Beatrijs Hulskes: IM

Beatrijs Hulskes studied at the Academy of Arts Minerva in Groningen from 1980 to 1985. Beatrijs made several video installations and from 1986 she worked as a director for many television programmes, such as Marre (1987), Stapelbed (1988 and 1989), and a documentary series Geheim Gebied. In 1988 she made computer animations for Het Tenenkaasimperium. In 1991 she started work on her first independent live-action film The River Okkervil (together with Mirjam van Veelen), that was shown in Rotterdam, Utrecht, the Paleis van Schone Kunsten in Brussels and St. Petersburg and was bought by the Stedelik Museum in Amsterdam.

In 2001 her animated film Touched by an Angel premiered in Utrecht and Amsterdam. This autobiographical, animated portrait draws on fable and real-life experience to evoke the far-reaching effects of a serious illness in progress. The film mixes drawings, photographs, models, objects and paintings. The film is Beatrijs' recollection of the many months of serious illness. It is about the difficulty of communicating about cancer and the pain that even the memory about it evokes. It is also a film about hope: her docters gave up on her, but she survived. It is per-sonal, emotional film. For everybody who ever has known the illness and everybody who was lucky enough not to.

Beatrijs Hulskes developed a style that combines cut-out animation with live action and object animation. Combined with the use of bright colours it evokes a fairy-tale and dream-like feeling. This style is also explored in the animated short DICHT/VORM: De zee, de zee, de zeeeeee (2002) The short film is based upon the poem by Hagar Peeters and is about longing for the sounds and emotions of the sea.

This program screened as part of HAFF 2006

Showing in this program