Museumnacht 2024

Programme

• Underground – American Avant-Garde Film in the 1960s

  19:00 - 23:00, temporary exhibition
  
  Spotlight on American avant-garde cinema of the sixties: the exhibition highlights the explosion of formal experiments in experimental film of that period. The exhibition features work by key figures in avant-garde cinema, including Jonas Mekas, Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage, alongside films by makers from the world of visual arts, with Bruce Conner, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono and Andy Warhol as well-known names. All this against the turbulent backdrop of a society in flux.
  
  Talk to one of our guides and discover more about the American avant-garde cinema of the 1960s on a guided tour, or wander around the exhibition space yourself.

• What is film?

  19:00 - 23:00, permanent exhibition
  
  On the ground floor and spread throughout Eye, various components shed light on the world of moving images. Get to know the development of film, from the past to the present. Browse through Eye's unique collection. Learn how the earliest cameras work. Enjoy the most beautiful fragments.

• Create your own flipbook

  19:00 - 00:00, permanent exhibition
  
  Have you seen the TikTok-trend? In the permanent exhibition 'What is film?' on the ground floor of Eye Filmmuseum you can make your own flipbook. Press start, make a fun move and have your mini film immortalized in the Flipbook Corner on the ground floor for €7,95.

• Return to Mazzo

  20:30 - 23:30, cinema 2
  
  For one time only, we bring legendary Amsterdam club Mazzo to life with an immersive visual installation featuring eight slide projectors and two 16mm projectors showing the work of VJ pioneer Peter Rubin. Rubin learned filmmaking in New York in the 1960s. In 1976, he moved to Amsterdam, where he started performing daily live shows at legendary club Mazzo in the 1980s. Later, Peter Rubin made his mark on the techno scene in Berlin, where he was involved with Mayday and Love Parade.
  
  Rubin can thus be seen as the ‘missing link’ between the avant-garde experiments in New York in the 1960s and the visual culture of nightlife today. He died in 2015, after which his personal collections were housed in the Eye collection.
  
  The evening will kick off with a celebration of Rubin’s work and the club Mazzo, followed by performances by former Mazzo DJs Steve Green and DJ Oscar.

• Club Recordings

  19:00 - 00:00, cinema 4
  
  Live recording of a Mayday rave in Berlin on the big screen, with DJ set by Sonic Empire and visuals by Peter Rubin.

• Nightlife on Film

  19:00 - 00:00, cinema 3
  
  Watch short films and video clips from Eye's collection that focus on nightlife.
  
  MAZZO cinematic trailer (Michiel van den Bergh & Peter Rubin, 1984, 2')
  The legendary Amsterdam nightclub MAZZO (1980-2004) which is being recreated in Eye's Cinema 2 during this Museumnacht, had a cinema trailer made that ultimately never made it to the cinemas... Exactly twenty years after the closure of the club, it can now be seen on the big screen for the first time! With new music by Pascal Plantinga.
  
  The Healers (Tim Leyendekker, 2010, 10')
  The Healers is a deconstructivist reconstruction of a memory, set in the nightlife of the 1990s. Layers that normally form a cinematographic unity are shown separately here, questioning the boundaries of the constructed narrative.
  
  Remembering the Nights in Safe Haven (Iztok Klančar, 2020, 22')
  A drag performer rendez-vous with their many personalities during the after hours. A man is taken over by his surrogate lover, made of textile. Two brothers dance in an empty nightclub. Remembering the Nights in Safe Haven is a short film in three parts. The starting point of this project is the sudden loss of nightlife due to the Covid-19 pandemic and its detrimental effect on the social fabric of queer people. The film addresses this loss by means of fantasy scenes, combined with performances and activities that would have taken place if nightlife was still alive. These fictitious events suggest a mental state of suddenly having to adapt to our new reality.
  
  Naar de Klote (Aryan Kaganof, 1996, 3' fragment)
  A small excerpt from the 1990s film Naar de Klote ('Wasted') about a provincial girl (Jacky) who moves to the big city but ends up in a shady world of drug crime and violence. The Dutch urban nightlife of the 1990s is the setting of this film and is depicted in a trippy manner in a number of extended sequences.
  
