Film response to Ondernaming Onderdak (1982)


Ondernaming Onderdak is a 1982 documentary, produced by Andre Reeder as a final work of the Film Academy in Amsterdam, which features interviews of Surinamese and Antillean immigrants in Amsterdam, following a decade long immigration wave from the former Dutch colonies, as well as city and state officials in different positions within and around the welfare system, who do or should be providing for the dignity of their living. The documentary focuses especially on depicting the figure of the “shelter entrepreneur” who, exploiting what seems to be an organisational and/or conceptual flaw of the receptive system (subject to the conditions of the commercial housing market), profits from the welfare benefits assigned to the immigrants, gaining even the position of direct administrator of their finances.

Stylistically, the documentary showcases the attempt to depict the situation in the most objective way, interviewing the protagonists in their usual environment (houses, offices, holiday boats) to let the viewers decide for themselves. A narrative is well established, though, and at times the director falls (more or less intentionally?) into a very moralistic cut, somehow not managing to escape a generally stereotypical representation of the immigrant subject (even if, apparently, he's himself a participant or sympatiser of the struggles of the immigrants) as someone in need of being taken care of and powerlessly strangled in a bureaucratic, exploitative and fundamentally racist machine.

http://www.afrispectives.com/stories/netherlands/noord-holland/amsterdam-zuidoost/community-1/housing-inc-onderneming-onderdak/

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