Cinema

   After the American Andrew Rawson Jennings opened the first Dutch cinema in Amsterdam in 1916, many others followed. One of the most beautiful cinemas in the Netherlands is the Art Deco–style Tuschinski Theater, opened in Amsterdam in 1921 by Abraham Icek Tuschinski (1886–1942) and still in use. Particularly during the interwar period, still without television as an alternative, going to the cinema was popular. Awell-known part of this was the Polygoon newsreel, which presented all kinds of news items from 1922 until 1986. Currently, Pathe is the largest film company in the Netherlands. The country’s biggest movie festival is the International Film Festival Rotterdam (yearly since 1972). Dutch cinemas have mainly screened foreign movies, because the supply of the native film industry has always been small. Some Dutch filmmakers who have become successful abroad in clude the communist Joris Ivens (1898–1989), Bert Haanstra (1916–1997), and Paul Verhoeven (1938– ).

   See also GOGH, Theo van (1957–2004); HAUER, Rutger (1944– ).