The Mask is a film about the legacies of revolutionary ideals and a portrait of solitude and societal false selves, moving centrifugally around the life of Philippe, a homeless 23-year old man in Paris, during the festivities thrown for the bicentenary of the French Revolution over the month of June 1989. Through exchanges with the young man, and observation of the structures around him, the film captures the ambiguities of the real image, that “leads us astray, away from the marks and markers of the documentary,” as van der Keuken wrote of the film in 1995.  

Born in Amsterdam in 1938, Johan van der Keuken was a Dutch documentary filmmaker and photographer who published several successful photo books and over 55 films across a 40-year period, approaching the complexities and injustices of migration, disability, representation, work, housing, language and beauty through speculative and associative forms. Van der Keuken’s cinema lives off the tension between ethics and aesthetics, between a radical commitment to the world and a distinct attention to form.

Presented in collaboration with Sabzian in the context of their 10th anniversary. From October 2024 to February 2025, Sabzian and CINEMATEK organised a complete retrospective of van der Keuken’s films. As part of this, they published a special issue featuring a compilation of writing by Van der Keuken which can be read here alongside a complete annotated filmography of his films which can be found here.

Still courtesy © Estate of Johan van der Keuken