This is Amsterdam’s new Eye Film Institute, just across the river Ij from Central Station. Designed by Delugan Meissl of Vienna, the building’s striking horizontal polygonalism looks like a spaceship crash-landed on the river bank. Inside there’s a beautiful atrium with wooden amphitheater seating and a panoramic view of the Ij (including Central Station’s less attractive rear end).
The actual exhibition space is a bit jumbled, with odd angles, inexplicable corners, and awkward interior windows that at times feels as if the space has been over-thought instead of being born out of a natural curatorial need. Still, overall the building succeeds at drawing people northwards and potentially opening up a new neighborhood. The hit-and-miss exhibit was on artists who reassemble found footage. Christain Marclay’s work was remarkably absent.
In one of the institute’s four cinemas an orchestra was supplying live musical accompaniment to Dali’s Un Chien Andalou. I took the more contemporary route and watched Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom, an absolute delight (and also blessed with perhaps the best trailer of all time) and my favorite of his since Rushmore. I had a moment in the middle of the movie where I was struck by the inscrutable passage of time—Jason Schwartzman appeared on the screen playing a corrupt scoutmaster that could have easily been a grown-up version of Max Fischer.
He performs the nuptials for a pair of 12-year-olds and the torch is officially passed. Jason and I have grown old. We are no longer the ring bearers, we are the priests now, spreading our twisted gospel to the new crop of young ones.
