"Living against all odds, with the aid of beautiful stories that tell themselves, as a comfort in the face of nothingness."-The Long Holiday(De grote vakantie). We were honored to have filmmaker and photographer Johan van der Keuken (Amsterdam Global Village, The Eye Above the Well, Blind Child) as an Artist-in-Residence for two weeks in April 1999. After battling cancer, he passed away this January. Tonight we celebrate his life by presenting his last film. Irina Leimbacher wrote: "What do you do when learn that you have cancer? If you are Dutch film essayist Johan van der Keuken you do what you have always done: begin another journey, another film, this one enriched and informed by the acute awareness of your own mortality. An alternately meditative and agitated chronicle of this passionate whirlwind that is van der Keuken's life, The Long Holiday is shot in and between Paris, Holland, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Nepal, Brazil, and the U.S. as he seeks a palliative to despair and finds many reasons for living. From someone for whom living means filming, this is a moving hymn to life and its many enigmas."