Coat of arms of the former County of Holland

Holland is a region in the western part of the Netherlands. The term Holland is also frequently used as a pars pro toto to refer to the whole of the Netherlands. This usage is generally accepted but disliked by Dutch people in the other parts of the Netherlands.^[1]

From the 10th century to the 16th century, Holland proper was a unified political region, a county ruled by the Counts of Holland. By the 17th century, Holland had risen to become a maritime and economic power, dominating the other provinces of the Dutch Republic.

Today, the former County of Holland consists of the two Dutch provinces of North Holland and South Holland, which together include the Netherlands' three largest cities: country capital Amsterdam; seat of government The Hague; and Rotterdam, home of Europe's largest port.

Etymology[link]

Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) referred to this region as the land between the Helinium and Flevo ("inter Helinium ac Flevum"), the names of the mouths into which the Rhine divided itself, the first discharging its waters in the Mosa in the neighbourhood of Brielle and the second into "the lakes of the north" (present IJsselmeer).^[2] The name Holland first appeared in sources in 866 for the region around Haarlem, and by 1064 was being used as the name of the entire county. By this time, the inhabitants of Holland were referring to themselves as "Hollanders".^[3] Holland is derived from the Middle Dutch term holtland ("wooded land").^{[citation needed]} This spelling variation remained in use until around the 14th century, at which time the name stabilised as Holland (alternative spellings at the time were Hollant and Hollandt). Popular, but incorrect etymology holds that Holland is derived from hol land ("hollow land") and was inspired by the low-lying geography of Holland.^{[citation needed]}

Usage[link]

The proper name of the area in both Dutch and English is "Holland". "Holland" is a part of the Netherlands. "Holland" is informally used in English and other languages, including sometimes the Dutch language itself, to mean the whole of the modern country of the Netherlands.^[4] (This example of pars pro toto or synecdoche is similar to the tendency to refer to the United Kingdom as "England".)

The people of Holland are referred to as "Hollanders" in both Dutch and English. Today this refers specifically to people from the current provinces of North Holland and South Holland. Strictly speaking, the term "Hollanders" does not refer to people from the other provinces in the Netherlands, but colloquially "Hollanders" is sometimes mistakenly used in this wider sense.

In Dutch, the Dutch word "Hollands" is the adjectival form for "Holland". The Dutch word "Hollands" is also colloquially and occasionally used by some Dutch people in the sense of "Nederlands" (Dutch), but then often with the intention of contrasting with other types of Dutch people or language, for example Limburgish, the Belgian form of the Dutch language ("Flemish"), or even any southern variety of Dutch within the Netherlands itself.

However, in English there is no commonly used adjective for "Holland". "Dutch" refers to the Netherlands as a whole, not just the region of Holland. "Hollands" is ordinarily expressed in English in two ways:

• a possessive construction (e.g. "Holland's economic power"); or
• an "of Holland" or "from Holland" construction (e.g. "the Maid of Holland"; "a girl from Holland").

The following usages apply in certain limited situations but do not ordinarily serve as the English equivalent of the commonly used Dutch adjective "Hollands".

• Occasionally, the noun "Holland" is used in apposition (e.g. "the Holland Society").
• The adjective "Hollandic" is occasionally used by some historians and other academic writers as an adjective for Holland. Historians who use the word tend to reserve it to pre-Napoleonic Holland. Hollandic is also the name linguists give to the dialect spoken in Holland.
• The adjective "Hollandish" is a word in English but is no longer in use.

Geography[link]

North Holland

South Holland

Holland is situated in the west of the Netherlands. A maritime region, Holland lies on the North Sea at the mouths of the Rhine and the Meuse (Maas). It has numerous rivers and lakes and an extensive inland canal and waterway system. To the south is Zealand. The region is bordered on the east by the IJsselmeer and four different provinces of the Netherlands.

Holland is protected from the sea by a long line of coastal dunes. Most of the land area behind the dunes consists of polder landscape lying well below sea level. At present the lowest point in Holland is a polder near Rotterdam, which is about seven meters below sea level. Continuous drainage is necessary to keep Holland from flooding. In earlier centuries windmills were used for this task. The landscape was (and in places still is) dotted with windmills, which have become a symbol of Holland.

Holland is 7,494 square kilometres (land and water included), making it roughly 13% of the area of the Netherlands. Looking at land alone, it is 5,488 square kilometres in size. The combined population is 6.1 million.

