Koelinga’s De Steeg: Palimpsest and Parallax Historiography

Jan Koelinga's involvement in avant-garde circles during the production of De Steeg and his relations with the Nazi film industry in the 1940s are well-known facts in the Netherlands, but less has been written on his early work, situated in the area of photography and the socialist press. De Steeg can be considered a palimpsest, hiding under its surface remnants of both social photography and avant-garde cinema. More than just registering, Koelinga used a quite romantic representation of life in the slums as seemingly uncomplicated, straightforward, and solidary. De Steeg was also included in a program of avant-garde documentaries at the Antwerp conference of the Catholic Film Center in 1933. Koelinga's reputation of a contaminated film director affected projections of De Steeg, even though it was shot several years before his involvement with Ufa. He did manage to make a handful films in the post-war era, though local and national authorities kept making his life difficult.