Anecdotes

Haanstra experimented in the sixties with his cinematic techniques. In Zoo he experimented with hidden camera filming to capture the true nature of both man and beast.

His short film called, Zoo was released on the 14th of December, 1962. It was a film which compared the behavior of animals and humans through his always appreciated humoristic fashion.

Father of Rimko Haanstra and Jurre Haanstra.

Honorary president of the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985". Pages 409-414. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Graduated from the Academy of Arts, Amsterdam.

In the late 30s he mostly worked as an painter and photographer.

In 1952 he began to work for The Royal Dutch Shell Film Unit.

In 1956 he became producer and manager by Shell Film Unit, in Venuzuela.

In 1960 founded Bert Haanstra Filmproductie.

Folkert Haanstra and Jansje Schuiveling were his parents. His father was a head schoolteacher.

In 1996 Bert Haanstra was name-giver and first winner of the 'Bert Haanstra Ouvre Prijs', he got the price from: Het Nederlands Fonds voor Film (The Dutch Funds for Movies).

Received several medals, he was crowned Officier/Knight and Member in de orde van Oranje Nassau, he received the resistance-remembrance-cross, The Great Cross, Great-resistance Commandeur. Some of these where given/crowned by Queen Wilhelmina and Queen Juliana.

Due to budget issues, Jacques Tati's 1971 film 'Trafic', in which Monsieur Hulot drives from Paris to Amsterdam, was co-directed by Haanstra.

In 2004, Bert Haanstra finished at number 109 in the election of ''De Grootste Nederlander'' (The Greatest Dutchman).

He was the first Dutch filmmaker who won an Academy Award, for his short film Glas (1958) (''Glass'').

After his death the Oeuvre Award, a prestigious Dutch prize for film, (Haanstra had won one himself), was renamed the Bert Haanstra Oeuvre Award.

In the long documentary Ape and Super-Ape (Bij de Beesten af) (1973), for which he collaborated with Frans de Waal and Jane Goodall, among others, he compared the behavior of animals and human beings.

Abroad his movie ' Fanfare' was hardly noticed, but it was entered into the 1959 Cannes Film Festival and the 1st Moscow International Film Festival.

Haanstra was Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau.