A group of young filmmakers is currently busy with ANNE+, a six-part webseries about the (love)life of the lesbian Amsterdam twenties, Anne. “This is something we previously lacked.”
When ANNE+-creator and screenwriter Maud Wiemeijer (24) in its fourteenth learned that they girls fell, she went to find movies and series in which they themselves could recognize. “But I didn’t,” she says. “And actually, since then not much has changed.”
Therefore, she would like to create content about lesbian girls, to be precise, content about lesbian girls in which are lesbians is a given and does not become problematic. “No gestruggle and struggle to get out of the closet please,” she says. “To normalize, we want to. And girls everywhere in the world show that it is okay to be a lesbian. I think that helps. It had me really helped when I was younger.”
“Films and series help to discover your orientation and to understand who you are,” says Valerie Bisscheroux (24), Anne+ directs and together with Wiemeijer on the basis of the idea was. “If there is nothing to identify you properly to feel alone.”
Girls on girls
They see that the past few years, becoming internationally more for girls, girls fall. “But not from the Netherlands. And that while the audience is very large. Just as the need. If you see that, say, a Swedish web series about girls who girls fall in Brazil is viewed, with one or other subtitles that they have created, says that enough.”
“Maybe it is not commercial enough, that the producers and creators think that there is no large audience,” says Wiemeijer. “But that is nonsense. Women let us know that they very well find that we make and I get all messages from girls who say that they are, that they are so happy that there is finally a Dutch series for them. And if you see that the teaser of ANNE+ for more than 44,000 thousand times it is viewed…”
Teaser yes, you read that correctly. Because Anne+ is not yet ready to go online. There are even two episodes of the series on the move to the netherlands, a student of Anne and her relationships (each episode is the relationship between Anne and a different girl central, hence the plus). Bisscheroux: “Our idea with these two episodes is to have that as a sort of pilot to potential partners. Because we need funds for the remaining four episodes to run. This week begins our crowdfundingcampagne.”
Rising star
Two months after developing the idea came from Anne-performer Hanna van Vliet, a quickly rising star on acteergebied that at this time can also be seen in the film Oh Baby and the musical Fiddler On The Roof.
“Hanna, we already in the beginning stages of our heads as the perfect protagonist, do it just like the rest of the cast and crew for nothing,” says Bisscheroux. “It just feels like everyone and the urgency of working from enthusiasm. Very, very special. A large part of the cast and crew feels personally involved because it is this content used to be himself also missed.”
It adds something that the actress herself is also a lesbian, Wiemeijer: “The gay is very much in you, so I think it’s a very positive effect on the way in which Hanna her role approaches. And it is also just fine for a lot of the viewers. When I was fifteen and actresses googled that lesbians played then in real life a man seemed to have, I was always disappointed.”
Not difficult
Wiemeijer and Bisscheroux hope fervently that ANNE+ is, and that it is being launched as a side effect, a change brings about in the rather traditional world of Dutch film – and television. “I think the fact that you as a filmmaker are required for sexual diversity to show,” says Niemeijer. “Why would you, with all that Dutch romkoms come true not once one of the couples lesbian? Create if necessary, that sister is lesbian. It does not have to be difficult.”
Check for more information about this series and the crowd funding campaign www.anneplus.nl
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