The main cities in Holland are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. Amsterdam is formally the capital of the Netherlands and its largest city. The Port of Rotterdam is Europe's largest and most important harbour and port. The Hague is the seat of government of the Netherlands. These cities, combined with Utrecht and other smaller municipalities, effectively form a single city—a conurbation called Randstad.

The Randstad area is one of the most densely populated regions of Europe, but still relatively free of urban sprawl. There are strict zoning laws. Population pressures are enormous, property values are high, and new housing is constantly under development on the edges of the built-up areas. Surprisingly, much of the province still has a rural character. The remaining agricultural land and natural areas are highly valued and protected. Most of the arable land is used for intensive agriculture, including horticulture and greenhouse agri-businesses.

Language[link]

The predominant language spoken in the Holland is Dutch. Hollanders sometimes refer to the Dutch language as "Hollands", instead of the standard term Nederlands. Inhabitants of Belgium and other provinces of the Netherlands refer to "Hollands" to indicate someone speaking in a Hollandic dialect, or strong accent.

Standard Dutch was historically largely based on the dialect of the County of Holland, incorporating many traits derived from the dialects of the previously more powerful Duchy of Brabant and County of Flanders. Strong dialectal variation still exists throughout the Low Countries. Today, Holland-proper is the region where the original dialects are least spoken, in many areas having been completely replaced by standard Dutch, and the Randstad has the largest influence on the developments of the standard language—with the exception of the Dutch spoken in Belgium.^[5]

Despite this correspondence between standard Dutch and the Dutch spoken in the Randstad, there are local variations within Holland itself that differ from standard Dutch. The main cities each have their own modern urban dialect, that can be considered a sociolect.^[6] A small number of people, especially in the area north of Amsterdam, still speak the original dialect of the county, Hollandic. The Hollandic dialect is present in the north: Volendam and Marken and the area around there, West Friesland and the Zaanstreek; and in a south-eastern fringe bordering on the provinces of North Brabant and Utrecht. In the south on the island of Goeree-Overflakkee, Zealandic is spoken.

History[link]

Each of the provinces in the Netherlands has a history that deserves full attention on its own. However, to a certain extent at least, the history of Holland is the history of the Netherlands, and vice versa. See the article on "History of the Netherlands" for a more detailed history. The article here focuses on those points that are specific to Holland itself or that highlight the nature of the role played by Holland in the Netherlands as a whole.

Reclamation of the land[link]

The land that is now Holland had never been stable. Over the millennia the geography of the region had been dynamic. The western coastline shifted up to thirty kilometres to the east and storm surges regularly broke through the row of coastal dunes. The Frisian Isles, originally joined to the mainland, became detached islands in the north. The main rivers, the Rhine and the Meuse (Maas), flooded regularly and changed course repeatedly and dramatically.

The people of Holland found themselves living in an unstable, watery environment. Behind the dunes on the coast of the Netherlands a high peat plateau had grown, forming a natural protection against the sea. Much of the area was marsh and bog. By the tenth century the inhabitants set about cultivating this land by draining it. However, the drainage resulted in extreme soil shrinkage, lowering the surface of the land by up to fifteen metres.

Benthuizen polder, seen from a dike

To the south of Holland, in Zeeland, and to the north, in Frisia, this development led to catastrophic storm floods literally washing away entire regions, as the peat layer disintegrated or became detached and was carried away by the flood water. From the Frisian side the sea even flooded the area to the east, gradually hollowing Holland out from behind and forming the Zuiderzee (the present IJsselmeer). This inland sea threatened to link up with the "drowned lands" of Zealand in the south, reducing Holland to a series of narrow dune barrier islands in front of a lagoon. Only drastic administrative intervention saved the county from utter destruction. The counts and large monasteries took the lead in these efforts, building the first heavy emergency dikes to bolster critical points. Later special autonomous administrative bodies were formed, the waterschappen ("water control boards"), which had the legal power to enforce their regulations and decisions on water management. As the centuries went by, they eventually constructed an extensive dike system that covered the coastline and the polders, thus protecting the land from further incursions by the sea.

However, the Hollanders did not stop there. Starting around the 16th century, they took the offensive and began land reclamation projects, converting lakes, marshy areas and adjoining mudflats into polders. This continued right into the 20th century. As a result, historical maps of mediaeval and early modern Holland bear little resemblance to the maps of today.

