Filmmaker Emma Westenberg (35) has an American and a Dutch passport. She is an American citizen because she was born in Berkeley: her father, the Leiden emeritus professor of Psychology Michiel Westenberg, worked at the university on his dissertation in 1990. Such a passport gives much less hassle at customs, she says. Donald Trump wants to undo this in the Constitution.
Westenberg has made road trips throughout America for the past ten years, she wants and cannot believe that Trump was re -elected or that the average American supports him. “They are focused that their families are safe and healthy, just like here. That hateness of the current administration, those raids: I simply do not believe that the majority supports that.” But it is exactly what Trump promised his voters? “Many people perhaps thought: Trump says more, it doesn’t go so fast.” His ‘tech friends’ have arranged his election victory, she thinks. “By playing voters emotionally via social media or by influencing voting engines, I don’t know. They benefit from the country being restless and people are anxious and angry.”
Ferocious face
Emma Westenberg lived in Los Angeles after 2018, during the first presidency of Donald Trump. Then Joe Biden came to power, that didn’t feel very different. Now; This is not blowing over. In March she was invited as a moderator to the Ultra-Hippe South by Southwest film festival (SXSW) in the Texan capital Austin: introduce films, interviewing makers afterwards.
“We were talking about Trump in Austin, although we think about it just a bit the same as creatives. Some were combative, many others rather rooted. I heard a lot that America is rotten to its core by the past of slavery and racism that it now shows its true face. But I doubt that is so much better with our colonial past? Extremely. ”
Her queer friends are extra worried, given the hate campaigns against transgender people. “And one of my best friends in Los Angeles is an immigration lawyer of Mexican descent. I heard about the raids, acquaintances plucked by Ice and deported the country. The government behaves like a gang that doesn’t care about the law and procedures. It is all very shocking.”
America is no longer the place to bethinks Westenberg. But in her eyes that is changing since the rise of the internet, making it less and less important on what physical location you are. Covid accelerated that process, Trumps second term also.
Irons in the fire
At the beginning of 2024, Westenberg moved back to Amsterdam from Los Angeles with a stopover in London. This year she was in the US for months: for film projects and for the SXSW festival, where her roadmovie previously Bleeding Love With the British actor Ewan McGregor and his daughter Clara premiered; The film was given an American cinema release. She was inspired by the many films she saw and met in New York with colleagues for an apple and an egg to come and play four short films in September with minimal cast and crew and a lot of improvisation.
She has more irons in the fire. In New York, a fairly well -known actress wants to produce a dance film with her as a director: she is looking for another opponent. Westenberg scales on a Mexican horror comedy on a tropical island. “We have found American investors for that, that’s great. Now it’s about which actor draws, depending on that, the budget becomes 2 or 10 million dollars. In principle, that money is there.” She should not mention names, and in principle such film projects always stagger above an abyss, says Westenberg. It is like a tower of Jenga blocks. “Everything supports each other and sometimes something falls out and the entire structure collapses. But sometimes everything falls into place and then suddenly it goes very quickly.”
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Janelle Monáe
Emma Westenberg grew up in Leiderdorp. Her parents returned from Berkeley when she was less than a year old and looked back nostalgically on their six -year adventure in the United States. Westenberg: “I inherited my preference for America. We made a trip through California when I was seven, that made a big impression on me. Sometimes they had American friends.” Her telephone film Planet Beauty From 2016 is all about the cosmetic surgeon Bonnie who dreams of a prestigious fellowship In California.
She had lived in New York for a while: as a student of the Rietveld Academy she was allowed to exchange in 2014 at the Cooper Union in New York. “That was one lung shotthey only hired one student a year. ” She graduated on the Rietveld, won prizes with short films and music and fashion clips and returned to New York in 2016 with her then partner Sam de Jong, a director with whom she shares a dreamy, colorful Filmesthetics. Goldie. With her friend Valerie Kamen, she played the no-budget movie on Long Island Stranger’s armsabout three students who want to solve a murder from 1984 during their summer vacation.
In 2017, Westenberg won the Jackpot when she was the video clip Pynk was allowed to make Popster Janelle Monáe. “An intimidating, almost surrealistic experience,” she says, because the production was much greater production than it was used to. “But I was very well prepared, worked with an experienced cameraman and choreographer and could also lean on Dutch friends on the set.”
‘That hatefulness of the current administration, those raids: I simply do not believe that the majority supports that’
The video clip with ‘vagina pants’ designed by Rietveld friend Duran Lantink went viral. Westenberg was given a cop who urged Los Angeles to move, because it happened there. They lived in the Echo Park neighborhood for almost six years and made clips and commercials with stars such as Rebel Wilson and Kendall Jenner. A video in which Movie star Zoë Kravitz When ASMR influencing whispering beer, the Superbowl, the Walhalla for American advertisers. “You are paid per day, so it is not that you walk in with something like that. But it is quite a bag of money that you get.”
In March 2020, she rented a villa for her Dutch family and friends to celebrate her birthday. It was a great party in glitter dresses, her father dressed as his idol David Lynch. “I remember that my mother said: you did put savings aside? Oh no, everything ran smoothly, so won so won. A week later Los Angeles was locked because of Covid and I panicked a bit about my empty bank account.”
Series The US & WE
This summer interviews NRC Dutch people who have a strong personal relationship with the US. Do their feelings and ideas about the country change, now that Trump is changing that way?
Reading here All episodes
Permanently changed
She spoke to the Netherlands for a few months, but initially the damage seemed to be better than expected: the film industry in Los Angeles rode through mouth caps and rapid tests. Until the streaming services, the engine of that revival, cited the belly belt from 2022 and followed a long -term strike of writers and actors. Los Angeles were recorded in the expensive and overgregulated fewer films or television programs. With music clips there was little to be earned anyway. “Labels no longer put money into it as cheap tap movies also work.” Westenberg is not so sad about that: her ambition was always film and television, although she does not dispose of advertising work.
Covid has permanently changed the culture. Westenberg: “When I arrived in Los Angeles in 2018, I constantly had to meet meetings to meet this or Gene. It made it normal to meet each other by telephone or via Zoom, and it remained that way. If a film project is also included in Bucharest, then little stops you to move to the cheaper Florida or to an artists’ village, as from me from me.”
Whether she misses Loseles? Many people experience the city as fakeshe says. She not: she made real friends there. She misses the wealth of subcultures and fringe-performances: Amsterdam has become a bit small. Although she never felt at home in Los Angeles at home. Because she missed family and friends, but also because of the Dutch humor, the small nuances that are difficult to translate and so you always stay a bit of an outsider.
“No matter how interesting and fun that film industry is there, it is also very intense and intense, especially because of the fear culture. People are on their toes because they are terrified of doing something wrong and losing their job, with health insurance and all. quieter. ”
