Blogging Rotterdam, Part One: Dust Lighting Up the Darkness

The Big Show: The scene at the 37th Rotterdam film festival

The 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam is a 12-day event taking place in fourteen festival locations screening more than 600 films in 26 screening rooms. It is considered to be the Netherlands’ biggest cultural event in terms of paying visitors.

Having just arrived in the Netherlands for a three-month visit, I was looking forward to visiting the festival to explore the landscape of documentary production and distribution in the Netherlands and in the rest of Europe.

Overwhelmed by the volume of theaters and screenings, I spent my first day in the film library where my press pass allowed me to access most of the films through DVD or a streaming server. Oddly, the catalogue has no list or notation for documentaries, but there are actually many in the program. I looked through the 500 -page catalogue and marked films of interest — including a large selection of films about Iraq.

But I began my viewing with a profound German film on the very quirky topic of dust.

German veteran filmmaker Hartmut Bitomsky’s film Staub (Dust) begins with shots of very old, dusty film of people moving through dust. We then see shots of a film camera being cleaned and we hear his voiceover meditating on the relationship between cinema and dust. Bitomsky comments “film material is nothing but dust adhered to a transparent film base. Film is dust lighting up in the darkness of a movie theater.”

I’m particularly drawn to the film because I am slightly allergic to dust, somewhat obsessive about cleaning it away, and recently curious if it is possible that I am actually less allergic to Amsterdam dust than New York City dust. Is it possible that our dust consists of drastically different in different landscapes — and that our immune systems respond differently? Does the American obsession with cleaning alter our own relationship to dust?

Bitomsky leads us through his exploration of this most essential ingredient to human life through a distinctly European style. Very long takes, moving fluidly over the contents of the subjects’ homes and work spaces give the audience a kind of breathing room, time to connect to the themes of the film. Bitomsky is never seen on camera, but his resonant voiceover and gentle questions and comments create a calm structure. Throughout the film we are introduced to many characters—including people who dust domestically, in offices, and in industrial sites, individuals who develop various dust-filtration systems, who study health effects of dust particles, who deal with dust in the military, and scientists studying dust and the creation of the universe. They speak about their passions for dust with pride and clarity—they seem to be rehearsed in their performance of actuality. I wonder if this points to some fundamental character of European storytelling—or if this is the unique mark of Bitomsky.

After a scene in a paint-pigment factory, we see a shot of someone attempting to sweep up red pigment dust. Trying over and over to get the last bits into the dustpan, our narrator reminds us what might be his thesis: Dust always leaves a trace, no matter what. A trace of a trace.

Just as Bitomsky never shows his image to us, he chooses not to identify his characters. Both choices seem to lead the film away from the journalistic tradition, and into a more contemplative mode.

In a particularly lively interaction at the home of a woman who calls herself a “house-proud maniac” Bitosmky asks “Why this persistent battle against dust?” The woman responds “I don’t know, when there’s dirt in the corners, I just don’t like it. I don’t feel comfortable.”

As we watch the woman dusting the TV and leather chair Bitomsky comments “I once heard that 95 percent of the dust in a home, in an apartment, comes from people: skin particles, hair, dandruff. So dusting means, you deal with yourself. Actually, you can’t ever win the battle.”

In one of the most delightful scenes in the film we meet a woman who is either an artist or a scientist whose work consists of collecting dust and classifying it.

With a huge smile she explains to the camera: “Dust and science both belong together, and they don’t. Dust is a kind of interface. There’s something philosophical about it. To me, dust is a kind of proto-matter. It is a phantom particle. It exists out of public eye. Yet it essentially has the ability to create matter. It’s evolution that went wrong. Evolution under the bed. On the one hand, we have a biological evolution where in the beginning there was dust as a kind of fertility charm. We are always emitting dust. It is essentially the ‘personal cloud’ around us, a kind of ‘calling card’ for everyone. The dust in our home is like an archive, a record of what has happened.”

The film pivots from the delight of delight into its dark side as we meet scientists studying dust particulates like Bensoapyrene, a byproduct of coal energy production that cause cancer as they enter the lungs and bloodstream. Then, behind images of the dust of the fallen World Trade Towers, Bitomsky reads a very long list of the substances identified in the dust — including organic compounds later to be identified as human matter. He tells the audience that this same dust has caused incalculable illness to 9/11 rescue workers, many who receive no government support for their medical treatment.

The film includes very little archival material, but Bitomsky’s use of 9/11 footage is a powerful reminder that violence often creates dust that causes even more harm in the future. In a new scene, the camera shoots a computer monitor scrolling through Internet images of American and Iraqi babies with depleted uranium related birth defects from the first Gulf War. War and dust, bound together. We then meet scientists studying how buried depleted uranium seeps into the earth and in a gentle reminder of constant militarism, we also meet German military who are testing missile systems for use in dusty (desert) landscapes.

The film that begins with a notion of dust as the building block of cinema concludes as it reminds us that dust is the building block of the solar system originating 4 ½ billion years ago. “We have a constant cycle of gas and dust creating new stars which then give up gas and dust when they die… our own sun will explode in several billion years at the end of its life.”

I am very impressed by Bitomsky’s choice to take on this unique story, and his graceful weaving together of seemingly disparate themes. The film left me with deep respect for dust. Dust is part of us, is the beginning of everything, and the end which produces new beginnings. I experienced the film essentially as a spiritual essay on life, death, science and violence, as witnessed through dust- an almost invisible and usually disrespected character close to all of us.

Films covered in my next blogs:

Allen Ginsberg Gives Great Head, a short pornographic film from Singapore

Lynch, a documentary on David Lynch, Transcendental Meditation, creativity and frustration