Jos de Putter

This is the official website of Jos de Putter, documentary filmmaker, visual artist and creative producer. Here you can find information about feature documentaries, television documentaries, webdocs, and video installations he directed and created over the years.

 

Jos de Putter (1959) studied linguistics, literature and philosophy in Leiden and Berlin, and worked several years as a film critic before he made his first documentary in 1993.

 

IT’S BEEN A LOVELY DAY (1993), about the last year of his parent’s work and life on their traditional farm, was hailed internationally as a film in the purest documentary tradition. It won the prize for best debut of the year and was elected best Dutch film of the year by Dutch film critics. In 2007, the film was elected as one of the 16 best Dutch films ever made and thus became part of the Dutch Film Heritage. In 1994, SOLO, THE LAW OF THE FAVELA (1994), focusing on the dreams of teenagers in the slums of Rio de Janeiro to become soccer stars, won the prestigious Joris Ivens Award at the Amsterdam Documentary Filmfestival.

 

Many other awards followed, for documentaries as:

 

THE MAKING OF A NEW EMPIRE (1999), the Godfather-like story of a Chechen warlord, screened on A-Festivals Berlinale (FORUM) and Toronto International Filmfestival and winner of the Jordaan-prize of the City of Amsterdam for best film of the year, DANS, GROZNY DANS ( 2002) following a tour of a Chechen children’s dance troupe, winner of 7 international festivals, and ALIAS KURBAN SAÏD (2004), about five different families who claim to be a mysterious writer and BEYOND THE GAME (2008), the first documentary about the heroes of the cyber-generation: an intimate portrait of the 2 best Warcraft-gamers on the way to their final duel. The flm premiered at IDFA Amsterdam, 2008, and subsequently won the Award for Artistic Success of the Dutch Filmfund. SEE NO EVIL (2013) is a tale of three famous senior apes, inhabitants of retirement homes. The film was shown at more than 50 festivals worldwide, awarded best film at DokFest Munich and jury awards at Message to Man (St. Petersburg) and Gdansk. SEE NO EVIL was honored with a prestigious special screening at the Galleria d'Uffizi, in Florence, 2016.

 

In 2005, De Putter was honored with a retrospective of all his films in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In 2014, there was another retrospective of all films at Festival dei Poploi, Florence. In 2006, De Putter started working as a visual artist. Various installations were shown in Dutch museums. His experimental short film PASSERS-BY was shown at the MOMA, New York.

 

Between 1997 and 2017 de Putter made numerous short documentaries for renowned VPRO-tv documentary-series Diogenes and Backlight. His tv documentary about Aleksandr Litvinenko (2007) was sold to 17 countries. 

From 2007 until 2013 De Putter was editor in chief of VPRO Backlight. He shifted the profile of the program to 'future affairs', concentrating on developments and trends in various disciplines that design the world to come.

 

Since 1993, De Putter works as a creative producer for Dieptescherpte. The company focuses on very personal and preferably ‘impossible’ creative documentaries. Films that have been awarded include Babaji, by Jiska Rickels (Visions du Réel), Radio Kobanî by Reber Dosky (winner Dutch competition IDFA 2016; Fact Award at CPH Dox Copenhagen) and most recent Sidik and the panther, directed by Reber Dosky (winner Dutch Competition IDFA 2019).

 

In 2013, De Putter started producing webdocs for Dutch online news site De Correspondent. The short documentaries by mainly emerging filmmakers have been awarded at prestigious festivals, amongst others: Silver Leopard in Locarno 2014 and Oscar Qualifier, for SHIPWRECK, BFI best short film and European Film Award 2016 for 9 DAYS, ‘best film’ for THE SNIPER OF KOBANI in Sapporo, Mexico, Ismailia, and Go Short 2016, nomination European Film Award 2018 for MERYEM. https://decorrespondent.nl/josdeputter.

 

Since 2018, he also produces web/short docs for Dutch public television network HUMAN: http://www.human.nl/webdocs. TRAPPED IN THE CITY OF A THOUSAND MOUNTAINS by renowned director David Verbeek premiered at IDFA 2018 and won MESSAGE2MAN 2019.