▶ TrailerRick Salazar, filmed for the East part. Photograph from the shoot.

20124 × 90 minDocumentary in four parts

Amsterdam Stories USA

Name: Amsterdam Stories USA
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2012
Duration: 360 min
Cast: Russell Banks, Adrian Cronauer, Charles Evers, Elinor Tatum, Edgar Oliver

Rob Rombout and Rogier van Eck, two filmmakers of Dutch descent, drive from New York, once Nieuw Amsterdam, to California, through fifteen small American places that all bear the name Amsterdam. Sheriffs, poets, cowboys, a Vietnam DJ and a civil-rights veteran tell their own stories, in their own time. Over four chapters, East, South, Midwest and West, filmed on four journeys between 2010 and 2011, a borrowed name becomes a way into small-town America.

More excerpts

Press

“With this patient road movie we enter a continent still unknown. Familiar, though.”

« Nous pénétrons, avec ce patient road-movie, dans un continent encore inconnu. Familier cependant. »

Caroline Lamarche, Usage du Nouveau Monde, 2013 · Our translation.

“a detailed X-ray of what is perhaps one of the most many-sided countries in the world”

«uma radiografia detalhada daquele que é, porventura, um dos mais poliédricos países do mundo»

Ricardo Vieira Lisboa, Cinemateca Portuguesa, 2025 · Our translation.

2013Portrait d’une Amérique perduePhilippe Manche, Le Soir · PDF ↗
2013Usage du Nouveau MondeCaroline Lamarche · PDF ↗
2014L’espace américainCinergie, La Libre Belgique · PDF ↗
2022A portrait of ordinary AmericaMarc-Emmanuel Mélon, The Mise en Scène of the Real, Yellow Now, provisional translation · PDF ↗

Photographs

Two men hold up a framed photograph of the Manhattan skyline beside a camera on a tripod, the real skyline across the water behind them — 2011USA, New York, Governors Island

Elinor Tatum, in a red jacket, on the phone in the doorway of the New York Amsterdam News building — 2011USA, New York, Elinor Tatum

A cameraman leans over a car roof to film Tony Ndogo, seen from behind in an orange shirt, on a New York street — 2010USA, New York, Tony Ndogo

A man in sunglasses leans out of tall grass beside a Neighborhood Watch warning sign and a street sign for Rombout Ave — USA, Upstate New York

A granite stone reading Amsterdam Cemetery among red and pink flowers and two small American flags — 2010USA, Amsterdam, Pennsylvania

Lee McCoy, white-bearded, holds a set of bagpipes on a lawn beside a camera on a tripod — 2010USA, Amsterdam, Pennsylvania, Lee McCoy

Jack Wingate holds a large mounted striped bass in a restaurant dining room — 2011USA, Amsterdam, Georgia, Jack Wingate

A rusted iron gate sign reading Amsterdam, green leaves behind — 2010USA, Amsterdam, Virginia

A woman in a red shirt and braided hair stands by a car with a camera mounted on its side, woods behind — 2011USA, Amsterdam, Georgia

A cameraman with a large camera on his shoulder, a raised finger, and an equestrian statue on a column behind — USA, Waterloo, Michigan

Chesney Sherman, half lit against a dark background, holds open her top to show tattoos below her collarbones — USA, Great Falls, Chesney Sherman

Ben Wolf at a camera on a tripod on a rocky ridge at Dante’s View, above Death Valley under heavy clouds — 2011USA, California, Death Valley, Dante’s View. Camera: Ben Wolf

A young woman and a cameraman with a tripod on a snowy plain beside a stop sign, mountains far off — 2011USA, Great Falls, Chesney Sherman

A close-up of a blue eye with long mascara-coated lashes and silver eyeshadow — 2011USA, Great Falls, Chesney Sherman

Ben Wolf at a camera on a tripod and Rogier van Eck on a snow-covered plain, a single snowy butte on the horizon — 2011USA, Idaho, Ben Wolf, Rogier van Eck

Technical sheet

Title: Amsterdam Stories USA
Year: 2012
Runtime: 4 × 90 min
Countries: Belgium, Netherlands
Languages: English, Dutch
Production: Saga Film, with Wallonie Image Production and RTBF; co-production Pieter van Huystee Film
Availability: On request

Direction: Rob Rombout, Rogier van Eck
Image: Ben Wolf
Sound: Colin Bannon, Matthew J. Menter, Trevor Cohen
Editing: Fanny Roussel, Alice de Matha, Frédéric Dupont
Music: Hughes Maréchal
With: Russell Banks, Adrian Cronauer, Charles Evers, Elinor Tatum, Edgar Oliver, Michael Botwinick, Myron Mixon, Robert Amsterdam and others

Prizes

2013Grand prize, 22nd International Festival of Ethnological Film, Belgrade
2013Audience Award, feature film (World Pulse), IndieLisboa, Lisbon

Selections

2012IDFA, Amsterdam
2014Magritte awards, Brussels