Last Conversation

Noud Heerkens (1954) has for years played an important role in the Dutch film world – as a teacher at several art academies, as a producer and compiler of film programmes and festivals, but above all as a maker of videos, installations, dance films and short experimental films, such as Erasmus Spitzen/Crossing a Bridge on Points, which can be seen as an ode to Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge.
In 2008, he shot his first full-length feature, Last Conversation. Heerkens posed an enormous challenge for his protagonist Johanna ter Steege and his crew: the whole film was shot in one long take. Cameraman Richard Oosterhout mounted 25 fixed cameras on the car from which the career woman Anna makes one last phone call to her lover. He had ended their extramarital affair a few days before. Anna, a self-assured woman with a good job, is not used to being a victim of other people’s decisions. During the long, dramatic car ride she fiercely resists her feelings of humiliation, loss and sorrow.Unlike previous one-take feature films that have been realised since the advert of digital video, from Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2003) to the Brazilian Still Orangutans (2007), Heerkens concentrates on one person and one character. As a result, the emphasis is on concentration. This makes the achievement of all those involved even more impressive. (GT)