For 40 years, a small, non-commercial, community-based arthouse cinema has been located at the Van Hallstraat 52, the heart of the Staatsliedenbuurt. Founded legally in 1983, after a historical neighbourhood festival, the Staatsliedengreep, showed the promise of our cinema space, Filmhuis Cavia emerged from our city’s unique squatter culture. During those years, our neighbourhood was nicknamed ‘Kraakliedenbuurt’ due to the many squatters who came to live here and who started all kinds of social, cultural, and political initiatives (such as Zaal100, De Blauwe Duim, and the Tweede Nassau Ateliers).
At the Staatsliedengreep of ‘83, several activities were held throughout the entire neighbourhood. Thirty-three successful film screenings took place, and from there, an opportunity arose to start a cinema. Filmhuis Cavia was born! In these 40 years of history, Cavia served as a springboard for many film festivals, and events, but also for individual filmmakers, programmers, and film collectives involved in the organization. A space shaped collectively for and by our community, Cavia has grown into an alternative haven for independent thoughts and cinematic works. Not to mention, a third space – or second home – for film lovers of all kinds.
The pandemic gave us time and space to turn our gaze toward Cavia’s past, with the awareness that November 2023 would be an important milestone in the history of our cinema. An archive project was put into motion, and the current volunteers have been investigating the history of Cavia and the dedicated people behind its foundation.
In parallel to that, for the very first time, we were able to assemble a chronology of all the films ever shown at Cavia. This chronology, which traces back to a screening of Tarkovski's Stalker on 11 November 1983, is a source of great inspiration. It also served as the starting point for the year-long program: 40 CHAIRS, 40 FILMS, 40 YEARS, re-reeling and re-wiring images from our past, as well as projecting new ones towards our future.
With this selection, we want to celebrate Cavia’s authenticity: its diversity, the dynamism of its program, and of course, filmmakers from The Netherlands and abroad who have inspired us and fuelled Cavia’s screen throughout the years with their cinematic dreams, tales, struggles, and astonishing world visions. We hope this selection of films, both historical and contemporary, highlights Cavia’s long commitment to cinema as a political, irreverent art form, as well as its embeddedness in the neighborhood and the city in which it belongs, and where it plans to stay.
Friday 3rd
17:00 | Guided tour of the shop windows project Kunsttraject, starting at Van Limburg Stirumplein
20:30 | Film d'Amore e d'Anarchia (Lina Wertmüller, 1973)
Saturday 4th
19:00 | The Work We Share: Now Pretend ( L.Franklin Gilliam, 1991) + Loss Of Heat (Noski Deville, 1994) + Sweet Sugar Rage (Sistren Theatre Collective, 1985)
21:00 | Naughty Boys (Eric de Kuyper, 1984) – 16mm
Sunday 5th
12:00 - 18:00 | Open Studios at Tweede Nassau Ateliers
18:00 | Found in Translation – contemporary artists’ moving image at Tweede Nassau Ateliers
Monday 6th
20:30 | In Krakende Welstand (Mijke de Jong, 1989) – 16mm
Tuesday 7th
20:30 | Cine Interzone presents: W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (Dušan Makavejev, 1971)
Wednesday 8th
20:30 | YOL – The Full Version (Şerif Gören, 2022)
Thursday 9th
20:30 | De Stad Was Van Ons (Joost Seelen, 1996) + Q&A with Eric Duivenvoorden
Friday 10th
20:30 | Cine Fantastico: The Beyond (Lucio Fulci, 1981) + introduction by Is Hoogland – 35mm
Saturday 11th
17:00 | Filmkafee Cavia: Amsterdams Stadsjournaal films (several) + Screaming Layers (Fred Pelon, 2002) + Lab Ladies (Fred Pelon, 2001) + Don't Look Now: item about Filmhuis Cavia (Don't look now, 1991)
20:30 | Cavia Club Night at Zaal 100
Friday 3 November, 17:00
CAVIA 40 JAAR
Guided tour of the shop windows project starting at Van Limburg Stirumplein
Still Moving – Kunsttraject shop windows
Since 2001, dozens of shop windows in the Staatsliedenbuurt display contemporary art, day and night. Thus, adventurous and diverse art becomes visible and accessible to all. Since 2006, the shop windows have been programmed by Stichting Kunsttraject. Each exhibition includes a guided tour by the artist(s), to which local residents and anyone interested are very welcome.
