Ellos Son Gigantes
By Koert Davidse
Ellos son Gigantes or They Are Giants (Rotterdam, 2009) is the second in a series of five short films by seriousFilms productions about collectors. Director Koert Davidse explains, “According to collectors there is a huge difference between those who save and those who collect.”
For more than thirty years the featured charaters in this documentary, Guus Thurkow and his wife Luce, ran an antiquarian bookshop in their native Holland. When Guus and Luce finally retired they embarked on a lifelong wish to build their very own miniature library for their private collection of miniature books – all handmade by Guus himself.
“Thurkow is a man with a dream and this dream is to have a miniature library, filled with only ‘unique pieces’. One unique piece is a dream of the true bibliophile. A whole library full of unique pieces is paradise and this creation of this new private world comes out of his biggest love: the book,” says Davidse.
They Are Giants takes us into the world of the miniature book an age-old tradition and craft that has only been revived by a small few. The Thurkow’s library lovingly named “Bibliotheca Thurkowiana Minor” joins the realm of other miniature book collections, such as the collection of Charlotte Smith in the library of the University of Iowa, which contains 3000 titles, the Bodleian collection in Oxford, the collection at the Grolier Club in New York and the Huntington Library miniature book collection in California.
Davidse named the film “Ellos son Gigantes” after a quote from Cervantes’ Don Quixote. When Don Quixote sees his infamous windmills for the first time he exclaims “They are Giants” believing them to be monsters he must slay by sword. Guus Thurkow placed a miniature statue of Don Quixote in the center of his Bilblioteca Thurkowiana Minor as the patron saint of his miniature books to stand guard over the message that miniature books are in fact Gigantes.