Filmmaker Wendela Scheltema liked to bring people from the Amsterdam art and film world together and never expected anything in return. “She wanted to give the stage to others.”
The Golden Olive: for that price, filmmaker Wendela Scheltema has driven half the Amsterdam art world up a northern Italian mountain every summer holiday since 2001. The road to her second home near Ventimiglia was narrow and winding along precipices and cliffs. But that didn’t stop about a hundred filmmakers and friends from coming to Scheltema’s film festival parody: the Bunker Festival.
Tents were set up between the olive trees and the group watched films for five days: Italian classics, premieres by friends or Bollywood films. “It was the most beautiful day of the year. Wendela always said on the second or third day: ‘I like it more this year than last year’,” says co-organizer and friend Gabrielle Provaas.
The love for films originated in Oud-Zuid, where Scheltema, her twin sister Tatiana and her older sister Barbara grew up surrounded by books, theatre, theater and films. “We were all allowed to bring friends to the movies,” says Tatiana. “And once or twice a year we went to London to watch musicals.”
Even before Scheltema was accepted at the Film Academy in 1990, she had already made her first film, Saudade. “She made very poetic, cinematographic films,” says former classmate and friend Jessica Gorter. “It reminds me of Polish cinema from the sixties or seventies. She could tell a lot with one image.”
Creative and philosophical
She tackled heavy themes in her life by thinking about them in a creative and philosophical way. “Shortly before she went to the academy, she lost her mother. That was a big influence on her, but she would never put that directly or literally in a movie. She sought out the imagination, the feeling of loneliness and the search for the essence of our existence,” says Gorter.
After graduating, she founded Bobbie Film editing company with Caitlin Hulscher. That name referred to the plastic core of a film reel, but also to her fiancé Bob Meijer, founder of museum Het Kattenkabinet. The two met in the stairwell of artists’ society De Kring, on Leidseplein. Despite the age difference – Meijer dates from 1945 – they quickly became inseparable, says film academy friend Michael Schaap. They had a son and a daughter.
It did not stop at the assembly company, because Scheltema was ‘a source of initiatives’. With cultural web workshop Limboland.tv she gave artists and makers of special films and television a stage between 2008 and 2013. In 2015, together with Meijer, she founded the Foundation for Education and Culture (SEC), a fund to support cultural and educational projects. And she made soup for the homeless every week.
Stargazing course
“She has made as much as possible,” says friend Roosje Klap. “She was eager to give the stage to others, despite being a filmmaker herself.” Scheltema asked nothing in return. “She always shared everything with everyone. And she gave fantastic gifts to her friends. A stargazing course, for example,” says Tatiana. “The Bunker Festival was also such a great gift to everyone who came.”
Although she organized and facilitated a lot, she was not the center of attention. “She was the hub of all kinds of circles, but she was certainly not a loud person,” says friend Jessica Gorter. “But she was also headstrong and stubborn. Shuffling quietly through everything, she did exactly what she wanted to do.” This is how people camped in the Italian olive grove during corona time.
She had already chosen the theme for Bunker 2023: ‘levelling’ it had to be. At the age of 53 she had also started studying law. But Wendela Scheltema died unexpectedly on May 12, after a series of cerebral infarctions. She was 56 years old.
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