Film and visual art have always mutually influenced each other. Think of the collaboration between filmmaker Luis Buñuel and painter Salvador Dalí, or Edward Hopper's painting House by the Railroad that appears in Hitchcock's Psycho. Many contemporary artists use film and video as a medium, but links to films can also be found in many paintings, drawings, and sculptures. The shop window exhibition Still Moving features stationary works that refer to moving images, ranging from storyboards, and film posters to the use of cinematic imagery or telling a story inspired by a film. Ten artists from the Tweede Nassau Ateliers are showing work in 11 shop windows throughout the Staatsliedenbuurt.
With works by: Martie van der Loo, Wafae Ahalouch, Godelieve Smulders, Adriaan Rees, Lies Neve, Suus Scheller, Hans Jongsma, Diana Blok, Arjan van Amsterdam, and Frans van Tartwijk.
The exhibition will be on view from November 4th to November 22nd.
Shop windows:
- Van der Hoopstraat 66, 41, 89
- Fannius Scholtenstraat 20
- J.M.Kemperstraat 89, 121, 140, 148
- Van Hallstraat 13, 31
Guided tour of the shop windows on Friday, November 3, 17:00, starting at Van Limburg Stirumplein.
Friday 3 November, 20:30
CAVIA 40 JAAR
Film d'Amore e d'Anarchia (Love & Anarchy)
Lina Wertmüller |1973 | IT | 125' | EN subs
During the 1970s, Lina Wertmüller emblazoned her name into the pantheon of Italian cinema with a series of intensely polemical, deeply controversial, and wonderfully entertaining films. A kind of Fellini in skirts, the opening film is Wertmüller’s acclaimed Love & Anarchy, set in Fascist Italy before the outbreak of World War II, the story centers on Tunin, a farmer turned anarchist who stays in a brothel while preparing to kill Benito Mussolini. There he falls in love with one of the sex workers.
This film was first screened in Cavia on October 17, 1984.
Saturday 4 November, 19:00
CAVIA 40 JAAR
Cinenova presents: The Work We Share
Various | 1985-1994 | various | 86'
Cinenova presents The Work We Share: a public program of newly digitized films from their collection addressing representations of gender, race, sexuality, health, and community. The Work We Share gathers a number of films which previously existed in precarious conditions; in some cases, with negatives being lost or distribution film prints being the only copy. This program intends to acknowledge our interdependency: from organisation, to filmmakers, cultural workers, communities, and individuals. How can we acknowledge our interdependent relationships? How can we recognize our place in a network of communications, relationships and resources, particularly as an un-funded volunteer organization? What different strains of labor does our work rely on? How do we sustain this work mutually?
Cavia’s collaboration with Cinenova dates to the screening of two films by Sandra Lahire, which took place on September 17, 2019.
Now Pretend
L. Franklin Gilliam | 1991 | USA | 10'
Now Pretend plays with the potentialities of black and white film, with the limits between light and shadow, and by probing the constraints and possibilities allowed by fiction and verbal language, Gilliam’s work thinks about what it means to have or inhabit a black body.
+
Loss of Heat
Noski Deville | 1994 | UK | 20'
In Noski Deville’s magic realist short Loss of Heat, the audience is invited to reflect on notions of queer love and epilepsy through a poetic portrayal of two parallel lesbian couples.
