Descent

“Where do I come from?” After years of archival research, Marco Bakker put the dwellings of 1,106 of his ancestors on the map. The result is an animated film that shows all relocations of these ancestors between 1660 and 2016. It's a story of ordinary people between all kinds of historical events. We see the Disaster Year of 1672 — with inundations and sieges — city fires, the Christmas Flood of 1717, the Batavian Revolution of 1795, the Leiden gunpowder disaster of 1807, and the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. In addition, Marco mapped the 19th century development of large polders, railways, and changing boundaries. The rapid growth of the city concludes this journey through history. The short film is about the genealogy of Marco's family — in Groningen, Drenthe, Friesland, Holland, and parts of Germany — but also shows his love for old maps.