Still: A Prelude - wendelien van oldenborgh

wendelien van oldenborgh’s short filmA Prelude is exactly that, a prelude to a feature to be titled Lyrical Vengeance, and which will draw a parallel between three historical female writers from Japan, the Netherlands and Indonesia, “who resisted dominant patriarchal and nationalist politics in mid-20th Century.” 

But the short film is a dynamic entity in its own right, and the queer folk we meet – a collection of artists, researchers and academics – are also part of that same tendency towards resistance. Some of them are part of a collective, or a gathering, called Waifu which was formed after a trans friend was refused entry into a bar during a club girl night. Each of the characters embodies defiance in their own way, whether elaborately, such as the hyper-feminine drag artist Andromeda, or less ostentatiously, as with the reflective Hanna or Midori.

“In struggles, as in solidarity, although we look for our roles to play, we can also be there as an anonymous self,” we are told in the film.

There are fascinating, core points of reference in A Prelude, such as Japanese novelist Hayashi Fumiko, whose delicate work we hear narrated. She is one of the three writers (together with Dutch Beb Vuyk and Indonesian Suwarsih Djojopuspito) whose works of protest will be profiled in the longer film to come.

“I've been interested in the history between the Netherlands and Indonesia - of course, colonial history - but Japan plays quite a role in that, and it's never really included,” says director van oldenborgh.

“I wanted to tell this story not through wartime and politics, but through female artists, through whom we came to these inclusive queer movements of today, which seems like a jump, but actually it's not. It's the same feminist continuation.”

Another, very cinematic, touchpoint is radical Japanese female director Kinuyo Tanaka who made the rich, vibrant and highly energetic film we see projected on a screen behind our contemporary Waifu protagonists (Onna Bakari no Yoru; Girls of Dark, 1961). One tender scene from the monochrome movie is recreated in glorious Wong Kar Wai-like technicolour by Andromeda and their friend aliwen, and shot by cinematographer Yukiko Iioka who worked miracles with regular lenses and poor light, van oldenborgh points out to SEE NL.

In a later scene the director and Iioka allow the camera to roam across internal spaces like a spirit, resting on the faces of people who choose to listen to or ignore the prevailing conversation we hear on the soundtrack.

A Prelude also references the The Sanrizuka Struggle, an ongoing series of civil conflicts and riots between the Japanese government and the agricultural community of Sanrizuka who continue to protest the construction (and very existence) of Narita International Airport (originally called New Tokyo International Airport). The conflict arose from the government's decision to build the airport in Sanrizuka without consulting or obtaining the consent of the majority of local residents.

On the airport site is a house called Kinone Pension where members of Waifu meet to talk, to protest and to dance. “I think is totally important how these things are intergenerational,” says van oldenborgh. “It is also a policy of Waifu that they always organise their rave in a location that has a relationship to other struggles, somewhere where it has meaning. It is all very interesting. And very cyclical. It's not like a single-struggle issue ever.”

A Prelude was created for a solo exhibition at YCAM: Yamaguchi Centre for Arts and Media (which took place from 30 November 2024 to mid-March 2025), and shot in two days and finished in a month. 

FID Marseille marks the film’s festival/theatrical world premiere. It is a festival where van oldenborgh remains a firm favourite. “Many of my films have premiered in Marseille in competition,” she says. These include Obsada (2022), made with an all-female film crew at the Łódź Film School in Poland who reflect on aspects of gender within the industry they have chosen, and Hier (2021) in which young women examine colonial history and contemporary society through music, poetry and dialogue, all set against the backdrop of Museum Arnhem’s renovation.

Find out more about FID Marseille here.