Eye(s) Open at EYE Film Museum: colonial films through new eyes

Imagine an archive of some 2,000 colonial films shot in formerly occupied Indonesia and Suriname. Images that for decades determined how the ‘distant territory’ was seen, from one perspective, from the colonizer's camera. The exhibition Eye(s) Open at the EYE Film Museum now radically questions that view. Curator Hicham Khalidi and co-curator Judith Öfner invited eleven artists to dive into that archive for two years and make something new with it. No commentary from the outside, but ten completely new works that answer from within.

The eye-catchers are hefty. Riar Rizaldi, from Indonesia, made Tropenkolder: a film installation in which he uses re-enactment to make the invisible work of Javanese railroad workers visible through so-called phantom ride films, images once shot from moving trains. That same colonial perspective is central to Dominion by the duo Jongsma + O'Neill (Eline Jongsma and Kel O'Neill). They used artificial intelligence to reconstruct encounters that were never filmed: those between Dutch Catholic missionaries and the people of the island of Flores. What was never recorded is now being made visible.

EYE itself is already a special location for such an exhibition. The futuristic building on the northern IJ bank, designed by the Viennese firm DMAA, has four cinema halls and a large changing exhibition space. That the museum considers its collection a ‘Living Archive,’ open to reuse and new interpretations, is exactly what Eye(s) Open makes possible. Moreover, there is an extensive fringe program: films, talks and events in the cinema halls, and a sixty-minute guided tour every Sunday at 2 p.m.

Ten new works that answer from within what those old images do not show.

Eleven artists from countries including Indonesia, the Netherlands, Jamaica and the United Kingdom, ten new works, and an archive of 2,000 films as a starting point. Eye(s) Open runs until Sept. 6, 2026. The Sunday tour costs $7.50 per person and lasts one hour. There is a separate offer for secondary and higher education students. The museum in the Overhoeks neighborhood can be reached by ferry from Central Station in a few minutes.