When I Close My Eyes (2024)

When I Close My Eyes

The Japanese occupied the Dutch East Indies during World War II and put women and children into camps. In his second directorial feature, Dutch filmmaker and long-time producer Pieter van Huystee uses drawings, animated sequences and talking head interviews to evoke an account of life in these camps. When I Close My Eyes recently premiered as a part of the Dutch Movies Matter section at the Movies that Matter Festival in The Hague, Netherlands.

The filmmaker speaks with several women who were young girls or teenagers while interned, including Lilly Kloots Touwen, Trudy Hommes Wardenier, Yvonne Müller, Femke de Kat, Marij Mouwen and Willy Glorius Jansen. They recall their time there a source of deep-rooted pain for many memory by memory until eventually it forms a mosaic of civilian war trauma. The internees were forced into manual labor; they were beaten and starved. They slept in crowded quarters and lived in cramped spaces; they had to follow rituals of subordination; many were sexually assaulted by Japanese officials.

While living in the camps they made bright drawings and detailed watercolour paintings about their lives there which captured both beautiful moments and great horrors. These works are animated by Hanneke van der Linden who carefully emulates each one’s style before smoothly editing them together with Chris van Oers so that they create a unified picture of what it was like being inside those places on an experiential level the shared happiness among inmates during festive occasions or fear mothers felt when their sons were taken out every time boys reached puberty.

This follows a tendency within animated documentary film making also seen in Agnieszka Zwiefka’s Silent Trees where filmmakers use subjects’ drawings as starting points for building expressive range within films themselves.

Van Huystee’s mother was interned too this is why he made this film; however objectivity itself doesn’t exist within documentaries sometimes there are subjects so close to one self that it hinders how well they come across through storytelling. Although touching and illuminating an unknown period of history through the lens of survivors’ accounts alone, When I Close My Eyes lacks contextuality and leaves one with a sense of having only seen part.

At no point does van Huystee mention the Dutch presence in Southeast Asia, where local populations suffered centuries-long violence at their hands. The Dutch conquests from 1600s onwards made possible for many interviewees to live beautiful lives with help from servants who were people indigenous to those regions being colonized, along side significant amounts wealth being accumulated.

Comparing traumas is dangerous; pitting Japanese imperial violence against Dutch colonial violence serves no purpose other than to create divisions between peoples who have all been victims before each other’s eyes throughout human history. However failing bring criticality while still balance towards many these statements as well lack camp context itself ultimately disservices experiences women went through here which should be given due recognition.

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