ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the film Pierement directed by Jan Teunissen. In 1931, Filmliga board member and treasurer Jan Teunissen made this lyrical short sound film about the working-class neighborhood Jordaan in the city center of Amsterdam. The film starts and ends with images of houses mirrored in the water of canals, not unlike the imagery Joris Ivens and Mannus Franken introduced in Regen. Teunissen shows the effects the presence of the organ and its music has on the district. The film also includes atmospheric images such as close-ups of a butcher's shop window, a funeral parlor, and the decaying facades of the Egelantiersgacht. In two rapidly edited sequences, the filmmaker applies the technique of film rhyme and associative montage. A handful of theaters in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and The Hague showed the film in their supporting program.
