Piet van der Ham

The interview with Piet van der Ham (born 1910) was made as part of Renate Bergsma’s research internship at SFW in 1995. It was incorporated into her doctoral thesis “Do you speak film? The Catholic filmmaker Piet van der Ham, Amsterdam (doctoral thesis Cultural Studies, UvA), 1995. Under the same title she published an article in the 1994 Yearbook Stichting Film en Wetenschap – Audiovisual Archive, Amsterdam: Stichting Film en Wetenschap, 1995, p.75-101.

Piet van der Ham has been characterized as a Catholic filmmaker. His “discovery” in 1936 as an amateur filmmaker by the filmmaker Otto van Neijenhoff was the impetus for a whole series of commissioned films from that angle. He was theoretically influenced by the Catholic ‘film pope’ Janus van Domburg and the writer-poet A.J.D. van Oosten and more generally by the aesthetic views of the Filmliga. With Van Oosten, he founded the Catholic film group Kafilgro. The amateur film Redt Volendam, made by Piet van der Ham and Goof Bloemen, can be found on the website of Beeld & Geluid.

During World War II he experimented with feature films, together with his friend Alfred Mazure, and worked as a photographer for the Internal Armed Forces. Over the years, he made many film journalistic contributions to newspapers such as De Tijd and de Maasbode and was associated with film magazines such as Filmfront and Filmforum. He was also involved in the Catholic Film Censorship Board. After the war, he made a number of films for the KVP, including the well-known De Opdracht (1956). He also made several corporate films and produced news items for Polygoon and the NTS. Finally, Van der Ham taught film and photography in The Hague.