Love me or leave me dir: Jan Louter DOCUMENTARY Art "The war has never disappeared from my life. It will never leave me. It is like drunkenness: as long as you keep drinking, the hangover doesn’t get a chance." "Montyn" is a documentary on the Dutch artist Jan Montyn (80), who voluntary joined the German marine force in 1944 to fight on the eastern front. After World War II, he enlisted with the foreign legion. He fought in Korea and was involved in the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia. As an artist Jan Montyn is well known all over the world. Thousand of prints have been acquired by private collectors and museums in France, Germany, the United States, Japan and the Netherlands. Jan Montyn calls himself a reporter of images. It is a pointed description because, in contrast to the conceptual art of the last period where the idea is more important than the outcome and where the essence of art is studied, Jan Montyn makes "autobiographical" art, not "art for art’s sake," so to speak. Though they are transformed, his observations and experiences can be directly recognized in his work: his love for beauty of life and landscape. But he has also depicted the horrors of four wars. Jan Montyn’s life is an almost surreal wandering between war and peace, life and death, despair and happiness. In this film, we will meet the restless solitary Jan Montyn and will learn about the role art plays in his life. A film that will take part one moment in the mundane artist surroundings of New York, Paris, Tokyo or Amsterdam and the next moment in the brothels of Thailand or the interior of Cambodia and Birma, where Jan Montyn tries to help the impoverished peasants by bringing them medicine. For most of the year Jan Montyn lives in Thailand, but never longer than a few months at a time. During the day time he makes studies for his etchings or he prepares the medicine transports. At night he looks for amusement with the local girls who work in nearby bars, or he visits one of the hundreds of brothels in Bangkok or Pattaya. When not in Thailand, he is on one of his medicine transports in Cambodia or Birma. Or he works in his studio in France, where he makes his etchings. It can also be that he is on a plane, travelling. Always moving. "I always travel first class, it is the only luxury I permit myself." He travels to deliver prints, to be present at openings of exhibitions around Europe, America or Japan, or simply to meet his daughter in the Netherlands. Jan Montyn is always on the move in order never to arrive somewhere. He is a real "loner," a wanderer who only feels at home in Thailand. "On dirt and shit grows the most beautiful flower in the world, the lotus. These are not my own words, Buddha said it. It is what Thailand, Bangkok, means to me. It is a metaphor for the social life here, a blend of rootless people from all over the world: Europeans, Hong Kong Chinese, half and whole criminals, Vietnam veterans who can no longer find their niche in America, but also the inland girls who live off prostitution. They all swarm together and everyone leaves each other alone." One cannot begin to grasp all that Montyn has seen in his life: it is too much for only one life, too much for only one documentary. A documentary about Jan Montyn must have a solid structure, a golden thread. "Montyn" will be structured around the recent history of Southeast Asia. Around the wars that Montyn depicted in his work. His view on the recent history, as expressed in his etchings, could be juxtaposed with archival material of those wars. In such a way, an interesting area of tension can be created between the world of Montyn and the way the history of Southeast Asia has been collectively memorised. It would be the intention to let this documentary be more than a portrait about an artist with an extraordinary (bizarre) life.