Het is een schone dag geweest

For generations, the sons had taken over the family farm; But Willem retires without a successor. As a last tribute “to his father who gave him his love of the land, and to his mother from whom he received his love for the cinema”, Jos, the son, in 1992, filmed his father’s work, his gestures, the final harvest, the cattle auction, many facets of everyday life, the very eloquent silences punctuating conversations about yesterday’s and tomorrow’s weather. Winter fog and summer fertility, breakfast time and fishing parties, a sorrowful goodbye to the flat country and to a way of life which is disappearing in the Netherlands as in the rest of Europe.