+
Sweet Sugar Rage
Sistren Theatre Collective | 1985 | Jamaica | 56'
The Sistren Theatre Collective, founded in Kingston in 1977, and working mainly on political theatre projects, sought to use their craft to develop social initiatives, of which Sweet Sugar Rage is a fine example. Within the film, members of the collective are shown interacting with Jamaican women who work on sugar plantations and raising awareness of the women’s labor conditions and daily experiences through discussion and performance.
Saturday 4 November, 21:00
CAVIA 40 JAAR
Naughty Boys
Eric de Kuyper | 1984 | NL | 105' | EN subs | projected on 16mm
A recurring filmmaker at Cavia in the 1980s, Eric de Kuyper immediately made Naughty Boys in 1984, after debuting in 1983 with Casta Diva, the year which coincides with the opening of our cinema. A film that he himself described as “a sad musical comedy” in which de Kuyper pays homage to golden-age musicals. The film is set in an unspecified time, somewhere between both World Wars in a large English country house. Six gentlemen in dinner jackets try to maintain the atmosphere of a party that has just ended.
This film was first screened in Cavia on February 27, 1985.
Sunday 5 November, 12:00-18:00
CAVIA 40 JAAR
Open studios at Tweede Nassau Ateliers
Works in progress, exhibitions and short films
There are thirty-two artist’s studios at Tweede Nassau Ateliers. In 2019 we celebrated the building’s 50th anniversary. Now, four years later, the artists of Tweede Nassau Ateliers are joining the 40th anniversary of Filmhuis Cavia. On Sunday November 5th, from 12:00 to 18:00, twenty studios will be open to visitors, with works in progress, exhibitions and short films, followed by the film program Found in translation with 10 videos by contemporary artists, that will start at 18:00 in studio 21 (see item below).
Participating artists: Martie van der Loo, Niels Keus, Wafae Ahalouch, Nora Hooijer, Godelieve Smulders, Anita Nuñez Larraz, Frank van den Broeck, Adriaan Rees, Frits Nolte, Lau Heidendael, Lies Neve, Suus Scheller, Peter Smit, Hans Jongsma, Marie Ilse Bourlanges, Liza Prins, Alma Teer, Karolien Buurman, Diana Blok, Leo Arnold, Frans Horbach, Arjan van Amsterdam and Frans van Tartwijk.
Free entrance
Sunday 5 November, 18:00
CAVIA 40 JAAR
Found in Translation at Tweede Nassau Ateliers (studio 21) + Q&A
Found in Translation is a contemporary artists’ moving image screening in studio 21 of the Tweede Nassau Ateliers. The screening is curated by Lies Neve, with films by Danielle Alhassid, Miriam Bajtala, Marie Ilse Bourlanges, Keren Cytter, Giovanni Giaretta, Ine Lamers, Lies Neve, Frans van Tartwijk & Guda Koster. In this screening, signs and voices speak about language, while revealing power structures, and hidden stories. Language, both literal and visual, can be a powerful tool for assimilation or help shape new forms of identity. When we translate from one language to the other, meaning shifts or reveals itself. We present a Shakespearian drama, a story of migration told in three languages, a linguistic body performance, the narrative of a city unfolding in layers, an automated Russian dialogue, and a landscape where a new language was born.
Some of the artists will be present for a Q&A after the screening.
Free entrance
Monday 6 November, 20:30
CAVIA 40 JAAR
In Krakende Welstand
+ Q&A with producer Digna Sinke
Mijke de Jong | 1989 | NL | 65' | EN subs | projected on 16mm
In Krakende Welstand is a feature film in documentary style about life within the squatting movement of the 80s. Eveline lives in an Amsterdam squat. In an assignment for university, she makes a video report about her house and its fellow residents. Kaat is Eveline's best friend. She has remained true to her principles and still engages in more radical political actions. Michiel has also been a squatter from the start, but he has different ambitions. He is at the beginning of an advertising career. Then there is Maurice, a refugee from Ghana, who is keeping a low profile for the time being. When the municipality offers to buy the building, renovate it, and rent it back to the residents, adversities begin to erupt within the group.
Unfortunately Digna Sinke cannot be there for the Q&A, because of travelling reasons.
