Nederlands

African Film

Lectures and introductions into African Cinema

Workshops and seminars on African cinema and non-western documentaries

Film production and -research

Film and selection committees

Jury membership

Other activities and network

Contact

FILM BIO Mariët Bakker

Intro
I like to watch and I like stories. Together, these preferences result in love for film, joining images and stories. For 30 years I have been working as a professional within different branches of the world of film. My preference for African cinema rapidly became my specialization, complemented by activities concerning non-western documentaries, cultural education and interculturality.

African Film
After having worked for three years as a art house programmer in the Shaffy Theatre in Amsterdam, I decided to broaden my horizon and look beyond the Netherlands. As a result I developed a love for African cinema in 1986. I really wanted to introduce the Dutch people to this very special and youngest loot of world cinema. In 1987 my ‘brainchild’ was born, a film festival called 'Africa in the Picture'. Ever since, I’ve been closely monitoring the development of African cinema, until 2005 as the director of the film festival and ever since as a specialist of African cinema.

Lectures and introductions into African cinema
For the past ten years I’ve been lecturing and leading workshops on African film and the African Diaspora cinema, e.g. at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, the Universities of Leiden and Antwerp, the The Hague Film-house and the Dutch Art Institute. December 2007 I was invited by the Caravan to Africa Festival in Seoul (Korea) to hold a series of lectures on African cinema.

Workshops and seminars on African cinema and non-western documentaries
My first workshop I gave in 1999 at the Unesco School of Film in Harare (Zimbabwe). For a group of female filmmakers from southern Africa I composed a week-program titled ‘Women to Women Workshop, Harare’. That same year I started a series of seminars at the University of Amsterdam. Since 2006 I teach workshops annually to freshmen at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy. For the Institute for Social Studies in The Hague I compose a series of workshops on non-western documentaries, including a film-mix of western and non-western filmmakers.

Film production and -research
Whenever I was not working at ‘Africa in the Picture’, I was regularly acting as production manager for film workshops, short fiction films or working as a researcher. A top result was the production of the infamous Gay Dating Show in 1991, showing gay culture on a local Amsterdam channel for the first time in a non-problematic way. 

Film- and selection committees
Ever since the foundation of the Jan Vrijman Fund Jan Vrijman Fonds connected to the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in 1998, I’m part of the selection committee, specializing in Africa and the Middle-East. One year later I was appointed as ‘advisor on fiction and documentary’ at the Stifo, Stimuleringsfonds voor Culturele Omroepproducties as of 2009 called Mediafonds (Fund for the Media)
All this gave a powerful impulse to my love of documentary, especially the non-western documentary. Since January 2008 I’ve been a ‘documentary committee member’ for the Dutch Film Fund.

Jury membership
I like to use my expertise on African film and Diaspora Cinema in judging films in competition programs, resulting in being part of the jury for films in e.g. Zanzibar, Milan , Tarifa en Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso).

Other activities and network
Over the years I’ve built up an extensive (inter-)national network. This resulted (in 2008/2009) in a temporary job as team leader at ACP Film, an organization related to the European Union judging applications for subsidies by film makers from Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.
Apart from the world of film making this network includes people from the world of theatre, visual artists, as well as organizations in higher education, cultural education and interculturality. It also includes the Buddhist Broadcasting Corporation, for which I presented the International Buddhist Film Festival

Years of experience, my study on the path of yoga and my work as coach /counselor have made me a person feeling at home in very different situations and surroundings, at the same time always managing to stay close to my individuality.