This ongoing struggle to master the water played an important role in the development of Holland as a maritime and economic power and in the development of the character of the people of Holland.

County of Holland[link]

Until the 9th century, the inhabitants of the area that became Holland were Frisians. The area was part of Frisia. At the end of the 9th century, Holland became a separate county in the Holy Roman Empire. The first Count of Holland known about with certainty was Dirk I, who ruled from 896 to 931. He was succeeded by a long line of counts in the House of Holland (who were in fact known as counts of Frisia until 1101). When John I, count of Holland, died childless in 1299, the county was inherited by John II of Avesnes, count of Hainaut. By the time of William V (House of Wittelsbach; 1354–1388) the count of Holland was also the count of Hainaut, Flanders and Zealand.

In this time a part of Frisia, West Friesland, was conquered (as a result, most provincial institutions, including the States of Holland and West Frisia, would for centuries refer to "Holland and West Frisia" as a unit). The Hook and Cod wars started around this time and ended when the countess of Holland, Jacoba or Jacqueline was forced to give up Holland to the Burgundian Philip III, known as Philip the Good, in 1432.

The last count of Holland was Philip III, better known as Philip II king of Spain. He was abolished in 1581 by the so-called Act of Abjuration, although the kings of Spain continued to carry the titular appellation of count of Holland until the Peace of Münster signed in 1648.

Holland's prominence in the United Provinces and Dutch Republic[link]

In 1432, Holland became part of the Burgundian Netherlands and since 1477 of the Habsburg Seventeen Provinces. In the 16th century the county became the most densely urbanised region in Europe, with the majority of the population living in cities. Within the Burgundian Netherlands, Holland was the dominant province in the north; the political influence of Holland largely determined the extent of Burgundian dominion in that area.

Comitatus Hollandiae (1682)

In the Dutch Rebellion against the Habsburgs during the Eighty Years' War, the naval forces of the rebels, the Watergeuzen, established their first permanent base in 1572 in the town of Brill. In this way, Holland, now a sovereign state in a larger Dutch confederation, became the centre of the rebellion. It became the cultural, political and economic centre of the United Provinces, in the 17th century, the Dutch Golden Age, the wealthiest nation in the world. After the King of Spain was deposed as the count of Holland, the executive and legislative power rested with the States of Holland, which was led by a political figure who held the office of Grand Pensionary.

The largest cities in the Dutch Republic were in the province of Holland, such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Leiden, Alkmaar, The Hague, Delft, Dordrecht and Haarlem. From the great ports of Holland, Hollandic merchants sailed to and from destinations all over Europe, and merchants from all over Europe gathered to trade in the warehouses of Amsterdam and other trading cities of Holland.

Many Europeans thought of the United Provinces first as "Holland" rather than as the "Republic of the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands". A strong impression of "Holland" was planted in the minds of other Europeans, which then was projected back onto the Republic as a whole. Within the provinces themselves, a gradual slow process of cultural expansion took place, leading to a "Hollandification" of the other provinces and a more uniform culture for the whole of the Republic. The dialect of urban Holland became the standard language.

Kingdom of Holland[link]

The formation of the Batavian Republic, inspired by the French revolution, led to a more centralised government. Holland became a province of a unitary state. Its independence was further reduced by an administrative reform in 1798, in which its territory was divided into several departments called Amstel, Delf, Texel, and part of Schelde en Maas.

From 1806 to 1810 Napoleon styled his vassal state, governed by his brother Louis Napoleon and shortly by the son of Louis, Napoleon Louis Bonaparte, as the "Kingdom of Holland". This kingdom encompassed much of what would become the modern Netherlands. The name reflects how natural at the time it had become to equate Holland with the non-Belgian Netherlands as a whole.^[7]

During the period the Low Countries were annexed by the French Empire and actually incorporated into France (from 1810 to 1813), Holland was divided into the départements Zuyderzée and Bouches-de-la-Meuse.

Provinces like any other[link]

After 1813, Holland was restored as a province of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Holland was divided into the present provinces North Holland and South Holland in 1840, after the Belgian Revolution of 1830. This reflected an historical division of Holland along the IJ into a Southern Quarter (Zuiderkwartier) and a Northern Quarter (Noorderkwartier). But the actual division is different from the old division.

