Lawrence Weiner – "Plowmans Lunch"

Plowmans Lunch is a 28 minute film by Lawrence Weiner that was produced by De Appel. The music is by Peter Gordon; the cinematography by Jules van den Steenhoven. The film was shot in Holland during the spring and summer of 1982 and premiered in the autumn of that year: in Utrecht during the 'Dutch Film Days' on September 24 and in Amsterdam's Kriterion Theatre and The Hague’s Film House on October 13. Michael Gibbs gives the following description of the film in his article 'Plowmans Lunch' (De Appel, 2 (1982) 4, p. 30.): 'In short, rapidly successive scenes, Plowmans Lunch forms a picture of a group of men and women, including two children, who live on and by the water. The characters in the film represent a reality. They have emigrated, or they want to emigrate; they express themselves in various languages; they are searching, waiting to leave. 'They all wanted to get somewhere, and they all ended up there''.