Rob du Mée

Biography

Rob du Mée was a Dutch producer. He was the son of the Amsterdam cinema director, A.P. du Mée, who owned the Rialto Cinema. Du Mée, along with Frans Weisz, belonged to the first generation of students at the Netherlands Film Academy. In 1959 he made his first short film, Moreelse park, which starred Weisz. The film is inspired by the then-up-and-coming French nouvelle vague.

In the early 1960s, Du Mée was part of the editorial board of the film magazine filmblad Skoop, along with Pim de la Parra, Wim Verstappen and Nikolai van der Heyde. In the magazine they declared war on the film establishment, including filmmakers such as Bert Haanstra and critics like Janus van Domburg and Charles Boost. A couple of years later, all the controversies would be forgotten and Du Mée would share the post of editor in chief at Skoop with the veteran Boost.

Meanwhile, Du Mée had also made a name for himself as a film producer. In 1967 his first long production, De verloedering van de Swieps by Eric Terpstra, was released. In the years that would follow, he would produce films for fellow students such as Samuel Meyering, Nouchka van Brakel and Adriaan Ditvoorst. He was best known, however, as Frans Weisz's producer. In the 1970s his production company Parkfilm was responsible for the films De inbreker, Naakt over de schutting, Rooie Sien and Heb meelij, Jet! by Weisz. The last film turned out to be a catastrophe. The cooperation with Weisz was very difficult and the film flopped. It was the end of Parkfilm, which went bankrupt.

For Du Mée, who also worked as a programmer for cinema Studio K, it was also the end of his career as a producer. After that, he mainly focused on studying and writing about film.