TV review Liberation festivities do not produce good television

If you repeat the word ‘freedom’ often enough on such a liberation day, it will automatically lose any meaning. It was a party in the countryPop festivals everywhere. Dancing, drinking, waving with a flag. The prime minister was given a smoke bomb for the feet in Wageningen, demonstrators against the genocide in Gaza were quickly taken away. It had to stay cozy.

Of course, just a little party is not possible, so NPO3 reporter Evita Mac-Nack came to ask the visitors what freedom meant for them. « The world is on fire, you know, » Douwe Bob knew. « You can be gay or whatever« Said twins. Clichés and repetitions were not avoided. The COC Zwolle held ‘lacquered conversations’ at the festival site: passers -by could have their nails lacquered while having a conversation with queers.

The day ended with the 5 May concert (NPO1) on the Amstel in Amsterdam. People in boats, the king and the queen watched a slick show on pontoons. The program mainly contained Dutch -language songs from, among others, Antoon and Yves Berendsen, interspersed with light classic by the symphony orchestra Phion – a gypsy song from Dvorak, a cowboy dance from Copeland.

My highlight was the group of synchronous swimmers supplied by the twins Noortje and Bregje de Brouwer. Last year they won silver with a daring Van Gogh dance at the Olympic Games-they grabbed their ears in a star night bath suit. This time they brought a freedom dance in the cold water of the Amstel. Unfortunately, the director was so busy with fast shot changes that he forgot to visualize artistic swimming. In a total shot at a great distance you sometimes saw how they cast their legs in the air.

I became a little woe of that festival. Earely chatter, bad stamp music. Let people especially celebrate freedom, but good television does not yield it. Fortunately there was the Amsterdam singer Sophie Straat, hero of the day, who had thought for more than ten seconds and liberated day linked to lack of freedom and war now. « I think we can’t celebrate anything as long as we are not all free, » she said. She intervened when guards wanted to take Palestinian flags in the audience. « Sir, the flags stay! » After this she said: « As a Jewish person I will always be against genocide. We say » Never again Auschwitz « but instead of resisting it, we watch tacitly. »

Soldier of Orange

Is nothing holy anymore? Even our soldier of Orange had to believe it. Because his war adventures were edited into a feature film and musical, Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema (1917-2007) grew to embodiment the Dutch resistance. The documentary The unknown soldier: Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema (Sunday, NPO2) by Jean van de Velde talks about, among other things, the life of the resistance man after the war.

He was a fierce opponent of Indonesian independence and worked with the British secret service on illegal arms deliveries for Moluccan insurgents. Because he found the Indonesia policy in accommodation, he participated in a Dutch coup in 1947. The documentary is filled with fans of Hazelhoff, they feast on his threeths adventures that often did not lead to anything, and in this light the coup is also treated briefly. That lid bad boy anyway. What helps with this is that they conceal the most incriminating part: the failed murder attempt on PvdA leader and resistanceman Koos Vorrink.

Hazelhoff, the celebrated freedom fighter, therefore wanted to have a politician killed and turn parliamentary democracy around. Let’s say that everyone has their own idea of ​​freedom.

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