Bassie and Adriaan, several generations have grown up with the iconic clown and acrobat. The episodes are still broadcast and now there is a documentary: ‘A treasure of memories’, made by two fans from Breda: Freek Haverman and Bas Bakker. “Bassie and Adriaan have seen the documentary and fully approved of it. That is of course great.”
Written by
Arnold Tankus
Of course he was a fan. “Yes, I played Bassie when I was ten. I performed in a Bassie suit at children’s parties.” But that was not the reason to make the documentary. Ten years ago, together with media producer Bakker, he made short broadcasts about Bassie and Adriaan.
“That was commissioned by a kind of predecessor of Netflix. The occasion was the duo’s 35th anniversary and Bas already had good contact with them.” The channel, 5minuten.tv no longer exists, but they kept a lot of material from all the interviews they had of the two.
“They apparently never drank alcohol, because they remember everything.”
“About three-quarters of a year ago the idea arose to use that material for a documentary,” explains 38-year-old Haverman. The old interviews have been combined with new ones and supplemented with well-known TV personalities such as Paul de Leeuw. But the biggest part of the story is told by Bassie and Adriaan themselves: “They have apparently never drunk alcohol, because they remember everything. You throw in a quarter and you have hours of material.”
“Hardly anyone knows that they have also been an acrobat duo for 25 years.”
Brothers Bas and Aad van Toor selected archive material for the film themselves. The documentary contains, among other things, unique material from ‘The Crocksons‘, the acrobat duo with which they traveled all over the world in the 1950s and 1960s with a chair act. “Almost no one knows that,” says Haverman. “They even went to China with it, but stopped because it was physically impossible to maintain. Then they started with Bassie and Adriaan.”
“Adriaan is still on his feet and he was at the premiere.”
The premiere was in Rotterdam on Saturday, but Freek himself could not be there. “I am traveling and am now in Namibia, in the middle of the desert. I had already planned that a year ago,” he says. “Yes, of course I would have liked to have been there. I would have loved to see it in the cinema myself and hear the audience’s reactions. But I have now received a lot of messages and photos from the people who were there and that is also nice.”
Bas and Adriaan van Toor are now elderly, 88 and 81 respectively. “Adriaan is still on his feet and was at the premiere, but it was no longer possible for Bas.” It has now been announced that the film will be in cinemas for an extra week. “At least until December 5.”
Unfortunately, it is too late for Haverman to see the documentary on the big screen, because he has not yet returned from his trip.
The documentary makers together with Bassie and Adriaan at the caravan. (photo: Freek Haverman)
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