Norton Lectures with Steve McQueen: Pulse | Lecture Four: "Occupied City"

THE NORTON LECTURES

2025-26 Norton Professor of Poetry: Steve McQueen

Discussant: Bianca Stigter, Writer, Producer, and Director

Moderator: Dennis Lim, Writer and Film Curator

The 2025-26 Norton Lectures | Steve McQueen: Pulse

Norton Lecture Four: Occupied City

Occupied City explores the past and the present of Amsterdam. Based on Bianca Stigter’s Atlas of an Occupied City - Amsterdam 1940-1945, Steve McQueen’s epic film observes 130 locations in present-day Amsterdam and pairs them with stories about persecution, collaboration and resistance that took place there under the nazi rule of the Dutch capital. The images show the city now, a voice-over tells the stories of the past; stories about the occupation, oppression, terror and the persecution of Jews and other groups by the Nazi regime, stories that lie hidden behind the façades, streets, and squares of the city. The film was shot between 2020 and 2023, as the COVID pandemic took place as well as the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and Climate Change marches. The 4.5-hour film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 and was shown at the New York Film Festival and the 50th Telluride Film Festival and was one of the best films of the year according to the New York Times.

Steve McQueen and Bianca Stigter are joined by Dennis Lim, artistic director of the New York Film Festival, to discuss how the film intertwines the history of Amsterdam's Nazi occupation with its present-day reality, addressing themes of memory, time, and the impact of history on the present. The lecture will also refer to the 34-hour presentation Occupied City (still) on the facade of the Rijksmuseum, where it was shown continuously from September 2025 until the 25th of January 2026.

Steve McQueen: “The work invites reflection on themes such as occupation, persecution and freedom. The two versions of Occupied City act differently. Occupied City (still) which is mounted on the façade of the Rijksmuseum, literally holds up a mirror to the city. It presents the daily life of contemporary Amsterdam, which sits on 750 years of history. At its core is the magnitude of what has taken place right here during the Second World War. You couldn’t possibly hold it all in your head and the passage of time has covered most of it. Living in Amsterdam feels like living with ghosts. There are always two or three parallel narratives unfolding at once. The past is always present.’’

This is the fourth of six Norton Lectures with Steve McQueen. For all Lecture dates and information, visit the Mahindra Humanities Center website.

Admission is FREE; tickets are required. Tickets can be obtained through the Harvard Box Office. Seating is first come, first served. Limit of four tickets per person. Tickets valid until 5:45pm.

Tickets will be available in advance one week prior to each lecture starting at noon online, in person at the Smith Campus Center box office, or by phone. Handling fees apply for online and phone sales. Tickets also available in person at Sanders Theatre starting two hours prior to each lecture, subject to availability.

Free parking for all six Norton Lectures is available at the Broadway Garage, located at 7 Felton Street, between Broadway and Cambridge Streets. Parking is from one hour pre-performance to one hour post. More info at Parking & Directions.

About the Speakers

Steve McQueen is recognized internationally as one of the most important artists of his generation. His work explores universal themes, often addressing painful and challenging histories and exposing the fragility of the human condition.

Awarded the Turner Prize in 1999, McQueen has had his artwork presented at some of the most significant venues and museums around the world. His work has been featured in Documenta, he represented Great Britain at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009, and was selected several times for the Venice Biennale’s central pavilion. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Art Institute of Chicago; Schaulager, Basel; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. In 2019 he presented YEAR 3 at Tate Britain and had a major solo exhibition at Tate Modern in 2020 which toured to Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Milan in 2022. In Spring 2023, he presented Grenfell at the Serpentine South Gallery, London. In 2024 McQueen unveiled a new installation, Bass, co-commissioned by Dia and Schaulager Basel, at Dia Beacon in New York.

McQueen has directed four feature films. His first, Hunger (2008), was awarded the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and his third, 12 Years a Slave (2013), received the Golden Globe, Oscar, and BAFTA awards for best picture in 2014. In 2020, he made Small Axe, an anthology of five films about London’s West Indian community and, in 2021, Uprising, a 3-part documentary with James Rogan, about the New Cross Fire in London in 1981. His documentary film, Occupied City, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2023. Blitz, his most recent feature, about the Second World War, had its world premiere as the opening film of the 68th BFI London Film Festival.

Bianca Stigter is an historian and cultural critic. She writes for the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad and has published three books of essays. Stigter was an associate producer on 12 Years a Slave and Widows. In 2019 she published the book Atlas of an Occupied City: Amsterdam 1940-1945. In 2021 she directed the documentary Three Minutes – A Lengthening, which premiered in the Giornate degli Autori at the Venice Film Festival and was selected for the Telluride, Toronto, and Sundance festivals as well as IDFA and DocAviv. It won the 2022 Yad Vashem Award for cinematic excellence in a Holocaust-related documentary.

Dennis Lim is a writer and film curator in New York City. Since 2013 he has been the director of programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where he also serves on the selection committee for the New York Film Festival, as co-chair of the New Directors/New Films programming committee, and as co-organizer of annual and recurring programs including Art of the Real, Print Screen, and Projections.

He was the film editor of The Village Voice from 2000 to 2006 and a frequent contributor to The New York Times from 2006 to 2013. He edited The Village Voice Film Guide: 50 Years of Movies From Classics to Cult Hits (John Wiley, 2006) and has written on film and culture for The Los Angeles Times, Artforum, and Cinema Scope, among other publications. He has taught in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University and the Cultural Reporting and Criticism graduate program at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. His book on David Lynch, The Man From Another Place, part of James Atlas’s Icons series, was published in 2015 by New Harvest.

About the Norton Lectures

The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship in Poetry was endowed in 1925. Harvard’s preeminent lecture series in the arts and humanities, the Norton Lectures recognize individuals of extraordinary talent who, in addition to their particular expertise, have the gift of wide dissemination and wise expression. The term “poetry” is interpreted in the broadest sense to encompass all poetic expression in language, music, or the fine arts.