to gertjan (mr. g)

Dan Koh
May 3
3 min read

Gertjan Zuilhof, or mr. G as i called him, the preeminent programmer of Asian and African cinema and a burgeoning filmmaker himself, passed away on 3 March; i didn't find out till the middle of the month over coffee with a friend.

IFFR, the film festival he was "the heart" of programming at for a long time, paid tribute to him, and i can only add a few words:

mr. G and i met in 2018 at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF); i knew of him as the programmer almost all independent SEAsian filmmakers had showed their films to first, and admired his curation over the years, especially Forget Africa (what a title!). i had also seen his cameo in Tan Chui Mui's short "A Night in Malacca" (2013) and immediately recognised his shock of hair in real life.

over Covid, job losses and gains, and an endless stream of pictures, mr. G and i stayed in touch over Facebook and caught up at festivals, bars, and cafes in Tokyo, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Berlin. we originally met at his curated programme SEA of Sadness, which travelled, in sensitively modified form, to my $ingapore in 2019. beyond the great title again, the landmark programme opened my eyes to the cinemas of Roxlee, The Maw Naing, and Ismail Fahmi Lubis, as well as reaffirmed my love for Thunska Pansittivorakul, Ho Yuhang, and Edwin—experiencing Edwin's Hortus (2014) on 16mm is up there for me with encountering Jarman on the big screen.

mr. G and i last saw each other in 2022, when we visited the Rijksmuseum's REVOLUSI! exhibition. i recall being stimulated and endlessly going on about anticolonialism, but it was mr. G who spotted the error in the exhibition's map, labelling the entire Borneo as Indonesian territory. "not everything is about colonialism, you know," he said over drinks. i was going to make a video essay in response to that... maybe one day.

besides programming, mr. G was also a special artist. his sketches, like the one he sent me above, captioned "Hair has little to do with identity," picture discordant, animal-like shapes taking over sense, lines, and emptiness. i still have one of his original drawings, done on hotel stationery, somewhere precious. mr. G was also actively beginning to make and write films: his debut feature premiered posthumously at BAFICI in April.

discussing SEA of Sadness with another friend in 2018, the question came up: Do we need another white guy programming our films? i think mr. G was acutely aware of his positionality, particularly when it came to pan-African cinema, and at least for this programme, his outsider-insider nature and extensive friendships in the region helped cast a light on otherwise easily overlooked films. who else could have programmed Khavn's confrontational Alipato: the Very Brief Life of an Ember (2016) next to Liryc dela Cruz's Notes from Unknown Maladies (2017), a B&W observation of his grandmother dying? Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004) is a given, but who else would not have dismissed Aline Magrez's short "No'I" (2016) as a tourist film, and shown it for the minor revelation it is?