The Waste Land (film)

The Waste Land (The Netherlands, 2024) 
Direction: Chris Teerink 

The most legendary and groundbreaking poem of all time, The Waste Land by T.S Eliot is sometimes called. Written a hundred years ago, and yet it still serves as an inspiration for writers, songwriters, and philosophers, from Stephen King to Bob Dylan and from Nick Cave to Francis Ford Coppola. The Waste Land is a film which engages deeply with the complex tissue of the famous poem. Eliot wrote it like a patchwork quilt, citing from Dante, Buddhism and Hinduism. In this photo-film, with a beautiful soundtrack by Blaudzun, Teerink shows how the threads of Eliots poem still run through our present. Written in a time of crisis and insecurity, The Waste Land resonates with the challenges of our own time, like climate change, political instability and the search for ‘new’ meaning in a quickly changing world. We see how progressive thinking literally halts at the borders of our society. With that, the film touches upon both the disappointment about the world from a 100 years ago and the one people are feeling now. But more than that, it's an incredibly rich visual and auditory experience about mankind in all its awe-inspiring and astonishing creativity, intellect and drive for innovation. The Waste Land is everywhere and takes you along for the ride, from metropolitan London to no man's land in the Mojave Desert, and from the Italy of Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer to the Polish border and far into India.  

Short welcome by Gerlinda Heywegen, Poetry International film programmer. Afterwards, Gerlinda will interview director Chris Teerink in a Q&A.

Director, editor and photographer Chris Teerink (1966, the Netherlands) lives and works in Amsterdam. He attended the AKI Art Academy in Enschede and the Netherlands Film and Television Academy, in Amsterdam. As an editor he has worked on numerous audiovisual projects including The Polish Bride (1988) directed by Karim TRAÏDA (1949, Algeria). Teerink has taught at the Jakarta Film School, Indonesia. 

Gerlinda Heywegen is a film scholar and speaks about films for film exhibitors and festivals in the Netherlands and writes about it for Elders literary magazine, the website of Netherlands Society of Cinematographers and Schokkend Nieuws. Among other things, she published her book The Other Director, about directors of photography, and co-wrote Passie voor cinema. She is also a film programmer for various festivals such as Film by the Sea, International Film Festival Assen and Poetry International. 

Her own organization is called Koning Film, which offers film specials and offers a collection of talented speakers on film.