Short poetic documentary about the southern sea in the Netherlands.

A small town doctor gets a visit from a former study-friend. He doesn't know this former surgeon has become a junkie that wants to steal his morphine.

After a fight the brass band in a small village splits up into two separate bands. They both want to win a contest and will do anything to prevent the other band from winning it.

Bert Haanstra paints a portrait of The Netherlands and the Dutch, in his own unparalleled manner. Partly with the aid of a hidden camera he observes people in the most diverse situations. He shows the unusual in the usual and the usual in the unusual. The harsh years of the post war era of reconstruction have passed and for most people life is better than before.

1983 film by Bert Haanstra

In this short film Bert Haanstra gives his vision - from the water – of a tranquil Holland. During filming he held the camera upside down and afterwards put the images ‘up right’ again in the film. By doing this, we see the ‘usual’ waterfront, but transformed by the rippling of the water. In this way Mirror of Holland became a modern looking experimental film. However this did not devalue the Dutch sentiment regarding waterfronts that are so trusted to so many.

In 1952, Haanstra made Panta Rhei , another view of Holland through the eyes of a painter and filmmaker. Its poetic images of water, skies and clouds reflect Haanstra's own moods.

In 1957, the Royal Leerdam Glass Works commissioned Haanstra to make an informative promotional film in black and white. This resulted in the accomplished 25 minute Speaking of Glass. On entering the factory, however, Haanstra noticed that a mechanical stacking machine was malfunctioned because of one broken bottle. Amused by its robot like but futile movements, Haanstra agreed to make the film, but only on condition that he could make a separate short on glass. The film gives an intriguing view of the process of glass blowing and the mechanical way in wich glass objects are made. Glass, his greatest success to date, even won an Oscar, the grand prix of Hollywood and Holland's first Academy Award.