Director’s statement

‘All that is valuable is vulnerable’ has become a very personal film in which I search, just like my main character, for my identity as a (film)maker. I met Gerard Suurmeijer during commission work and instinctively felt the urge to make a film about him. In the end it also became a film about myself. Gerard is a translator who somewhat wanted to be a writer. In this, I recognized my own struggle with how to find space to make personal work without getting bogged down in commissioned work.

Gerard gradually became a source of inspiration; he rekindled the fire for me to make my own work again. Although he had found acceptance in translating words of others, for me that is not enough. This documentary teaches me that I want and need to tell my own stories, and that makes this project extra special to me.

I started to follow Gerard in his daily life to investigate why he is unable to write his own book but during interviews I noticed that I was actually looking for my own answers. Questions I asked Gerard were questions I need to ask myself. We seemed, however, to be talking past each other because even when I tried to make appointments with him I often came across his answering machine. To symbolize our one-way communication, I used the answering machine as a basis for our dialogue. It also symbolizes something bigger and more universal: being on hold. Something Gerard and I both struggle with and in which many people will recognize themselves. Why not do what you really want now, why wait for it?

With my intuition as the most important touchstone, I looked for ways to make the universal story of Gerard and myself tangible. I intuitively knew I had found a visual metaphor when I went to Katwijk with Gerard, a place that’s important to him. There he spotted a scarecrow in the distance, we looked at it together. He saw a bird that flew around quickly, while I instantly knew it was the scarecrow that was restricted. That was the heart of my film: we sometimes feel like we’re stuck but don’t we do this to ourselves?

That is when I came up with the idea of the interweaving wind as a metaphorical layer in the documentary. Just as you can only see wind when it encounters a scarecrow, an inner urge is only visible when there is friction. For example when dealing with ones own inner critic. You may even need this friction to get ahead. In his study of creativity, psychologist Csikszentmihalyi describes a creative flow as “something that propels you forward with great force”. Just like the wind, this inner urge can push you forward.

My hope is that this film will serve as a mirror for creatives and for anyone struggling with important choices. Going after what you really want is often difficult and scary, but when we learn to embrace this, we move forward.

‘Wind finds its own way, obstacles only give it direction.’

Karen Ebert