BIOGRAPHY

Mirjam van Veelen has an individual and independent vision in contemporary filmmaking with a style uniquely her own.
Originally educated as a visual artist she has transferred a painterly vision to an imaginative way of filmmaking.
Typical for her work is that she combines different film styles like fiction with animation or documentary with fiction as to be seen in her earlier films The River Okkervil, Aidaluli,The Leap and Beautiful Mali.
A returning theme in her work is how we interpret the many layered reality.

Van Veelen was one the first foreigners who co produced with the well known Lenfilm Studio's in Sint Petersburg. She arrived in Russia in1990, a year after the fall of the Wall in Berlin to realise her first feature film The River Okkervil with co director and co writer Beatrijs Hulskes. The River Okkervil is based on the same novel by the Russian writer Tatyana Tolstaya. Van Veelen and Hulskes lived three years in Sint Petersburg to realise their film.

In 1995 Van Veelen founded her own production company Mirfilm.
For Mirfilm she produced Beautiful Mali, Megumi and co produced Aidaluli. Van Veelen's films have been all premiered at the International Rotterdam Film Festival, are shown at many international film festivals, Museums of Modern Art and broadcasted on Dutch TV.

FILMOGRAPHY

Megumi, 2007

65 min, Japan, Japanese, English subtitled
Authors' documentary.
Screening formats: HD, Digibeta, DV Cam.

The Leap, 2001

15 min, China, the Netherlands, no dialogue
Screening formats; 35 mm, Digibeta
Music-Art Film, based on the composition of the Chinese composer Chen Qigang.
Directors: Sylvia Stoetzer & Mirjam van Veelen
Distributed by the Filmmuseum Amsterdam together with MILLENIUM MAMBO from the Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao Hsien.
Premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in Amsterdam with a live performance of the music by Het Nieuw Ensemble.
Shown on the International Film Festival Rotterdam in The Dutch Perspective, 2001

Aidaluli, 2000

54 min, Russia, Russian, English subtitled
Screening formats: Digibeta
Experimental documentary.
Committed portrait of five Russian artists form the Moscow sub circuit and their live in a society that changes from communism to capitalism.
Director & Scenario: Mirjam van Veelen
Producers: Yuca Film & Mirfilm
Premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2000.

Beautiful Mali, 1999

48 min, Mali, French & Bambara, Dutch subtitled.
Screening format: Digibeta
Documentary portrait of a Dutch woman who starts up non governmental development projects with women in Mali and the difficulties she meets due to their different cultural backgrounds.
Director, scenario, camera, production: Mirjam van Veelen for Mirfilm.
Broadcasted by the Dutch TV, RVU

The River Okkervil, 1993

56 min, Russia, Russian, English subtitled
35 mm
Fiction combined with animation.
Production: Watch Out B.V & Hulskes & Van Veelen.
About a Russian man who lives alone and falls in love with a female singer who he thinks has died already but suddenly she seems to be still alive.
When he meets her, his dream-love-world falls into pieces.
Distribution Cinemien, the Netherlands.
Bought by Dutch TV, NOS.
Premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 1994.