Been a week since I left Suriname, always takes me a few days to get used to the clinically organised landscape of The Netherlands. Miss the Paramaribo chaos and vibrancy, stray dogs with tails pointing up, now in this Lego land I see most dogs with tails between their legs. Back in Prozac territory it seems, so many people numbed by the system, even pets have psychiatrists here.

Having said that, weather was good in the weekend and Sunday hung out with a positive crowd in Vondelpark. As I left an Irishman asked me what I was doing and when I said I was a filmmaker, the usual questions rolled out what films etcetera and I mentioned that I did a film about Alan Moore, the comic book writer. His eyes widened as he stumbled out: “The Mindscape of Alan Moore? I have seen that. He’s inspired me since I was fifteen.” He also added to his shame that it was a pirate download he saw and it made me think again, especially when I saw the meagre selection at the Cannes Film Festival:

1) There are indeed a great number of people who are Alan Moore fans.

2) 90% of them seem to love the docu

3) The numbers don’t fit, because sales are continuous, but not what everybody predicted. Especially if you consider the hundreds of thousands of views that some sites got within a week of posting the film online.

4) Obviously we are suffering from all the pirate downloads

5) The DVD market is indeed caving in

6) Independents will be the first ones to feel this crunch because they don’t have the high volume business that enable big studios and distributors to survive on smaller margins or decreasing sales

7) Cinemas (the other main outlet for film besides the physical carrier) are again dominated by the Hollywood productions with the cash to front expensive campaign

8) The Internet is both a blessing and a curse, as it opens up the barriers between global communities, it also proliferates media in all shapes or forms to the extent that it does become a free commodity. Which is great to the audience, but not to the creator who spent years sharpening skills and even more years getting financing and actually making something to a high standard. We’re not talking home videos or quickly recorded music tracks that result from a side hobby. I’m talking about artists who dedicate themself to create things on a professional level, living it day in day out. Studying their medium, pouring in their own money to get projects moving.

9) I don’t believe fuckall in the whole idea of alternative revenue models for filmmakers and that they can make money on advertising, because you need to get millions of clicks and hits on a site before you even see a few dollars back, by the time of which you’re years further and burnt out from shopping the next project around to get some funding

10) There are still two extremes at work: a) the big productions resulting from test screenings, formulas, templates that corporations assume to work because they are based on the idea of pleasing a whole cross section of society. b) Pretentious art house fare designed as anti-thesis to the constant bombardment of fast images and sound effects in most mainstream movies. In other words, slow, ponderous pieces of work showing how clever and philosophical the director can be in comparison with “Hollywood”.

I don’t believe in this kind of polarisation, because there was a time (especially in the 70s) when a mixture of both was possible, exciting cinema that had the balls and brains to experiment, but most of all tell stories that could keep people in their seats.

And lastly, I’ve seen some young promising filmmakers at work in Suriname who are completely autodidactic and have “the eye”. Similarly in Mexico, Brasil, countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, you name it, there are new generations of artists who are more in touch with the new global vibe than the executives in charge of production and finance. I think the most exiting films to come out in the next decade will be those shot with no or micro-budgets where the creators have full control.

The question remains: without proper distribution, will any of us ever get to see them? And more importantly, if these filmmakers don’t get any income from their work, how many years and projects can they sustain this? By the time they start a family they need to feed, this modus operandi is impossible to continue on a full time basis.

Anyway, let’s keep our eyes and ears open for those sparks of inspiration.

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