film

Johan van der Keuken squeezed an extraordinary amount of work into his sadly short 62 years, completing 55 documentary films, many of them award-winners, and nine books on film and photography. With I Love Dollars (1986) he made a sharp, freeform essay film that turns the camera on the global flow of money, labour and power. Shot across locations including Amsterdam, New York City, Hong Kong and Geneva, the film constructs a fragmented portrait of late-capitalist life in the 1980s.

Van der Keuken moves fluidly between street scenes, interviews and observational fragments, juxtaposing the lives of bankers, artists and migrant workers. His style resists tidy argument, instead building meaning through rhythm and contrast, with editing that emphasises the connections between distant economies and intimate human experiences. The result a political, poetic critique of inequality that never loses sight of the individuals that lend it its story.