  Twisteria (Bas van der Lecq, 1962, 10')
  Amsterdam nightlife in a wholly different era! Twisteria is a candid camera-recorded report of a dance 'twist' competition in the Krasnapolsky hotel in Amsterdam in the early 1960s.
  
  Hotel Nachtclub (Arianne Olthaar, 2011, 3')
  The larger, luxury hotels during the 1970s not only had a lobby, a restaurant, a souvenir shop, a beauty salon and a bar, but usually also a nightclub that was to be found in the cellar, generally indicated by an arrow at the stairs pointing down. An enclosed space, without windows, opened after 22:00. Almost all of these have since been closed or renovated. Originally shot on Super8.
  
  Mondo Roxy: No drugs required (Aryan Kaganof, 1997, 4' fragment)
  The other leading club in Amsterdam in the 80s and 90s, besides MAZZO, was the RoXY (1987-1999). Aryan Kaganof made a documentary in 1997 that tried to capture the spirit of the RoXY, as seen in an excerpt here.
  
  City at Night (Gerard Olthuis, 2000, 9')
  Part of nightlife is also the sometimes wonderfully soothing, sometimes disturbing silence of the night... City at Night is a short thriller without a plot in the canals of The Hague, inspired by a scene from Apocalypse Now. A boat sails through the canals at night, observing people and buildings. What happened?

• DJ's Passion DEEZ & Friends + VJ Errol Tyson

  20:00 - 01:30, bar & restaurant
  
  Passion DEEZ & Friends was born from a desire to bring collaborative work and new dialogues to the nightlife. As the landscape becomes more conceptual and artificial, the collective aims to be a counter-movement. By embracing fluidity, immersive soundscapes emerge that can only be enjoyed in real-time, before disappearing into the darkness of the night. By combining genres, the sets remain spontaneous, unexpected and completely original.
  
  Errol Tyson, better known as Ezhi, is an audiovisual artist who manipulates filmic material and natural textures to create new worlds. During Museumnacht he will perform a live rendition of archive footage of VJ extraordinaire Peter Rubin. Errol is researching the role of AI in redefining audiovisual collections at the University of Amsterdam. This has led to collaborations with organizations such as Radio Tempo Não Pára, Zenith, ADE and IDFA.

• Food by Euro Pizza

  19:00 - 22:00, bar upstairs
  
  In collaboration with Restaurant Euro Pizza, Eye Bar & Restaurant provides a quick dish (no, not pizza) to start Museumnacht or as an in-between snack.

• Make your own kaleidoscope

  19:30 - 20:00 / 20:15 - 20:45 / 21:00 - 21:30 / 21:45 - 22:15, foyer
  
  Build your own kaleidoscope and discover how light, reflections and movement create ever new patterns, inspired by the psychedelic experiments in the Underground exhibition. Once it is finished, you will experiment with it on a large scale: we will film the inside of the kaleidoscope and make a colorful and wonderful film.

• Celluloid workshop

  19:30 - 20:00 / 20:15 - 20:45 / 21:00 - 21:30 / 21:45 - 22:15, foyer
  
  During this workshop you will make your own analogue film, without using a film camera. You will get the chance to work directly on a celluloid film strip. You can draw on it, make holes in it, stick things on it, you name it. Afterwards we will view your creation together in a vintage 16mm projector.

• Moviezone presents: soundtrack karaoke

  20:30 - 23:30, cinema 1
  
  Karaoke collective KINNFOLK will transform our biggest cinema hall into a karaoke club with a special focus on film music. Some films have produced the biggest hits, such as Saturday Night Fever, Ghostbusters, Space Jam or Titanic. And some films have given existing songs a new life through their perfect timing. Think of Trainspotting or the films of Quentin Tarantino. Which one will you choose?

• Sign Language Café and Crash Course in Dutch Sign Language

  Sign Language Café: all night, upstairs at Eye Bar & Restaurant
  Crash Course: 21:00 - 21:20 / 21:30 - 21:50 / 22:00 - 22:20 / 22:30 - 22:50, Studio (gather in the Sign Language Café)
  
  Musea in Gebaren makes art and culture accessible for deaf and hearing impaired people in the Netherlands and is a platform for deaf and hearing impaired art lovers. Meet each other in the café!
  
  Nvard Abgaryan will teach you the basics in a short Dutch Sign Language workshop – then use your new vocabulary in the Sign Language Café.