Avonturen op het land

The square kilometre of polder land surrounding the farm of the Van der Elsken family is the setting for Once Upon a Time. After their Memisa project, the filmmaker and his wife Anneke again used a super-8 camera. Wedged between the IJsselmeer and the surrounding pasture land, their backyard is depicted as a jungle teeming with unseen life. On the premises birds of very different feathers run around, and the thousand and one insects all have their own magical story to tell. Van der Elsken would not be Van der Elsken if he did not experience just as many exciting adventures on this exceptional location as in the remote places he often visited. This precursor of Microcosmos sketches the miraculous changing of the seasons in the polder flora and fauna; meanwhile the cattle market in Purmerend takes on the form of a wild rodeo in the filmmaker‘s eyes. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)