The BBC’s Arts production team is making a new series of documentaries, called The Art Lovers Guide. The series is presented by art historians Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke, and in each episode they will visit a different European city to explore its cultural and artistic identity.
As well as discovering unexpected aspects of some iconic works of art, architecture, literature and performance, the series will be focusing on some of the hidden artistic and cultural treasures that most visitors would never know about.
The aim is to get beyond the usual ‘top ten must-see’ lists, and offer an enjoyable, insider’s guide to what you could discover during a day in three extraordinary cities: Barcelona, Amsterdam and Sint Petersburg.
The three documentaries of an hour will showcase contemporary and historic work in order to capture the spirit of the arts scene in each city today.
In Amsterdam Jamina and Alastair visit the former Amsterdam stock exchange (Beurs van Berlage), theOld Church, that dates form the middle ages, book designer Irma Boom, the studios of different artists in the former ship yard NDSM, an elderly couple living in a huge house at one of the canals, sail their own boat in the centre of the city and experience a performance of the sailing trumpet player Reinier Sijpkens, visit an art kitchen, the Rijksmuseum, the modern art museum (Stedelijk Museum), the Portuguese synagogue and the Jewish library, the red light district and the hip district De Jordaan, café Hegeraad, a traditional so called brown café and they end their visit with a hallucinating show at the Azart, the ship of Fools at the Amsterdam harbour.
For this documentary production Featurez gave advice, did research, accompanied the recce, booked a rental van, did the driving, booked rental boats and a rental bike, booked runners, accompanied the filming and organised the signing of the release forms.