The location of Pluk de Nacht, Het Stenen Hoofd, works perfectly for a screening of De engel van Doel. (An Angel in Doel). A documentary about a withering frayed edge along the water, right on the border of a port that wishes to expand – film and surroundings come together beautifully.
What an amazing image it will be: a cargo ship passing by in the fog on the Pluk screen. Let’s hope the night is a bit foggy – not so foggy that it affects the screening, but just enough that you can turn around and imagine the ship sailing on into the night, towards the Central Station.
The tanker is one of the scenic images that serve as punctuation in the black-and-white film De engel van Doel. Doel is a Belgian village on the river Scheldt, a rapidly emptying ghost town, which is about – and has been about for decades – to be wiped off the map to make room for an expansion of the port of Antwerp.
A bit like Ruigoord, close to Halfweg, which partially had to make way for the port of Amsterdam. And like the Stenen Hoofd, the frayed edge location of Pluk de Nacht, which itself was under threat of being demolished to make way for new buildings for years (location seems to be safe for now, even though the ‘wet head’, the last part with poles in the water, will be dismantled soon)
Dutch documentary maker Tom Fassaert filmed in Doel for five years. In 2006 he made the documentary short Doel leeft (Doel lives), and the full-length documentary De engel van Doel was selected for the Berlin film festival and received an honourable mention from the Ecumenical Jury.
The jury was probably especially enamoured with pastor Verstraete, one of Fassaert’s amazing characters. The old Verstraete is terminally ill, but that doesn’t stop him
from visiting people at home – slowly, on a tricycle. Even though more and more people move away from Doel and the size of his parish is steadily decreasing. The village is just as terminal as he is, but De engel van Doel never gets morbid. The pastor does, but the way he bangs on about approaching death from the pulpit is so apocalyptic that it becomes funny.
Above all else, De engel van Doel is driven by a mild melancholy. Tempus fugit, tempo doeloe and memento mori. A feeling that is enhanced by the beauty of the images and lightened by the humour with which the old villagers tackle their fate.
This applies especially to Fassaert’s second main character, Emilienne Driesen, who stubbornly keeps peeling shrimp at the kitchen table, nattering about everything under the sun, but never for a minute contemplating moving away. Even when her friends leave, one after the other, and she is left alone with the shrimp.
That kitchen table is the focal point of the documentary. That’s where Driesen and her visitors discuss what’s going on in the world. A world which will soon have to do without Doel.
+ tomfassaert.com Director Fassaert is a photographer as well. In colour and black-and-white – and sometimes in Doel.
+ interview Fassaert being interviewed in Berlin by Floortje Smit for the VPRO programme De avonden. ‘The film being selected really came as a bolt from the blue.’
+ www.doel2020.org Activist site about the situation in Doel, with a FAQ . Despite the exodus, there are still Doelers refusing to give up. ‘There are hundreds of candidates ready to move to Doel, but they don’t get permission’, says the site.
+ stenenhoofd.nl Site of the Stenen Hoofd, with the latest information about the plans for ‘the last piece of frayed edge at the centre banks of the IJ’.