From 1850 a strong process of nation formation took place, the Netherlands being culturally unified and economically integrated by a modernisation process, with the cities of Holland as its centre.^[8]

Image of Holland at home and abroad[link]

The predominance of Holland in the Netherlands has resulted in regionalism on the part of the other provinces. This is a reaction to the perceived threat that Holland poses to the identities and local cultures of the other provinces. The other provinces have a strong, and often negative,^[9] image of Holland and the Hollanders, to whom certain qualities are ascribed within a mental geography, a conceptual mapping of spaces and their inhabitants.^[10] On the other hand, some Hollanders take Holland's cultural dominance for granted and treat the concepts of "Holland" and the "Netherlands" as coincidental. Consequently, they see themselves not primarily as "Hollanders", but simply as "Dutch" (Nederlanders).^[11] This phenomenon has been called "hollandocentrism".^[12]

Holland tends to be associated with a particular image. The stereotypical image of Holland is an artificial amalgam of tulips, windmills, clogs, cheese and traditional dress (klederdracht). As is the case with many stereotypes, this is far from the truth and reality of life in Holland. This can at least in part be explained by the active exploitation of these stereotypes in promotions of Holland and the Netherlands. In fact only in a few of the more traditional villages, such as Volendam and locations in the Zaan area, are the different costumes with wooden shoes still worn by some inhabitants.

New Holland[link]

The province of Holland gave its name to a number of colonial settlements and discovered regions that were called Nieuw Holland or New Holland. The most extensive of these was the island continent presently known as Australia: New Holland was first applied to Australia in 1644 by the Dutch seafarer Abel Tasman as a Latin Nova Hollandia, and remained in international use for 190 years. On the same voyage he named New Zealand after the Dutch province of Zeeland. In the Netherlands Nieuw Holland would remain the usual name of the continent until the end of the 19th century; it is now no longer in use there, the Dutch name today being Australië.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Holland

• Map of Holland (the provinces of North Holland and South Holland) on Google Maps

Coordinates: 52°15′00″N 4°40′01″E / 52.250°N 4.667°E / 52.250; 4.667

Jools Holland
Holland at the British Academy Television Awards 2009
Background information
Birth name	Julian Miles Holland
Born	(1958-01-24) 24 January 1958 (age 54) Blackheath, London, England
Genres	Boogie-woogie, jazz, blues, R&B
Occupations	Musician, composer, television presenter, bandleader
Instruments	Piano, keyboard, guitar
Years active	1974–present
Associated acts	Squeeze Rhythm & Blues Orchestra
Website	Official site

Julian Miles "Jools" Holland OBE, DL (born 24 January 1958) is an English pianist, bandleader, singer, composer, and television presenter. He was a founder of the band Squeeze (1974-1980 & 1985-1990) and his work has involved him with many artists including Sting, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, David Gilmour, Magazine and Bono.

Holland is a published author and appears on television shows besides his own and contributes to radio shows. In 2004, he collaborated with Tom Jones on an album of traditional R&B music. He currently hosts Later... with Jools Holland, a music-based show aired on BBC2, on which his annual show Hootenanny, is based.^[1]

Life and career[link]

His great grandfather came from Ireland.^[2]

Holland played as a session musician before finding fame, and his first studio session was with Wayne County & the Electric Chairs in 1976 on their track "F*ck Off."^[3]

Holland was a founding member of the British pop band Squeeze, formed in March 1974, in which he played keyboards until 1981 and helped the band to achieve millions of record sales, before pursuing his solo career.^[3]

Holland began issuing solo records in 1978, his first EP being Boogie Woogie '78. He continued his solo career through the early 1980s, releasing an album and several singles between 1981 and 1984. He branched out into TV, co-presenting the Newcastle-based TV music show The Tube with Paula Yates. Holland achieved notoriety by inadvertently using the phrase "groovy fuckers" in a live, early evening TV trailer for the show, causing it to be suspended for six weeks.^[4] He referred to this in his sitcom "The Groovy Fellers" with Rowland Rivron.

Holland at the Tsunami Relief concert in Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, 22 January 2005

In 1983 Holland played an extended piano solo on The The's re-recording of "Uncertain Smile" for the album Soul Mining. In 1985, Squeeze (which had continued in Holland's absence through to 1982) unexpectedly regrouped including Jools Holland as their keyboard player. Holland remained in the band until 1990, at which point, he again departed Squeeze on amicable terms to resume his solo career as a musician and a TV host.

