Henny Vrienten

“When I do my suicide for you, I hope you’ll miss me too,” Herman Brood sang in “Rock ‘n’ Roll Junkie” – just one of many announcements of his own death Brood worked into his songs. It’s a subject Brood, who jumped off the roof of the Amsterdam Hilton 15 years ago, often sang about. In Unknown Brood, a whole range of people look back on the rock and roller’s turbulent life, including fellow musicians, his manager, a former girlfriend, photographer Anton Corbijn, Brood’s wife and their daughter. Video footage shot by Brood himself and never seen before is intercut with a rich collection of archive material, including a humorous clip of Brood barking the Dutch national anthem. His sister Beppie Brood stresses her brother’s split personality: on the one hand the shy, vulnerable man wary of other people, and on the other the one who played Herman Brood – an extravagant, hedonistic junkie and rock and roll star.

Pupil Abel is the victim of Laura's nasty prank, yet gets accidentally blamed and overreacts. His ma withdraws him from school and gets him a job as lift-boy. But its' a special lift: when he pushes the forbidden green button, it takes him, Laura, Jozias Tump and Maria Klaterhoen to Manhattan. There he's mistaken by a rich woman who looks like his mother for her long missing son Johnny. When a police helicopter comes to tow the lift cabin, the Dutchmen get back in. It takes them to a Latin American country, Perugona. The new revolutionary leader realizes presidents live about one year, so he gives the job to Mr. Tump, who saved his life. The news coverage attracts Abel's and Johnny's family, in time for an even weirder finale.

The film is based on the popular Dutch childrens book by Chris van Abkoude. In a Dutch port in 1921 lives a 10-year-old orphan boy known to everyone simply as Little Crumb. His poverty-stricken mother Lize van Dien filled with shame was forced to turn him over to Mrs. Koster soon after he was born. Foster mother Mrs. Koster, who has cared for him since he was a baby, is very poor too, unable to support him by herself and proves to be a cruel taskmaster who insists Crumb bring her money before shell feed him. Somehow he must earn his keep out on the streets and can only go home after he has earned enough money. Crumb becomes an urchin stealing from the streets barrows and the shops to stay alive, sleeping in churches or huddled in doorways. Sometimes he has to run off from the police and he has earned the enmity of the most grownups around him.

This documentary is a chronicle of the legendary career of the Dutch 80’s band Doe Maar.

The live recording of one of the 16 soldout concerts Doe Maar gave in 2000 in Ahoy. This DVD contains the complete concert (23 songs in the superior AC3 sound standard) and many extras.

Talk show hosted by Matthijs van Nieuwkerk containing a mixture of news, information, television bloopers and general entertainment.

Matthijs looks back in surprise. With humor, music and other surprises.