Huub Bals

Hubertus Bernardus "Huub" Bals (February 3, 1937 – July 13, 1988) was the first director and creator of International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), formerly named Film International.

Huub Bals was born to Hubertus Bernardus Bals and Lamberta Snellenberg in Utrecht on February 3, 1937.

His parents were simple, Catholic citizens from the traditional Wijk C in Utrecht, who traded in animal-waste products.

Just before the Second World War, they moved to the working-class district Ondiep in the same city.

Organizing and programming was Bals like a glove.

During his time at highschool, the Catholic Bonifatius Lyceum in Utrecht, he set up a small singing group - for which Bals wrote his own lyrics on well-known pop songs - and was the leader of the club Dragnet; a small group of friends that used to listen to music from the American Forces Network in Germany on the radio, play records and gamble.

Furthermore, he contributed to Minjon, AVRO radio's programme for youth, and the school newspaper Stemmen.

His fellow students describe him as 'a solitary, not particularly nice boy, who liked arranging and organizing things and preferred to be in charge.'

During his highschool years, Bals developed a particular love for jazz; he gave lectures on jazz at school and once travelled to Bonn for an interview with Gernot Haefeker, the chairman of a jazz-club, for the school paper.

It was partly this predilection for jazz that eventually made Bals quit his high school education, which he never completed.

He got a job in the publicity department of the Dutch Phonogram Record Company and worked as a jazz impresario; among other things, he organized jazz concerts and performances with international stars at several locations in the Netherlands.

In April 1957, Bals was called up for military service, which ended his music activities in Utrecht.

However, even in the military, Bals could not let go of his passion for organizing; as a Welfare Officer he took care of the entertainment for the NCO's and organized all kinds of parties and film evenings.

This is where his interest in film began to develop.

When Bals returned from his military service in January 1959, it only took him one month to find a new job.

He got hired as assistant-manager at the cinema Camera/Studio of the Wolff Cinema Group, a combination of an arthouse cinema (Studio) and a public theatre (Camera).

This position has been of great importance for the rest of Bals' career in the film world.

Wolff allowed him the freedom to organize all kinds of events, as for example special filmweeks, like a Bergman film week and a Chaplin festival, in Studio.

When La belle americaine was being screened (1962) he had a large American car driven through the centre, at the premiere of Zorba the Creek visitors could learn to dance the sirtaki, and in the case of a ghost film he made sure the cinema hall was filled with a big spider's web.

Films that flopped in the rest of The Netherlands could run for weeks in Studio.

'He had a perfect nose for attracting the right people to help him carry out his ideas (...) who made sure that the exteriors of the cinemas always looked different and always sparked the imagination.'

The first international film week in Studio in February 1963, organized on its seventh anniversary, is often seen as the source of the eventual International Film Festival of Rotterdam.

Bals had the reputation of always creating the right atmosphere in the cinema's, by means of big publicity stunts.

In 1966, Bals started to organize the Cinemanifestatie Utrecht for Wolff; an international film festival which introduced many new directors from diverse countries and new film movements like the Nouvelle Vague to the Netherlands and grew out to be an important biennial film event in the sixties.

It was in these years that Bals developed his passion and personal taste for films:

‘I began to devour films, by the bucketload!

No, no preferences, it was a long time before that happened.

I didn’t yet fully understand films by people like Antonioni or Buñuel, but gradually I did begin to experience a certain feeling, something like ‘hey, put your brain on hold and just take it in.’ It wasn’t taught, the feeling, it was just out there.’

In the same year he married Marjolijn de Vries whom he met at the cinema they were both working at.

IFFR started small in the Calypso cinema and film theatre 't Venster (now Lantaren/Venster) in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 1972, with only 4500 visitors and 31 films.

After Huub was no longer involved in the organization of the Cinemanifestatie (1972) - he organized it four times - the event only lasted for three times:

'(...) Everyone is in agreement that Utrecht doesn't have 'it' anymore.'

Besides his work for Wolff, Bals also worked on another project, for which he bore full responsibility: on June 20, 1973 he opened the very first filmhouse 't Hoogt in Utrecht.

With the work he did for Wolff - the Cinemanifestatie, the Filmweeks, special screenings, etc. - Bals had gained a tremendous reputation as an organizer of festivals in The Netherlands.

'The International Film Guide (...) made mention of a new phenomenon in the international film world: "The energetic Hubert Bals".'

This motivated other institutions, among which the, to approach the passionate cinephile for the organization of all kinds of filmrelated events.

One of them was Adriaan van Staay, managing director of the Rotterdam Arts Foundation, who wanted Bals to help improving the film climate in Rotterdam by means of a festival, analogous to the avant-garde Poetry International.

In the forthcoming years the film festival expanded gradually under the watchful cinephile eye of Bals to 150.000 visitors and multiple cinemas in 1988 – Bals' last festival – and developed into an annual film event of great international importance, with already more than 350.000 visitors in 2010.

Thanks to Bals many new film countries and continents have been introduced to The Netherlands, among which Russia, China, Taiwan, Africa and Latin-America.

'The masters of the cinema of tomorrow are from the Third World.'