In 1987, Holland formed The Jools Holland Big Band which consisted of himself and Gilson Lavis from Squeeze. This gradually became his 18-piece Rhythm & Blues Orchestra.^[3]

Between 1988 and 1990 he performed and co-hosted along with David Sanborn during the two seasons of the music performance program Sunday Night on NBC late-night television.^[5] Since 1992 he has presented the music program Later... with Jools Holland, plus an annual New Year's Eve Hootenanny.

In 1996, Holland signed a recording contract with Warner Bros. Records,^[3] and his records are now marketed through Rhino Records.

Holland has a touring band, The Rhythm And Blues Orchestra, which often includes singers Sam Brown and Ruby Turner. In January 2005 Holland and his band performed with Eric Clapton as the headline act of the Tsunami Relief Cardiff.

Personal[link]

Holland lives in the Westcombe Park area of Blackheath in South East London, where he had his studio, Helicon Mountain, built to his design, inspired by Portmeirion, the setting for the 1960s TV series The Prisoner.^[6] Holland owns costumes and props from the series and occasionally appears wearing the trademark brown-with-white-pipe blazer featured in the series. In 1987, Holland demonstrated his love of the series and starred in a spoof documentary, The Laughing Prisoner, with Stephen Fry, Terence Alexander and Hugh Laurie.^[6] Much of it was shot on location in Portmeirion, with archive footage of Patrick McGoohan, and featuring musical numbers from Siouxsie and the Banshees, Magnum and XTC. Holland performed a number towards the end of the program. His younger brother, Christopher, also plays organ in the Rhythm & Blues Orchestra, as well as being a singer-songwriter.

Holland was an interviewer for The Beatles Anthology TV project, and appeared in the 1997 film Spiceworld as a musical director.

He received an OBE in 2003 in the Queen's Birthday Honours list, for services to the British music industry as a television presenter and musician. In September 2006 Holland was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant for Kent.^[7] He is also known for his charity work: in June 2006 he performed in Southend for HIV/AIDS charity Mildmay,^[8] and in early 2007 he performed at Wells and Rochester Cathedrals to raise money for maintaining cathedral buildings.^[9] He is also patron of the Drake Music Project^[10] and has raised many thousands of pounds for the charity.

Holland was appointed an Honorary Fellow of Canterbury Christ Church University at a ceremony held at Canterbury Cathedral on 30 January 2009.^[11]

On 29 August 2005 Holland married Christabel McEwen, his girlfriend of 15 years (between 1983 and 1995 she had been married to Edward Lambton, 7th Earl of Durham, before they divorced). The wedding, at St James's Church, Cooling near Rochester, was attended by many celebrities, including Ringo Starr, Robbie Coltrane, Stephen Fry, Lenny Henry, Noel Gallagher, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.^[12]

Holland is also a patron for The Milton Rooms, an Arts centre in Malton, North Yorkshire, along with Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton and Kathy Burke.^[13]

Writing[link]

His 2007 biography, Barefaced Lies and Boogie Woogie Boasts was BBC Radio 4 "Book of the Week" in the week beginning 8 October 2007 and was read by Holland. He is the author or joint author of four other books.

Discography[link]

Albums that have charted and gained Certifications[link]

Releases[link]

• 1978 "Boogie Woogie '78" (EP)
• 1981 Jools Holland and His Millionaires
• 1984 Jools Holland Meets Rock 'A' Boogie Billy (U.S. release only)
• 1990 World Of His Own
• 1991 The Full Complement
• 1992 "Together Again" (single with Sam Brown)
• 1992 The A-Z Geographer's Guide To The Piano
• 1994 Solo Piano
• 1994 Live Performance
• 1996 " Jazz & Rock & Roll
• 1997 Lift The Lid
• 1998 Best Of
• 1999 Sunset Over London
• 2000 Hop The Wag
• 2001 Small World Big Band
• 2002 SWBB Volume Two: More Friends
• 2003 Jack O The Green (SWBB Friends 3)
• 2004 Tom Jones & Jools Holland
• 2005 Beatroute
• 2005 Swinging the Blues, Dancing the Ska
• 2006 Moving Out To The Country
• 2007 Best of Friends
• 2008 The Collection
• 2008 The Informer (With Ruby Turner)
• 2008 "The Informer" (single with Ruby Turner)
• 2009 "I Went By" (single with Louise Marshall)
• 2010 Rockinghorse

Film and television[link]

