With the camera on safari in the Bijlmermeer

Even people who have never been there have an image of the Bijlmer. Usuallynegative. From the images on TV they know the walls of high gallery flats,gatherings of black people around fires in oil barrels, crime, drugs, homelesspeople, illegal immigrants, poverty. A no-go area. Gray, gray, hopeless.

That is not true: often these images are exotics, or borrowed from Americanfilms about black ghettos.

What does the Bijlmer (‘Zuidoost’ officially, ‘Bims’ for intimates) look likein films and series? Shortly after the Bijlmermeer was completed, she alreadyappeared in a feature film, Blue Movie. This erotic sketch of sex from 1972,in which a released sex offender goes to bed with half the flat, is still 5 inthe list of best-attended Dutch films, with 2.3 million visitors. Director WimVerstappen wanted to show the new times of sexual freedom, and where better todo that than in the new gallery flats of the Bijlmer? The entire neighborhoodwas designed as an experimental new form of living. Striking: cameraman Jan deBont does not film the flats gray and desolate, as was customary later, butbathed in golden brown evening twilight. And even more striking: everyone inthe sex flat is white.

That would soon change. Later in the seventies, many Surinamese migrants cameto live who were not welcome elsewhere in the city. The district now has morethan a hundred cultures. From then on, the Bijlmer was almost always portrayedas a ghetto, with crime and impoverishment. Sometimes the neighborhood wasportrayed very positively, especially in documentaries, with a lot ofattention for colorful dresses, lively parties and church services, hip-hop.But here too, filmmakers rarely got past the clichés.

Bijlmer safari

A constant point of departure for films and series about the neighborhood isthe ‘Bijlmersafari’: a usually white outsider discovers the neighborhood as awonderful, exotic place. You can see that in Only decent people , aromantic-racist comedy from 2012 about a Jewish boy from Old South who likesblack women because he thinks they are more primitive than white ones, withbigger buttocks, and therefore better at sex. In the Bijlmer he finds theliveliness, the wild parties and the sexual freedom that he lacks in his ownenvironment.

The new series will be released at the Dutch Film Festival in Utrecht_disaster flight_ premiere. About the Bijlmer disaster of 1992, when an El-Alcargo plane crashed into two flats. There you will also find a clichéd fish-from-bowl motif. Although the series partly revolves around a Bijlmerresident, the other two leading roles are white journalists who search forconspiracies and cover ups and in the meantime discover the Bijlmer as a placewhere different rules apply.

Also read a interview with screenwriter Michael Leendertse and actress JoyDelima about ‘Disaster flight’

That not all viewers can appreciate the exotic safari view of the Bijlmer anylonger, was apparent from the fuss around The Tattas , a comedy in thepipeline for December. Even before a meter had been shot, the makers werecriticized for the basic principle: a rich white family from the Gooi goesbankrupt and is forced to live in the black Bijlmer, with all the culturalclashes that entails. A kind of reverse bag. Under pressure from thecritics, the makers have decided to set the film in a fictional place.

Gangland and basement box

To combat the stigma of the Bijlmer as a ghetto and to show the wealth of theneighborhood, the duo Karim Khamis and George Adegite released the reportseries last year Bims in the Lobby (VPRO). Khamis: „The image of the Bijlmeris super-stigmatising, almost always sensation, gangland, sex in the basementboxes. You also see this in hip-hop videos, often by rappers who do not livein the Bijlmer themselves. Everyone who grows up there suffers from it. Youstart to believe that you are less than other people and that the normal path– education, work, family – is not for you.”

Khamis has a much more positive view of the neighborhood: “It’s a mix, warm,human, lots of community spirit. You see that much less in other citydistricts.” He also sees the Bijlmer as an untouched treasure trove of filmtalent: „The Denzel Washingtons, Halle Berry’s and Spike Lees come from here.It is precisely here in the Bijlmer that there are stories and people thatwill appeal to a large audience.”

____As an example, Khamis . mentions Into nothing , a gripping short filmfrom 2013 about the Bijlmer disaster, about a twelve-year-old Ghanaian girlwho befriends a grumpy, traumatized man (Issaka Sawadogo) – until the crashingplane separates them. A monument to the anonymous, undocumented victims of thedisaster flight.

Horror film will also go to the Dutch Film Festival NFF _Black Girl Magic_premiere. Two Surinamese-Dutch girlfriends use winti rituals to hook ahandsome footballer, but in doing so summon dark forces. The Bijlmer is indeedthe setting of black magic here, but the living environment is self-evidentand is not an exotic terra incognita for the white explorer.