As the film’s only textual captions will tell you at the beginning, the Convento itself was built in the 1600s to house Christian relics from The Crucifiction. It was a monastery until the 1830s, and remained abandoned for some 120 years after. It’s a rich history, and Convento shows how that history is continuing today. But rather than Christian monks it’s the Zwanikken family who now walk the corridors and tend the elaborate gardens. They also practice their own form of monkish dedication to their beliefs. Alterman says that the minute he stepped into the Convento and met the Zwanikkens, he knew he’d have to come back. And bring a camera.
Geraldine Zwanikken and her husband decided to move from the Amsterdam art scene decades ago and they bought the overgrown land and decrepit buildings that make up the Convento. They left the Netherlands not to escape anything -- in fact Geraldine was at the height of a ballet career -- but because they felt change was a good thing. It is great to do art for a crowds, but perhaps doing your own art for yourself could be something sublime. The Zwanikkens brought with them their two young sons, Louis and Christiaan, barely older than toddlers at the time.
Together they made the Convento into the world that it is today. They repaired the buildings, brought in electricity, began growing their food -- but more than that they created a world solely for themselves. Like the monks before them who distanced themselves from the rest of the world in order to perfect their reverence for God, the Zwanikkens began perfecting their reverence for life.
Today, some 30 years later, the boys are grown and their father has died (though Geraldine will tell you that death does not exist). She tends the grounds, trundling through the pond to pull the weed-like plants that prevent the turtles from surfacing. Always laughing and casual, she refers to it as the pond’s “haircut.” Louis focuses on the animals, putting so much time and effort into their care that director Alterman has said he could barely keep up. Louis has grown to think of the animals as friends.
They each clearly have reached that sublime status of pure life, living how they want to live. The things they must do are also the things they want to do. But it is the activities of Christiaan that perhaps best exemplifies this notion, and in a tangible way.
Christiaan is a kinetic artist. He blends mechanics and the remains of animals found on the property into otherworldly creatures that move and occasionally speak in awe-inspiring ways. It is his artwork that provides the strange helmeted-rabbit creation used to promote Convento, an image likely disturbing to some but one that is simply assembled from the components of our daily lives. Alterman shows these creations in action, he in fact collaborated with Christiaan to really bring them to life for the camera. The jaw bones that clatter effortlessly, the bird skulls that look left and right as if watching for prey -- they are all truly amazing.
Perhaps the most surprising piece of all is the ancient water well that pulls up water for the entire garden and for centuries was turned by donkey. In today’s Convento, it’s turned by a mechanical animal with tire treads for feet and ears that flit about as if swishing real flies away. It is artwork blended with practicality as much as it is modern mechanics blended with bits of nature’s own machines.
Convento shows a world dedicated to that blend. The practicality of art, the art of living. It shows this with amazing images, alternating the strange with the familiar. It balances images of death with a casual air and occasional humor. The world that Alterman captures in Convento is a world well worth paying a visit to.
Editor: TS Harmon
Published by Modern Cinema Magazine
© Modern Cinema Magazine
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