Synopsis
« Amsterdam Stories USA » is a road-movie tracing 15 small places in the United States, all of them named Amsterdam. Two Dutch descent filmmakers, Rogier van Eck & Rob Rombout, cross the country from East to West Coast, from their arrival in New York (former Nieuw Amsterdam) to California. Through encounters and stories of the Amsterdams and of the road in between, this long and arbitrary adventure progressively weaves a singular image of the provincial and unknown « small town » America. The result is an intimate portrait and radiography of a protean country. The 6-hour documentary is divided in 4 chapters of 90 minutes each : EAST – SOUTH – MIDWEST – WEST
Director's Biography
Rob ROMBOUT: Rob Rombout (Amsterdam, 1953) has been making documentaries for over thirty years. His films have been broadcasted on international television and acclaimed at various festivals. Over the past five years, his work has been the subject of solo exhibitions (photo) and retrospectives. He has taught at LUCA, RITCS, INSAS, Paris 8, and served as course director at SKDA, the Hanoi Academy of Theatre and Cinema. He was a co-founder and later course director of "DocNomads," an international Erasmus Mundus master's program jointly organized by three film institutes in Lisbon, Budapest, and Brussels. Rob Rombout's documentaries often have a strong fictional character. In the road movie "Amsterdam Stories USA" (4x90 min, 2012), he takes the wheel himself alongside co-director Rogier van Eck. In 2016, Rob Rombout made a film about the Dutch writer Robert van Gulik: "On the Track of Robert van Gulik" (88 min).