• 1981 Urgh! A Music War
• 1982 Police: Around the World
• 1982 - 1987 The Tube (Host for 121 editions)
• 1983 Rebellious Jukebox: Compere
• 1984 The Young Ones: Punk (Episode entitled "Summer Holiday")
• 1985 Walking To New Orleans (Jools Holland in New Orleans)
• 1987 Eat the Rich: Sun Reporter
• 1987 Filthy Rich & Catflap: Strip Show Pianist (Episode #1.3)
• 1987 The Laughing Prisoner: No. 7
• 1987 French and Saunders (Episode 1.5)
• 1988 Sunday Night: Host (unknown episodes)
• 1989 Juke Box Jury: Host (unknown episodes)
• 1989 The Groovy Fellers Himself, 6 episodes
• 1991 Mr Roadrunner (Jools Holland in Memphis)
• 1994 There's No Business: Pianist
• 1994 - 1995 Don't Forget Your Toothbrush
• 1995 The Beatles Anthology
• 1997 Spice World: Musical Director
• 1997 Name That Tune: Host and Pianist
• 2003 Jool's History of the Piano : Presenter
• 2006 Top Gear: Star in a reasonably priced car.
• 2007 Fairport@Forty: Interview
• 2009 Chop Shop Rover Concept: The Jet 1 Car : Customer

Current television programmes[link]

• 1992–present Later... with Jools Holland
• 1993–present Hootenanny

Books[link]

• "Rolling Stones": A Life on the Road, (with Dora Loewenstein), Viking/Allen Lane (1998), (ISBN 0-670-88051-5)
• Beat Route: Journeys Through Six Counties, Weidenfeld & Nicholson (1998), (ISBN 0-575-06700-4)
• Ray Charles: Man and Music, (with Michael Lydon), Payback Press (1999), (ISBN 0-86241-929-8)
• Hand That Changed Its Mind , International Music Publications (2007), (ISBN 1-84328-645-9)
• Barefaced Lies and Boogie-woogie Boasts , Michael Joseph Ltd (2007), (ISBN 0-7181-4915-7)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Jools Holland at the Internet Movie Database
• Jools Holland's Radio 2 show at BBC Programmes
• Later...with Jools Holland at BBC Online

Cold Specks is the stage name of Al Spx, a Canadian singer-songwriter based in London.^[1] Her musical style has been described as doom soul and shows the influence of American deep south gospel with a strong goth streak.^[2]. She is signed with Mute Records since the beginning of 2012. Members of her band include Pete Roberts, Thomas Greene, Tom Havelock, Chris Cundy, Sarah Jones, Jim Anderson, Rob Ellis, Marley Ellis, Terry Edwards, and Ben Christophers.

Cold Specks appeared on Series 39, Episode 7 of Later with Jools Holland.^[3] Her debut single "Holland" was released on October 17, 2011,^[4] and she worked on tracks with producer Rob Ellis. She released her debut album, I Predict a Graceful Expulsion, on May 21, 2012 on Mute Records.

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• 2012: I Predict a Graceful Expulsion #86 CAN^[5]

Singles[link]

• 2011: "Holland"

References[link]

Citations

Agnieszka Holland
Agnieszka Holland, September 25, 2011
Born	(1948-11-28) November 28, 1948 (age 63) Warsaw, Poland
Occupation	Film director and screenwriter
Spouse	Laco Adamik

Agnieszka Holland (born November 28, 1948) is a Polish film and TV director and screenwriter. Best recognized for her highly political contributions to Polish cinema, Holland is one of Poland's most prominent filmmakers and a Hollywood outsider. Not only is she considered to be one of the few female directors working in Hollywood today, but is one of the only ones who are not actresses or industry insiders.

Personal life[link]

Agnieszka Holland was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1948. She was the daughter of two prominent journalists, a Catholic mother and a Jewish father. Despite the religions of her parents, Holland adopted neither and was instead raised without religion. Her Jewish father’s parents were killed in the ghetto, and her mother was a Catholic who in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising and was a member of the Polish Underground. Her father died under mysterious circumstances during a police interrogation when Holland was only thirteen years old. Although the official reports labeled her father’s death a suicide, many believe he was murdered, pushed from a window to his death. Holland’s mother later re-married to journalist Stanislaw Brodzki. ^[1]

Holland was a sickly child, and spent much of her time writing, drawing and directing short plays with her childhood peers. ^[2]

