Documentary on legendary Holland Pop Festival in Kralingse Bos on show

Filmmaker Ferri Ronteltap attended the Dutch Film Academy and subsequently made several short fiction films, documentaries and television programmes. A born and bred Rotterdammer, he stood admiringly at the fence of the Kralingse Bos in 1970 as a thirteen-year-old, but did not dare to enter the Holland Pop Festival. Now he has made a documentary about the festival that is still considered the mother of multi-day music festivals as we know them today. In the documentary about this historic event, the director (also known from Feyenoord - between quay and Kuip) interviews organisers Berry Visser (MOJO Concerts) and George Klap, among others, and uses archive footage to paint a vivid picture of the era.

It is 1970, it is raining cats and dogs, but tens of thousands of hippies have nevertheless travelled to Rotterdam's Kralingse Bos to admire great international bands like Santana, The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane and Pink Floyd alongside Dutch acts like Focus and Supersister at the Holland Pop Festival. This first European pop festival where you can also sleep on the festival grounds is an answer to the American Woodstock.

The documentary Holland Pop 1970 shows the festival breaking away from the narrow and bourgeois post-war atmospheres. Peace, love and happiness are the sentiment. Marijuana is openly traded on the grounds and the Dutch Society for Sexual Reform (NVSH) is present with educational materials and contraceptives. The party is seen as the beginning of the tolerance policy around soft drugs and the sexual revolution in the Netherlands. Among others, Paul Schnabel, former director of the Sociaal Cultureel Planbureau, and feminist Hedy d'Ancona shed their light on this turbulent era in the documentary.

Former Rotterdam police inspector Hans van Klinken, journalists Stan Rijven and Bert Bakker, Wim Kerkhof (The Amazing Stroopwafels), Jaap Schut (founder of national PopMuseum RockArt) and Robert-Jan Stips (composer and keyboardist Nits and Supersister) will also speak.

Special previews of Holland Pop 1970

There is already a screening at Kino on 18 June. On Wednesday 19 June, Robert-Jan Stips will attend the special pre-premiere of Holland Pop 1970 at LantarenVenster. He will introduce the film musically. Director Ferri Ronteltap will be present after the screening for a Q&A. Filmmaker Joost Schrickx will lead the conversation.