The Filmliga movement includes the Soviet avant-garde inspired documentaries of Joris Ivens, the scientific films of J.C. Mol (who evoked an aesthetic, abstract world with his 'Het rijk der kristallen') and the work of Andor von Barsy, Paul Schuitema, Willem Bon and Mannus Franken.
In 1970, Frans Zwartjes started teaching at the Vrije Academie in The Hague where he became an influential mentor to an entire generation of artists such as Jan Ketelaars, Gijs Schneemann, Matthijs Blonk, George Schouten and Ruud Monster, who constituted the so-called ‘Haagse Psychopolis school’.
This new generation, led by Wim Verstappen, Pim de la Parra, Nikolai van der Heyde and Adriaan Ditvoorst, saw themselves as revolutionaries and wanted to give the staid film world a rude awakening.
The epicentre of experimental film up until 1974 was the Electric Cinema, run by STOFF employees Barbara Meter, Mattijn Seip, Nico Paape and Jos Schoffelen.
The work of Shinkichi Tajiri, who lived in the Netherlands, attracted attention from the early 1960s onwards and from the end of that decade, he was joined by conceptual artists such as Jan Dibbets, Bas Jan Ader, Peter Struycken, Marinus van Boezem, Ger van Elk and Michel Cardena.
In their work, conceptual artists such as Dibbets, Van Elk, Boezem, Struycken and the Columbian Raoul Marroquin who resided in the Netherlands, experimented with video.
Other important filmmakers from the 1980s were Frank Scheffer, Noud Heerkens, Gerard Holthuis, Ruud Monster, Frederieke Jochems and Andras Hamelberg, Pieter Moleveld and Barbara Meter, who started working again after a 10-year break.
(source: mm2) De Filmbank, which inventories, presents and distributes contemporary Dutch experimental film in all sorts of ways (through rental, entries to Dutch and foreign film festivals, publications and DVDs), was founded in 2001 by Karel Doing, Anna Abrahams, Peter Van Hoof and others.