While Holland didn’t subscribe to the Jewish faith, she found herself marked by her Jewish heritage, mixed ancestry and family’s political past. Due to the high levels of anti-Semitism in Poland during the 1960s, combined with her a lack of females within the Polish film industry, Holland found it difficult to enter film school in Poland. Refusing to relinquish her drive for film, Holland applied to the Prague Film Academy where she was 7 of 220 applicants that were ultimately accepted. She also met her future husband and fellow director, Laco Adamik, who still lives in Poland. Holland attended Gimnazjum i Liceum im. Stefana Batorego (Warsaw, Poland) and graduated from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) in 1971. ^[3]

Career[link]

Holland studied in Prague during the Czechoslovakian New Wave of the 1960s, an interesting period in Czech history which resulted in such films as Loves of a Blond (1965) and Firemen’s Ball (1967) by young Milos Forman and 1965 and 1967 Academy Award Winners for the best foreign movie, The Shop on Main Street by Kadar and Klos and Menzel’s Closely Watched Trains. Alongside this interesting period of film, Holland also witnessed the Prague Spring of 1968, a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia under which she spent 6 weeks in prison for her support of governmental reforms.^[4]

Holland attended Gimnazjum i Liceum im. Stefana Batorego (Warsaw, Poland) and graduated from the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) in 1971. She began her career as an assistant director for the Polish film directors Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda, including Zanussi's 1973 film Iluminacja ("Illumination") and Wajda's 1982 film Danton. She served as First Assistant Director on Wajda’s Man of Marble (1977), the type of environment that supplied her with the capability to explore political and moral issues within the confines of an oppressive regime. ^[5]

Holland's first major film was Aktorzy Prowincjonalni ("Provincial actors", 1978), a chronicle of tense backstage relations within a small-town theater company that served as an allegory for Poland's contemporary political situation. The film won the International Critics Prize at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival. Holland was abroad when a military coup took place within Poland in December of 1981. She was informed that she could not return, and as a result, was not able to see or contact her daughter for over eight months. ^[6]

Holland only directed two more major films in Poland, Fever (Gorączka, 1980) and Kobieta samotna ("A Lonely Woman", 1981), before emigrating to France, just before martial law was declared in Poland in December 1981. Fever was entered into the 31st Berlin International Film Festival.^[7] Holland received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film for her 1985 film Angry Harvest, a German production about a Jewish woman on the run in World War II. Due to the vitriol climate of Poland at the time, Holland’s screenplays were constantly refused by authorities, but was able to make her first feature film in the latter years of the decade. ^[8]

Knowing that she could not return to Poland, she attempted to recreate herself abroad, writing scripts for fellow exiled Polish filmmakers such as Wajda’s Danton (1982), A Love in Germany (1983), The Possessed (1988), and Korczak (1990). She also accomplished this by developing her own projects alongside Western European production companies, creating such films as Angry Harvest (1985), To Kill a Priest (1988) and Oliver, Oliver (1992). ^[9]

Perhaps Holland's best-known and well-regarded film is Europa Europa (1991), based on the biography of Solomon Perel, a Jewish teenager who fled Germany for Poland following Kristallnacht in 1938. Upon the outbreak of World War II and the German invasion of Poland, Perel fled to the Soviet-occupied section of Poland. Later captured during the German invasion of Russia in 1941, Soloman convinced a German officer that he was German and found himself enrolled in the Hitler Youth. The film received a lukewarm reception in Germany and the German Oscar selection committee did not include the film as a submission for the 1991 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. However, the film caught the attention of Michael Barker, who was responsible for handling Orion Classics’ sales at the time. Europa, Europa released in the United States to much praise and fanfare, becoming the second top grossing film at the time, winning a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. ^[10]

A friend of the noted Polish writer and director, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Holland collaborated on the screenplay for his film, Three Colors: Blue. Like Kieślowski, Holland frequently examines issues of faith in her work.

Considering her background, it's not surprising that much of her film work has a heavy political slant. Government reprisals, stifling bureaucratic machinery, sanctioned strikes and dysfunctional familial structures were all represented in her earlier work as a filmmaker. ^[11]

In a 1988 interview, she said that although women were important in her films, feminism was not the central theme of her work. Rather she suggested that when she was making films in Poland under the communist regime, there was an atmosphere of cross-gender solidarity against censorship, which was seen as the main political issue. She stated that she was interested in the happenings between people, not the politics occurring outside them, and under this context, “maybe you could say that all my movies are political.” ^[12]

Following the successful Europa, Europa, Holand was invited by Warner Brothers to direct a film based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel Secret Garden. ^[13]

Holland's later films include Olivier, Olivier (1992), The Secret Garden (1993), Total Eclipse (1995), Washington Square (1997), the HBO production Shot in the Heart (2001), Julie Walking Home (2001) and Copying Beethoven (2006).

