Filmmaker Arjan van Engen was like a troubadour who brought light and music to others and then moved on. This time forever.
If you went to the pub with Arjan, you came out with ten new friends. The big strong man with a beard who lived on his tjalk ‘de Marietje’ in the harbor of Monnickendam was a social magnet. Near him there was light, warmth and a lot of energy. Others wanted a piece of him and he was happy to give it. With Arjan, dreams were no longer unattainable.
Renovating houses, making documentaries, organizing parties, sailing, on a motorcycle through Africa and America, he wanted it all and he did it.
Three years ago, Arjan and a friend bought a dilapidated 17-meter sailing ship in Ibiza with the idea of refurbishing it. You’re crazy, it’s a wreck, everyone said. They renovated the ship, nail for nail, into a seaworthy showpiece.
In his life, which sometimes resembled an exciting boys’ book, his daughters were his great pride. Three powerful blonde girls; Madelief of 19, Linde of 16 and Valentijn of 10, all from a different mother. Arjan was not a house-tree-animal father, but he gave them all his love and trust and took them on adventurous journeys.
He was the linchpin of a family system in which the mothers of his children got along, everyone attended birthday parties together, and his daughters stayed together with one of the ‘mamas’. And now his last great love had also been added; screenwriter Karen, with whom he had been in a relationship for four years.
On the way to freedom
Arjan was like a troubadour who connected everyone and brought light and music and left at a certain moment. On the way to freedom, in a sailing ship at sea or by motorcycle somewhere on an impassable road in Africa.
There he went again. An ordinary boy from the village of Tuk near Steenwijk, with a desire for beautiful and compelling experiences. Arjan often viewed the world from behind the eye of the camera. It started when, as a schoolboy, he was allowed to borrow the 8mm film camera from father Sierd and mother Els.
He extensively recorded skiing holidays and holidays with the caravan and surfboard. He filmed and directed his friends as they snowboarded over a woodpile during a skiing holiday in the Czech Republic as if they were professional sportsmen. Because he had an eye for filming, he sometimes did odd jobs for the local broadcaster.
Arjan preferred to learn from his own experiences and from stories of people he met, rather than from school. And that while his father was the director of his primary school, his mother the director of the domestic science school and his younger brother Jeroen did like to be with his nose in the books. Arjan had the technical insight of his father, with whom he often tinkered with cars and motorcycles in the garage at the parental home.
As a child, Arjan was calm and imaginative. He could make special buildings and stories from a few twigs in the garden. His brother had health problems as a child and had to undergo regular operations in the hospital in Rotterdam. Arjan sometimes went along or stayed with family or friends. He had the talent to entertain himself. The brothers would stand by each other through major life events.
Like a male Pippi Longstocking
Reluctantly, Arjan went through secondary school. Just like in primary school, he found life itself more interesting. The quietness of his childhood was gone. He included friends he had known since kindergarten in his entrepreneurial plans. In his teens he developed his own clothing line with a friend. They sat bent over the sewing machine for weeks and made canvas pants that you could skate and dance in. He was like a male Pippi Longstocking, unafraid of not being able to do something because he had never done it before. In his teens he rowed, with four in the boat he delivered half the power. Without training he could run twenty kilometers.
Arjan left the village to get his catering papers at the secondary retail school in Zwolle. Through an internship he ended up at the television studios of Joop van den Ende in Aalsmeer. His talent was quickly recognized. From jack-of-all-trades he rose to cameraman and director. At the time, he worked for the television broadcasts of the Postcode Lottery, among other things.
After some time he started for himself. For several years he traveled the world to make TV productions of Red Bull sporting events. He was not materialistic. He cheerfully spent the money he earned on trips and holidays that he organized for friends and family. In these years he also became a father.
In his element when he could improvise
In 2010, he traveled twenty thousand kilometers from Monnickendam to the south of Africa in a Landrover with the mother of his youngest daughter, who was not yet born at the time. Car breakdown in the desert in Jordan or a downpour in Uganda? Arjan was in his element when he could improvise.
Loved ones knew him as a giver, someone who never said ‘no’ when someone asked him to help with something or to do something together. Who with his projects, passions, work, friends, love and his daughters was not enough with one life, but seemed to live ten. He had no agenda. He didn’t like to plan, was a ‘last minute’ man.
During a trip to New York with his three daughters last June, it was his eldest daughter who reminded her father that something as practical as a visa was also needed. Because of that full and chaotic existence, he often arrived too late or did not appear at all.
People admired him. A free bird in his tjalk in Monnickendam, someone who managed to take the world by storm and who directed the film of his own life. Despite this admiration, he sometimes suffered from a feeling of inadequacy by societal standards. Now do what you promise, keep your obligation, take your responsibility, stay with the same woman for once, he heard more than once. All conditions seemed to have been created for the latter. We’ll grow old together, he and Karen said to each other. In a house in a warm country with a chair, plate and bed for everyone, those were the plans for later.
When Arjan was there, he was completely there. Behind the camera he soaked up images and stories of people like a sponge. He now worked for the film production company De Haaien, where he became one of the driving creative forces.
For the NPO television series Upside down of Africa from 2020, he traveled by motorcycle from South to North Africa with presenter Waldemar Torenstra and sound and cameraman Thomas Sykora. This journey along untrodden paths was made for him; physically and mentally tough, relying on his creativity and talent for improvisation. Arjan was always the first to wake up out of the three, put on his cowboy boots or motorcycle boots and went looking for beautiful images with his camera.
Last year, the trio took another three-month motorcycle road trip, this time crossing North and South America past communities of Native Americans, now for the television production Upside Down of America. The journey touched Arjan deeply. The traditions, rituals and way of seeing of the original inhabitants of America resonated and shifted something in him. Something he may have recognized, such as life close to yourself, to others and to nature. Being responsible together and at the same time the freedom to go your own way.
A deeper layer
The history of the slaughter of Native Americans and the destruction of a rich culture hit him hard as he saw the consequences firsthand. “That’s not common knowledge, is it?” he could exclaim during the journey. It seemed as if a deeper layer in him was being tapped. “Maybe I’m much more sensitive than I think,” he said during a nighttime walk with Waldemar through a Mexican town.
Back home he had countless plans with his contagious energy. Organizing regattas, doing fun things with his daughters, traveling with his beloved and he was well advanced with the editing of the 7-part production Upside Down of Americascheduled for May this year.
Perhaps parallel to his zest for life was a less visible trace of powerlessness, fatigue and a longing for a softer world than the one in which we live. There may have been a breaking point in which he made a decision with irreversible decisiveness as the director of his own life film, his surviving relatives suspect. “Too much to see, too little to do,” he wrote in his suicide note.
Arjan van Engen was born on June 10, 1976 in Tuk and died on December 4, 2022 in Monnickendam
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