30 times Jack Nicholson in Eye

Jul 5, 2011 | by Robert | Art, Event

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Art director, designer and photographer in the virtual world. What's in a name.

You might not know Eye, which is very well possible. Since January 2010, Eye Institute is a merger of four Dutch film organisations: Filmmuseum, Holland Film, Nederlands instituuut voor de Filmeducatie (NiF) and the Filmbank. At the end of 2011 Eye will move to the IJ-bank and thus becomes the very first major art institution at ‘the other side’ of the IJ.

Jack Nicholson tribute

To kill the time, they organised a summer festival as a tribute to Jack Nicholson. The crazy and classic actor will have 30 of his 70 films screened by Eye. All of us have seen one or more of Jack’s films, like The Shining (1980), One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) or Easy Rider (1969), but you might have missed a few.

Sometimes I really like to get out of the shallow waters of simply consuming films, and go more in-depth with lectures and talks about a particular film. I’m looking forward to a lecture and screening of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest on July 21st. This film is about a psychiatric ward which had quite an impact back in the day; Jack Nicholson was even rewarded with his very first Oscar. This lecture will be given by Patrick Allegaert, artistic leader of a museum about the history of psychiatry. He will talk about how the film influenced our image of psychiatry back in the ’70s, among other things. To me it’s always intriguing to find out how popular culture (in this case a film) can influence our view on actual life.