Tuesday 7 November, 20:30
CAVIA 40 JAAR
Cine Interzone presents:
W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism
Dušan Makavejev | 1971 | Yugoslavia, West Germany | 85' | EN subs
What does the energy harnessed through sexual orgasms have to do with the state of Communist Yugoslavia circa 1971? Only counterculture filmmaker extraordinaire Dušan Makavejev had the answers (or the right questions). His surreal documentary-fiction collision WR: Mysteries of the Organism begins as an investigation into the life and work of the controversial psychologist and sexologist Wilhelm Reich and then explodes into a free-form narrative following a young Slavic woman's sexual liberation. Banned upon its release in the director's homeland, this art-house smash hit is both whimsical and bold in its fusing of politics and volatile sexuality. After finishing this film, the director was forced to leave his country, but continued making mind-blowing films in exile for many years. But of all the films he managed to make, this is generally considered his masterpiece. It's a visionary movie of eerily appropriate juxtapositions... a mix of fact and fiction, a bizarre biography of Wilhelm Reich (who believed that sexual repression leads to fascism), fused with old archival footage, and an analysis of Stalinist propaganda films framed as displaced pornography. A stunning, bizarre and unique gem from one of cinema's greatest visionaries.
Entrance 3 euros
(Cineville card valid)
Wednesday 8 November, 20:30
CAVIA 40 JAAR
YOL – The Full Version
Directed by Şerif Gören, written and original idea by Yılmaz Güney | 2022 | Switzerland, Turkey | 110' | EN subs
YOL – The Full Version honors what Turkish-Kurdish actor, author, director, and producer Yılmaz Güney wasn’t free to complete during his lifetime. It presents on the screen the content of the script that Yılmaz Güney wrote in prison. The film recounts, as in Yılmaz Güney’s original script, six, rather than five stories about Turkish and Kurdish prisoners. Each of them attempts to get their life back on track during a week’s leave from prison, a piece of Turkish-Kurdish film history that is more contemporary than ever.
This film was first screened in Cavia on March 27, 1985. It was also one of the 33 films shown during the 1983 Staatsliedengreep Festival.
Thursday 9 November, 20:30
CAVIA 40 JAAR
De Stad Was Van Ons
+ Q&A with Eric Duivenvoorden
Joost Seelen | 1996 | NL | 95' | EN subs
The City Was Ours outlines the rise and fall of the Amsterdam squatting movement between 1975 and 1988. Based on highlights from the 'squatting history', the development of the movement is outlined. For many early activists, squatting was primarily a means of challenging the capitalist system. The relative ease with which homes could be squatted ensured that the movement experienced strong growth. As more and more people became involved in the squatting movement, internal conflicts arose about the desired goal and strategy. The increasing repression of the government, which evacuated buildings using great force if necessary, significantly fueled these internal conflicts. A 'hard core' in the movement wanted to fight the government and its representatives with violence, but the less militant members rejected these ideas about waging an urban guerrilla.
After the screening there will be a Q&A with sociologist, philosopher and former squatter from the Staatsliedenbuurt Eric Duivenvoorden. Duivenvoorden worked together with director Joost Seelen on the documentary. In 1991 he founded the Staatsarchief, the archive of the Dutch squatting and protest movement.
Friday 10 November, 20:30
CAVIA 40 JAAR
Cine Fantastico: The Beyond
+ introduction by Is Hoogland
Lucio Fulci | 1981 | Italy | 77' | EN subs | projected on 35mm
A special night in the spirit of Cine Fantastico – Cavia’s b-movie film club from the first generation of volunteers. In Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond, a young woman inherits an old hotel in Louisiana where, following a series of supernatural "accidents", she learns that the building was built over one of the entrances to Hell. She is confronted with strange events: a painter has a lethal fall, the plumber vanishes, and her friend breaks his neck. The Beyond works exactly like a nightmare world, where fear is present in every corner.
