Tiengemeten – Part 1 (2001)

Directed by: Digna Sinke | 75 minutes | documentary

The premise of the Tiengemeten project by director Digna Sinke seems deceptively simple. When it was announced in 1993 that a small island in the Haringvliet, Tiengemeten, would be converted from a small farming community into a nature reserve from 1998, Sinke decided to make a documentary about the planned return to nature. This immediately creates expectations for a film filled with serene, silent images of a slowly deteriorating landscape, with the occasional lost hiker who is swallowed up in it; visual reflections on the ‘naturalization’ of Tiengemeten as an ironic commentary on the otherwise unapproachable propelling modernity, or if necessary a striking counter-movement to it.

Those nature shots are ultimately quite numerous, but otherwise these expectations are barely realised. It has become a series of four documentaries, which have been collected in a joint DVD box. These are mainly filled with almost endless order: not only in the form of the orderly rows of trees that continue to form the landscape despite all ambitions, but especially also in the official mill through which the ambitious project has to be dragged. There have been hundreds of meetings over the years, perhaps showing more talking policymakers in dusty offices than rustic pastures. The entire policy project at Tiengemeten eventually takes eleven years to near completion, with the result that the last film about this, ‘Weemoed & Wildernis’, would only be released in 2010 – nine years after the first film.

In the first documentary in the series, ‘Tiengemeten part 1’ (2001), we are introduced to Tiengemeten as it appeared in the summer of 1998. The impressions are idyllic in their timelessness: on hot summer days, children splash in the water, amid mills, dikes and farms. As a viewer, you suspect that summer in 1958 or 1928 looked exactly like this. The question that arises is why this picturesque island should be completely turned upside down if necessary to turn it into a nature reserve – and all this on an island on the border with Zeeland, where the memories of the flood disaster of 1953 are still in the memory. lying down. Giving up habitats, especially if it involves breaching dikes, is still a sensitive issue here. However, it is far from that yet. Paradoxically, making room for nature requires extensive, excruciatingly slow stages of research and policy planning, which take years. As one concerned policymaker puts it in the film, real wilderness is of no interest to him; you already have that in so many places in the world. No, there must be a nice walking path through it. The ideal of makeability is central to the policy, whereby reticence is hardly noticeable. As soon as the officials and others involved walk across the island, they look like children in a huge toy store who actually want to play with everything for a while.

Although this documentary in itself offers enough intriguing viewing material, the entire series of films about Tiengemeten is so much more than the sum of its parts that it is advisable to watch them all and consider them as a coherent work of art. ‘Tiengemeten part 1’ is the start of a fascinating portrait of bureaucratic ambition (and perhaps hubris) and the agricultural society of Tiengemeten, but it is not more than a start, and those who are interested would do better to view the entire series.