In a 1997 interview, in response to how her life experiences as a director have influenced her films, Holland stated that “filmmakers of the younger generation lack life experience,” and as a result, lack many of the tools needed to breath humanity into their respective characters. Compared to the directors of her generation, she feels that the younger generations come from wealthy families, are going straight to film schools and are watching movies mostly on videotapes. This has resulted in what she refers to as a “numbness” and “conventionalization” of today’s cinema. ^[14]

In 2004 she directed "Moral Midgetry" the eighth episode of the third season of HBO drama series The Wire.^[15][16][17] She returned in 2006 to direct the eighth episode of the fourth season "Corner Boys".^[18][19][20] Both episodes were written by acclaimed novelist Richard Price. Show runner David Simon credits producer Nina K. Noble for attracting Holland to the show through their association working on HBO movie Shot In The Heart.^[21] Simon said that Holland was "wonderful behind the camera" and did an excellent job of staging the fight between Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell in "Moral Midgetry".^[21]

In 2007 she directed, together with her sister Magdalena Łazarkiewicz and daughter Katarzyna Adamik, the Polish political drama series Ekipa. She is currently on the faculty as filmmaker-in-residence at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.

On February 5, 2009 the Krakow Post reported that Holland will direct a biopic about Krystyna Skarbek entitled Christine: War My Love.^[22]

Her 2011 film In Darkness has been selected as the Polish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards.^[23] In January 2012, the film was named as one of the five nominees.^[24]

Currently, this renowned Polish director, accepted the offer to film a three-part drama for HBO about the act of Jan Palach, who immolated himself in January 1969 in protest against rising "Normalization", which came after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. She personally witnessed these events, because at the time of the Prague Spring and the beginning of normalization she was studying at the Film and TV School (FAMU) in Prague.

Filmography[link]

• In Darkness (2011) (nominee for Best Foreign Language Film award at the 84th Academy Awards as Polish entry)
• The Killing
  • Episode 1.06 "What You Have Left" (2011)
  • Episode 1.09 "Undertow" (2011)
  • Episode 2.01 "Reflections" (2012)
• Treme
  • Episode 1.01 "Do You Know What It Means" (2010)
  • Episode 1.10 "I'll Fly Away" (2010)
  • Episode 2.10 "That's What Loves Do (2011)
• The True Story of Janosik and Uhorcik (2009)
• Ekipa (2007)
• The Wire
  • Episode 3.08 "Moral Midgetry" (2004)^[15][16]
  • Episode 4.08 "Corner Boys" (2006)^[18][19]
  • Episode 5.05 "React Quotes" (2008)^[25][26]
• Copying Beethoven (2006)
• Julie Walking Home (2002)
• Golden Dreams (documentary, 2001)
• Shot in the Heart (2001)
• The Third Miracle (1999)
• Washington Square (1997)
• Total Eclipse (1995)
• Red Wind (TV movie, 1994)
• The Secret Garden (1993)
• Olivier, Olivier (1992)
• Europa, Europa (1990, Academy Award nominee for the best screenplay)
• To Kill a Priest (1988)
• Angry Harvest (Bittere Ernte, 1985, Germany, Academy Award nominee for the best foreign language film)
• Culture (documentary, 1985)
• Interrogation (1982)
• Postcards from Paris (TV film, 1982)
• A Lonely Woman (Kobieta samotna, 1981)
• Fever (Gorączka, 1980)
• Provincial Actors (Aktorzy prowincjonalni, 1978, International Critics Prize at Cannes Film Festival)
• Something for something (Coś za coś, TV movie, 1977)
• Screen tests (Zdjęcia próbne, 1976)
• Sunday Children (Niedzielne dzieci, 1977)
• Pictures from Life: A Girl and Aquarius (Obrazki z życia: dziewczyna i "Akwarius", 1975)
• Evening at Abdon's (Wieczór u Abdona, 1975)
• Jesus Christ's Sin (Grzech Boga, 1970)