The film will be introducted by Is Hoogland, a former Cavia programmer and one of the initiators of Cine Fantastico.
Saturday 11 November, 17:00
CAVIA 40 JAAR
Filmkafee Cavia
+ Q&A with former and current volunteers
This program encapsulates Cavia’s dynamic spirit, serving as a testament to the community that has flourished within the walls of Filmhuis Cavia over the years. In a collaborative effort with the Eye Filmmuseum and the host of extraordinary individuals who have been integral to Cavia’s Archive Project, we have put together a series of films that chronicle our community.
From the Amsterdams Stadsjournaal, a film collective that made both documentaries and short features with a social perspective since the early 1970s, to the 1991 episode of Don’t Look Now, featuring Cavia.
→ HAVE YOU BEEN ACTIVE FOR CAVIA IN THE PAST?
It's possible to sign up as a former volunteer for this screening, and we can reserve a seat for you. From 18:45 there will be a reunion with cocktails and food in the foyer.
Amsterdams Stadsjournaal films (several)
Amsterdams Stadsjournaal | various | NL | 30' | no subtitles
Screaming Layers
Fred Pelon | 2002 | NL | 11'
Lab Ladies
Fred Pelon | 2001 | NL
Don't Look Now: item about Filmhuis Cavia
Don't look now | 1991 | NL | 7' | EN subs
Saturday 11 November, 20:30 - 02:00
CAVIA 40 JAAR
Cavia Club Night at Zaal 100
Analog projections, queer performances & DJs
Our birthday extravaganza promises to be an unforgettable night as we gather at the vibrant Zaal 100. Get ready to celebrate in style in an evening filled with queer performances, analog projections, and ass-shaking DJ sets.
Online tickets are SOLD OUT.
From 22:00 onwards we will be selling 50 extra tickets at the door, for €6,50 each. No presales unfortunately.
Be sure to bring cash for the bar!
20:30
Jaap Pieters
A selection of Super 8mm films by legendary Amsterdam filmmaker Jaap Pieters, also known as the eye of Amsterdam. He films various small events and portraits, often from his upstairs flat, to capture simple everyday existence.
21:00
Mei Zhiyong 梅志勇
Mei Zhiyong is one of the most active Harsh Noise artists in China. He creates unique noise effects by making a large number of noise generators and modifying industrial instruments. His noise works are known for their exaggerated, dangerous, and extreme characteristics. His live performances are full of physical language and tense atmosphere, bringing audiences a shocking audio-visual experience.
21:30
• • •
Behind the soundless moniker • • • hides citizen Nikola H. Mounoud whom is now close to two decades of research and actions in the field of live sound making, he processes in real time analog, digital and hybrid feedbacks in order to produce unique, powerful and highly dynamic sound live performances where irresponsible sounds, unexpected dense sonic blasts, sharp textures, complete non-sense and deep irrationality meets to allow both the audience and the performer to absorb an unleashed raw beauty of frequencies wrath.
22:00
Mavi Veloso
Deep bass beats & tropical nasty moves in the live performance of Mavi Veloso’s one-of-a-kind Travesti Biológica album. Born in Brazil and based in the Netherlands, Veloso considers her music an over-ecstatic tranny-crafts mashup, questioning and enlightening our minds while we dance.
22:30
Dooombiamberos
In the name of their lord Landero… the Dooombiamberos will deliver a DJ-set filled with cumbia, cumbia rebajada, champeta, salsa dura and anything else that's loud, dance-able and hypnotic. The earthbeat is their guide. The Dooombiamberos are Mitze Apocalipze, Chucho Vinilo and Mijo: 2/3rd Colombian, 100% cumbia fanatics!
00:00
DJ Discourse
Discourse, aka Katayoun Arian, is a DJ, curator, and researcher. In her DJ sets, she moves through different musical traditions, resisting genre categorization. Her research on music from Iran and beyond coalesces with her versatile musical interest, ranging from techno and beyond all the way to funk, smooth jazz, R&B, and dancehall.