Jos de Putter

Documentary film director

Creative producer

Visual artist

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 selected best Dutch film of the year by Dutch film critics.

In 2007, the film was selected as one of the sixteen 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, ALIAS KURBAN SAÏD (2004), about five families with completel;y diffeernt cultural backgrounds who claim to be one and the same 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 2022 De Putter, together with Clara van Gool, directed A WAY TO B, a portrait of a dance troupe of people with functional disabilities, based in Barcelona. The film was nominated best documentary of the year, 2023.

 

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 (jury Award at Visions du Réel), RADIO KOBANÎ by Reber Dosky (winner Dutch competition IDFA 2016; Fact Award at CPH Dox Copenhagen), SISDIK AND THE PANTHER, by Reber Dosky (winner Dutch Competition IDFA 2019) DAUGHTERS OF THE SUN (Reber Dosky, 2022) and most recent MESSAGE FROM SASHA (by Anna Rudkova, 2023). MESSAGE FROM SASHA focuses on the Kafka-esque trial of Russian artist Sasha Skochilenko, who spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine by an artistic intervention (she changed price tags in a supermarket with information about the war) and was sentenced to 7 years inprisonment. Sasha was amongst the convicted who were part of the prisoners exchange in July 2024.

 

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, Banff Awarad for CLEAN MOUNTAINS 2022. 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.