- Thys Ockersen, born February 3rd in Amsterdam, attended a film-school, the NFA, from 1965-1969 and graduated with the fiction/instruction-short "Surprise Surprise" that won him a Chicagostudent award in 1969. At the same moment when his picture was shown on Dutch TV, it caused a much publicized riot when it showed the cutting of an eye, a reenactment of a scene from Bunuels Chien Andalou. Thys has made up till now about 50 documentaries, short films and was involved in feature films. He was a film critic for the Amsterdam newspapers NRC/Handelsblad and Het Parool and a film teacher at the Rotterdam Artschool for about twelve years. He writes for several magazines and runs a film society in his hometown Zandvoort. Recently he started a documentary about the reconstruction of a woodcutting mill which was demolished in 1942.- IMDb mini biography by: T.Ockersen
- On April 30th 2006 he received on the Queens birthday The Order of Orange Nassau award for services to the Dutch film industry over the last 40 years. The burgomaster of Zandvoort pinned the award on Thys during a meeting at the town council.
- In 1979 Thys Ockersen produced with Wim Lindner a screenwriters seminar in the Dutch Film Museum in Amsterdam. To improve the quality of the dutch screenwriters for movies and TV over a hundred people were invited to attend for four weeks to be lectured by three teachers from the American Film Institute: William Fadiman, John Bloch and Vincent DiPersio. Bloch and Fadiman had already done their screenwriters seminar in Belgium. This was a huge success. So was the dutch seminar. Four guest lecturers were invited: Ernest Lehman, Claude Goeretta, Ken Loach and Paul Schrader. Thys covered this seminar with a documentary for dutch TV.
- I am a big fan of the movies of Sam Fuller and Don Siegel but I wish I could make them like John Ford.
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