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30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025

Ineke Smits

Ineke SMITS (1960, Netherlands) graduated as a photographer and video artist from the Rotterdam Art Academy in 1984. Afterwards, she obtained a master’s degree in film directing and script writing from the National Film and Television School in England. She collaborated with Dutch writer Arthur Japin on a few short fiction films; their first feature fiction, Magonia (2001), was awarded Best Film at Bogotá Film Festival and was in competition at IFFR, San Sebastian, Toronto, Karlovy Vary and many other festivals worldwide. Smits received part of her training as a filmmaker in Poland and she lived and worked for many years in Georgia. She is heavily influenced by Eastern European Cinema and by the emphasis on the image that artists from Eastern Europe put in their work. Her second feature, De vliegenierster van Kazbek/The Aviatrix of Kazbek, was the closing film at IFFR in 2010 and it received a nomination for the European Film Awards.

Filmography

Emotionele constructies (1989, short), Monas Plen (1989, short), Rose, Violet and Lily (1992, short), Sirko (1994), Hoerenpreek (1996, TV short), De wolkenfabriek (1996, TV short), Nostalgia (1999, doc), Magonia (2001), Putins mama/Putin’s Mama (2004, doc), Zwart goud onder het Notecka Woud/Black Gold Under Notecka Forest (2005, doc), Transit Dubai (2008, doc), De vliegenierster van Kazbek/The Aviatrix of Kazbek (2010), Stand By Your President (2014, doc), De kleine man, tijd en de troubadour/Little Man, Time and the Troubadour (2019, doc)

Ineke Smits at IFFR

  • Sirko

    Tuba player contemplates suicide in desolate industrial landscape.

    • main programme

  • Their Helicopter

    A Georgian family fits out unusual accommodation for guests high in the mountains, recorded with beautiful imagery.

    • Short: As Long As It Takes

  • Black Gold under Notecka Forest

    Almost two years ago Poland’s biggest oil field was discovered under the Notecka Forest in poverty-stricken Western Poland, where ‘history has started

    • Rotterdam Perspective

  • Etna

    Life on the slopes of the volcano Etna during and after an eruption.

    • Short: As Long As It Takes

  • Little Man, Time and the Troubadour

    What makes a country? What is home? An artist/puppeteer tours troubled Abkhazia, land of his birth, collecting dreams and memories.

  • Magonia

    Three fairytales set in an imaginary land, Magonia.

    • dutch perspective

  • Rose, Violet and Lily

    Slightly absurdist sketch of a Dutch female reporter who gets stuck in a Georgia devoid of petrol.

  • Nostalgia

    Last film by the emigré Tato Kotetishvili, who died 18 months ago, provides a personal view of the consequences of the civil war in Georgia. Nostalgia

    • Hubert Bals Fund

  • De vliegenierster van Kazbek

    During the Second World War, the arrival of Georgian soldiers offers a way out for the dreamer Marie on the Dutch island of Texel. She flees the suffo

    • Spectrum

  • Rose, Violet and Lily

    Slightly absurdist sketch of a Dutch female reporter who gets stuck in a Georgia devoid of petrol.