Lodewijk de Boer

Biography

Lodewijk de Boer trained as a violinist at the Amsterdam Conservatory. He then worked as a violist for Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra. Beginning in the mid-1960s, he also became also involved in the theatre arts. He wrote the libretto for the opera Labyrint by Peter Schat, for example, and for several years he was a director in the theatre company Studio.

In the early 1970s, De Boer became well known for The Family, a theatrical play that he wrote and directed, about a number of young people living in a squatted house. In 1973 it won the ‘Critics’ Prize’, and was adapted as a film, directed by De Boer, in the same year.

In those same years, Lodewijk de Boer acted in a number of films by Frans Zwartjes. He also composed the music for Zwartjes’ films in collaboration with a number of other composers, including Rudolf and Frans Zwartjes and the sound artist Michel Waisvisz.

De Boer worked until his death in 2004 as a theatre and television writer and director, as the librettist for people such as Willem Breuker, and as a composer. In 2003, he was in charge of reconstructing the dialogues for the film Zeemansvrouwen (1930), the Netherlands’ final silent film, which was re-released in 2003 as a sound film.