Fragments of Decay

Plaat traveled a lot, to Greece, the Middle-East, India, South-America et cetera, where his fascination began for ‘places of the past’, characterised by decay and destruction. What he saw got registered on film and silenced fragments got edited into pure visual cinema. Like his drawings, montages, and paintings Plaat’s 8 and 16mm films blends imagination with reality. Plaat describes them as “atmospheric movies, often photomontages with mixes of war sounds, airplane rumble, Zarah Leander’s voice, Wagner’s music… All fragments, leading to amazing effects”. Henri Plaat (Amsterdam 1936) made about 40 films, from absurd and surrealistic to melancholic. He has a fascination for WW2, travelling, film music, and the slow decay of things. “To register, I want to register places and things before it gets destroyed by modernity and progression. Before it is lost forever."