Professor Columbus

Summary

German-Dutch co-production set in hippie mecca Amsterdam. With Jeroen Krabbé and Phil Bloom as flower children.

Reinhold Colbus is a conscientious but boring librarian who works in the German state library. He comes into an inheritance and suddenly finds himself the owner of an old whaling ship in Amsterdam harbour, the Walburga VII. When he arrives in Amsterdam to inspect his property the ship turns out be occupied by hippie squatters. Colbus starts to do up the ship, helped by the flower children and über hippie Jan (Jeroen Krabbé). Colbus and his colourful crew set off on an eventful trip.

Professor Columbus was a German-Dutch co-production headed by producer Rob Houwer. Houwer had studied at the Deutsches Institüt für Film und Fernsehen in Munich and had produced Volker Schlöndorff’s first feature film Mord und Todschlag (1967). He had hoped to tap into the hippie vibe of the time but the film was an artistic and commercial flop.