about
ABOUT
I am a filmmaker and a researcher. In my practice, film and research are intertwined: film-making is doing research, and doing research is film-making. One of the main topics of my work is (precarious) labour. One of the central questions in my work is: can film act as a form of resistance? I don’t just research this question through the subject matter of a film, but even more importantly through the way that a film is made.
I conduct this question as part of my PhD research at LUCA / KU Leuven (BE), titled How to relate to other people and get along with each other in workplaces and in film-making.
If, for example, existing (white, (neo)colonial, Eurocentric, patriarchal) power dynamics are being addressed as the topic of a film, can we then, while making that film, concurrently address the power dynamics inherent to industry film-making constructed and enforced by these very same power structures? If we take that question into account while making a film, from its very first phase of development, through its research, production, release, all the way to distribution and public engagement; then what does that imply? Which tensions does that bring to the surface? How do film-workers, all across the industry that film-making consists of, deal with an invitation to such reflection on their work environment? What other cosmoses of film-making could be enabled when raising and enacting questions of power dynamics, including those that are array in film-making itself?
Though ‘documentary’ and ‘fiction’ are never separated paradigms in practice, they seem so for many outsiders. My focus within this research is slightly more towards the first, yet can as well be exercised on the latter. The question I apply in both paradigms is: can film-making be a space of thinking together: together with the people who are being recorded, either on audio, video or both, as well as together with the film-workers? Can we do film-making that doesn't just address issues of e.g. vulnerability, insecurity, stress, anger and power imbalances but also explicitly enacts a 'cosmos' of refusal against dominant extractive media-making practices? Can we make film that does not shy away from showing the negotiations (of power) that are involved when recording (vulnerable) people? What other ways of spectatorship could this evoke? Could a practice that includes those negotiations in the frame, result in films that makes audiences receptive to the fact that problems addressed in these films do not just exist on the screen and 'out there', but are their issues as well; that they are our issues?
Main education I got my bachelor degree at Gerrit Rietveld Academy (NL, 2007) and my master degree at Nederlandse Film en Televisie Academie (NL, 2011). I worked as a script consultant (‘regieassistent’) for Dutch art house film and tv series (NL, DL, BE 2009-2017). I was a SIC (SoundImageCulture) participant (BE, 2022).
Selection of works In This Together (2026), about the work of people driving for Uber, was partly developed at SIC and premiered at IFFR festival (NL). See project page for upcoming screenings. In 2023 I was invited by Erasmus University (NL) to conduct cinematic research on the topic of microwork, which resulted in the film Ghost Workers (2024). Fantasies on how to Strike (2019), about the work of Dutch museum attendants, was exhibited and acquired by the Zeeuws Museum (Middelburg, NL). For more info & other selected works, see project pages.
mail@lisetteolsthoorn.com