1. "She was ten years old and was a ray of sunshine from the canal where i lived. A true Amsterdam girl, both sweet and mischievous like a monkey." Beppie recounts her adventures to filmmaker, who follows her through her daily life in the city. In the course of her stories, she talks to us about life and death, television, love, and money.
2. BEPPIE is a moving and disarming portrait of an Amsterdam street urchin. Van der Keuken once described her as follows: 'She was ten years old and the joy of the Achtergracht, where I was living at the time. An Amsterdam child, sweet and crooked as a corkscrew.' He films her while she skims the city with some friends and knocks at strangers' doors. Her family has nine children and is not well off. In those days, a visit to the De Miranda swimming pool cost a quarter, but only ten cents if the weather was bad. At school, Beppie gets a poor mark because she is too boisterous, but when the whole class rattles off the multiplication tables, she joins in at the top of her voice. All of TV-watching Holland was wildly enthusiastic about this portrait, with which Van der Keuken even made the front page of the national newspaper De Telegraaf.
Director: Johan van der Keuken.
Cast: Gerda van der Elsken, Ed Van Der Elsken.
Netherlands, 1965.
Language: Dutch.
Subtitles: French.
Download Beppie. 1965.

Beppie. 1965.