A canal house near the Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam. Louis van Gasteren has lived and worked in the same house in the centre of his hometown for more than 60 years. He moved into the house after the Second World War, initially as a guest of the writers Marga Minco and Bert Voeten, and sharing it with Gerrit Kouwenaar and Tientje Louw; Remco Campert and Lucebert also frequently stayed in the house. In the 1950s, Van Gasteren was able to obtain a loan from the chocolate company Van Houten and buy the entire premises, which has since then also served as his studio and office for Spectrum Film, Euro Television Productions, Artec, and other organizations that he has run. Over the years, many filmmakers have learned their editing skills at Van Gasteren's Intercine editing table and today his equipment is still regularly used by filmmaker colleagues. Still operational today, from the 1950s until the 2010s Spectrum Film was a small enterprise employing six to eight people. As Peter Cowie has remarked, ‘the fact that Van Gasteren owns a house-cumstudio in central Amsterdam is typical of the almost pugnacious desire for self-sufficiency inherent in the Dutch. Instead of agents, one discovers, many directors have their own offices and secretaries.’ Bert Haanstra lived in a villa in the village of Laren, where he had a studio and small projection room. John Fernhout used to run his affairs from a windmill used by the Dutch resistance during the war. And Johan van der Keuken called himself a ‘small independent’ (‘kleine zelfstandige’) mostly working with a small crew that included his wife, who was the sound operator for his films. In between his journeys over the world, Van der Keuken regularly filmed the people in his home city, most notably in AMSTERDAM GLOBAL VILLAGE (1996).

For Van Gasteren, too, the city and people of Amsterdam occupy an important place in his work. It is from his house and hometown that Van Gasteren has always departed on his journeys, near and far. When, in the early 1950s, Van Gasteren left Amsterdam for an adventurous film expedition to the African Gold Coast to film cacao production and transport in Accra (for the chocolate company Van Houten), the film crew was waved off by a crowd on Dam Square in the city centre.