Still: The Propagandist - Luuk Bouwman

Dutch filmmaker Jan Teunissen (1898-1975) was a disarming figure, a plump, cheerful movie lover who would do anything to further his own career in cinema. In the Nazi era, he was called the “czar” of the Dutch film industry. He boasts about being personal friends with Goebbels. Somehow, though, he and other Dutch fascist filmmaker colleagues who collaborated with the Third Reich never faced the reckoning you would have imagined for associating so closely with Hitler. Teunissen served some time in prison, but several of these filmmakers went on to have successful careers and they were very careful to scrub out any mention of their chequered Nazi pasts.

Luuk Bouwman tells the extraordinary story of Teunissen in his new feature doc The Propagandist** (sold by Film Harbour and premiering in International Competition at IDFA).

Teunissen wasn’t given to introspection or regret. He was an eminently practical man. Born into a wealthy background (his father was a successful antiques dealer), he started making home movies at an early age. In the 1930s, he directed the historical epic William of Orange (1934), notable as the first Dutch sound movie, but it was very badly received. During the war, he was involved in the production of the Dutch animated feature Reynard The Fox, ground-breaking in its techniques but also virulently anti-Semitic. 

“It came out of All Against All,” Bouwman explains how the new film is a natural follow up to his 2019 project, which also played at IDFA and which looked at the history of fascism in the Netherlands. During the research for the earlier documentary, Bouwman first came across the seven-hour interview with Teunissen conducted by historian Rolf Schuursma in the mid 1960s. (The interview forms the backbone of the new documentary).

“When I was working on All Against All, the subject of propaganda was one of the most interesting things for me. I wanted to go deeper into that…”

What does Bouwman make of Teunissen? Is he the embodiment of evil or a passionate cinephile who somehow lost his moral bearings along the way?

“It feels to me that he wanted to be an important figure,” Bouwman reflects on what drove his subject. “You can see elsewhere too that people with this huge amount of ambition, when their artistic ambitions are frustrated they pursue political careers.”

The director was also struck by Teunissen’s “coldness.” In the interviews, he didn’t show any remorse for the suffering perpetrated by the Nazi regime. “He is charismatic but he is also really detached from reality.”

Teunissen didn’t seem, at first, to be driven by Nazi ideology. He was a careerist who somehow never stopped to think about his moral responsibility. His loyalty to the Nazis cost him dearly. His son and stepson were both killed fighting for the Waffen SS on the Eastern Front. His kids, though, shared his fervent support for the Third Reich.

“In the end, he doesn’t take responsibility for it as a parent. In the interviews, he describes it as if he is on the moon, looking back on earth,” Bouwman says of Teunissen’s attitude toward his own life. The Dutch cineaste was a skilful editor. In the interviews after the war, he often gave the impression he regarded his own experiences as if they were movie rushes - raw material that he could cut and discard as he saw fit, presenting himself in the best possible light.

One benefit of Teunissen’s obsession with cinema is that he left a huge archive behind him. There were home movies shot on 16mm and 35mm, footage of him meeting with prominent Nazis like Himmler, and plenty of feature and promotional films which he either directed, edited or oversaw.

“It is part of an origin story of Dutch cinema and it has largely been forgotten because the films were never shown again or were thrown away,” the director says of his subject’s dubious part in Dutch national film history. Teunissen was a pioneer - but that doesn’t mean anyone will be in a particular rush to re-evaluate his contribution, such is his unsavoury reputation.

The Propagandist is produced by Docmakers. It is being released in the Netherlands by Cinema Delicatessen. Human is the broadcaster. 

This film is in a very different register to another of Bouwman’s previous docs, Gerlach (2023), co-directed with Aliona van der Horst and about a very likeable Dutch arable farmer, tending his land and the modern world encroaches around him.

“For me, with every film, you start with a blank page…to switch in form and invent something new for the next film is something I really enjoy! Gerlach is completely different. It is more about good in people and this one [The Propagandist] is more about evil…” Bouwman ends.

For more information about IDFA 2024, click here.

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*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund
**Film is supported by the Production Incentive