The travels of Rob Rombout
by Ernies Tee, 2018
Ernie Tee, Professor is Film History & Film Analysis at the Dutch Fim Academy
(Showcase Cinema Rob Rombout, 2018, Griffith Film School, Griffith University, Australia)
“In an age where everything is within reach, travel itself is the great forgotten path. Not in the films of Rob Rombout.”
When film made its first appearance in 1895, many of us were forced to stasis. In the course of the nineteenth century travel lust had prompted us to develop many other ways to transport us to distant places, in addition to maritime traffic. But very soon after the introduction of the Cinématograph from the Lumière brothers it was film that took us to the most inaccessible regions of all continents, including the ice-cold polar regions. At the same time, we as film public, were sentenced to small, and later larger, darkened rooms, which we were not supposed to leave as long as the film played. This is the situation that has descended on us since the coming of film: we have all become explorers, without having to leave our city, our village, our place. Because of film, travelling was no longer a matter of moving our bodies, but made travel settle into our imagination. And how rich did our imagination get when fed with all those beautiful, silent travelogues in the beginning of the last century?
Nowadays these conditions are gone of course: the physical movement is fully optimized and democratized, with ease everyone gets to the farthest corners of our planet and film has nothing more to tell us, since we ourselves are the suppliers of the most daring travel films with all our different types of smart apps. These films’ goals are not to challenge our imagination however, but are evidence: they have to demonstrate that one has been at that place.
Rob Rombout is a filmmaker who brings travelling back to our imagination with his documentaries. The filmmaker, living a nomadic life himself most of the time – as a Dutch Zaanlander who ended up in Brussels with his Portuguese wife, but travels a lot around the world for his films – leads us everywhere, from Paris to Moscow, from China to the Kerguelen Islands in the southernmost part of the Indian Ocean, from the Azores to the Urals, where Rombout discovered an extraordinary documentary film festival in the isolated town of Perm. And mostly we have ended up in Amsterdam through his films, though not only the Amsterdam in the Netherlands, but also the Amsterdam in the Indian Ocean (Île Amsterdam), the Arctic Island Amsterdam northwest of Spitsbergen, and the Amsterdams at fifteen places throughout the entire United States of America who are allowed to carry this name.
“But all these destinations are not the actual subject of the films of Rob Rombout. We may be taken anywhere and everywhere, but the films tell us more about the journey towards it, about travelling, about being on the go.”
But all these destinations are not the actual subject of the films of Rob Rombout. We may be taken anywhere and everywhere, but the films tell us more about the journey towards it, about travelling, about being on the go. In the filmportrait about Dutch writer Joost de Vries, made by Rombout in 2016, the filmmaker takes the writer on a train journey, as to literally loosen the writer’s views from the ground in which they are rooted. And in many films of Rombout we specifically experience the journey before we arrive at the destination (“Perm-Mission”, “The Azores of Madredeus”). But, once arrived, it is as if we are not yet convinced of the durability of the destination in the films of Rob Rombout. When he visits processions and taurada’s with Madredeus on the Azores, a custom in which enraged bulls are released in the streets, it seems like it is a study on the firmness of the ritual from the filmmaker. In other films it seems Rombout is openly looking for an excuse to leave the place again. For example, the film he made about the Alsace, “The Passengers of the Alsace”, does not have the Alsace as its subject, but deals with the question of what the inhabitants of this region, often coming from elsewhere, find so special about having become a true Alsatian. It is as if the filmmaker, perhaps out of disbelief, searches in others their reasons for moving to an area and stay there.
A rewarding arena for Rombout is formed by all those settle-locations, that have a temporary character and where departure somewhere in the future is certain. For example, at the Queen Elizabeth 2, where Rob was shooting his film “Transatlantic QE2”, and for the Queen Mary 2, a gigantic cruise ship, on which he filmed “QM2, The Enterprise”. This also applies to the Northern see drilling rig with its regular crew, where he filmed ‘Black Island’, and certainly also for the Nord Express train, with which he travelled from Paris to Moscow to portray his fellow travellers and many people who lived and worked along the route (“Nord Express”).
“The being on the move in Rob Rombout’s films is expressed by the loose, sensuous way in which the filmmaker builds up his films. Nowhere you can find the restrictions of a tight narrative structure. Destinations are allowed, but the journey itself may still surprise us in many aspects.”
The being on the move in Rob Rombout’s films is expressed by the loose, sensuous way in which the filmmaker builds up his films. Nowhere you can find the restrictions of a tight narrative structure. Destinations are allowed, but the journey itself may still surprise us in many aspects.
In an age where everything is within reach, travel itself is the great forgotten path. Not in the films of Rob Rombout.
