Mattijn Seip

Mattijn Seip studied at the Nederlandse Filmacademie in the early 1960s, and was a member of the illustrious generation of Wim Verstappen, Pim de la Parra, Adriaan Ditvoorst, and Nicolai van der Heyde. He made controversial films during that period: IJdijk and Schermerhoorn, both from 1965.

In August of 1968, Seip and Niko Paape co-founded ‘STOFF’, due to their dissatisfaction with the existing subsidy regulations. They demanded more freedom, and wanted to democratize filmmaking. STOFF emerged from a collaboration that also included other filmmakers such as Jos Schoffelen and Seip’s then-partner Barbara Meter. This collaboration was continued in Electric Cinema.

The films that Seip made in this period had a strong structuralist focus; they were films in which the properties of the film medium played the central role. Examples include Double Shutter and After the Colours from 1972.