.
Grave in the Tropics, 1998, 45 min. A documentary whodunit that sketches relations between white plantation owners, the Dutch authorities and the black inhabitants of the rural districts of Curacao at the turn of the 20th century. Who killed the assistant manager of the ostrich farmer on the Choloma estate on the evening of Wednesday 27 August 1913, and why?
Notes from the Underground, 1998, 30 min. Group portrait of five Dutch independent filmmakers who make wayward and valuable films. The film consists of a relay race of five studio visits: Cyrus Frisch, Karel Doing, Frans Zwartjes and Victor Nieuwenhuys and Maartje Seyferth pass on the bolex camera to each other.
Sotsgorod. Cities for Utopia, 1995, 92 min. This feature length documentary tells how the Soviet Union invited Western specialists during the Twenties and Thirties to co-operate on the design of completely new cities in the Urals and Siberia. These socialist cities, 'sotsgorods' for short, had to be constructed at high speed to house the future miners and foundry workers of the Russian hinterland. Filled with ideals and eager for adventure, modern architects from Holland, Germany, Switserland and Austria headed for the future workers' paradise. A few years later most of them returned. Without photos or drawings and without stories... What had happened to them? Had they built any cities at all?
Simultaneous City, 1994, 7 min. Experimental film about the impossibility to meet the 'unknown' when you travel. With the growing uniformity of the world - the same TV programmes, the same buildings, the same food - culture shock is replaced by a shocking familiarity. Cities are as anonymous and interchangeable as hotel bedrooms.
The Future will be Magnificent, 1992, 15 and 11 min. Two short films in which Hendrik Pieter Berlage (1856-1934), the godfather of Modern Dutch Architecture, returns to the world to examine what has become of his legacy. He visits the new building of the State Academy of the Arts in Amsterdam, designed by Koen van Velsen, and strolls through a social housing project in Rotterdam, designed by Mecanoo architects.
Building the Van Nelle Factories, 1991, 26 min. (co-director Vincent Verweij) This documentary tells how in Rotterdam, between 1917 and 1932 the Van Nelle Factories, one of the first examples of modern architecture, designed by Brinkman and Van der Vlugt, came into existence. The original highly inflammable filmstock of the construction had been lying in a storage room of the factories for sixty years. It had never before been edited.
Energies, 1990, 55 min. A documentary about the exhibition with this name at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. With: Frank Stella, Robert Wilson, Peter Struycken, Rem Koolhaas, Issey Miyake, Gary Hill, Rob Scholte and Luciano Fabro.
