about
ABOUT
Lisette Olsthoorn got her bachelor’s degree in writing and visual arts at Gerrit Rietveld Academy, followed by a master’s degree at Dutch Film and Television Academy (both based in Amsterdam, NL). She gained script development skills from Binger Institute (Amsterdam) and Franz Rodenkirchen (Berlin, DE) and worked as an assistant director for renowned Dutch film directors Nanouk Leopold and Paula van der Oest (a.o.).
Her work concerns hybrid film and inventive research. Occasionally fields of writing and performance are explored. Being intrigued by everyday speech and gesture, her work evolves around staging seemingly random interactions between people, revealing layers of common experiences and political tensions. For her re-enactments she works both with the persons the speech and experiences originated from as well as with actors, yet always staying close to the reality she has drawn from.
For the development of her project Fantasies on how to Strike she was a 2022 participant at SIC SoundImageBrussels (Brussels). The first film made as part of this ongoing project was exhibited by the Zeeuws Museum (Middelburg, NL). In 2023 she was invited by Erasmus University (Rotterdam) to conduct cinematic research on the topic of ghostwork. Several articles were published, a.o. Jacobin magazine and Metropolis M.
mail@lisetteolsthoorn.com