Cindy Jansen

E-mail

info@cindyjansen.com

Born in 1976
Works and lives in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

After her studies at the art academies in Arnhem and Milan, Cindy has specialized in photography and video. She has been writing scenarios and directing films since 2000.

In both her photo and film works Jansen tries to discover the esthetics the darker sides of life hide. Her images capture the beauty within loneliness, loss, veiled danger and madness, the esthetics they hide. Jansen looks for paradoxes and contradictions since she don’t experience reality as an obvious entity. She wants to address the spectator’s fascination for the unknown, the strange, so they can project their own fantasies, fears, and dreams onto the –moving- images.

Her first film, Alice, shows the ambiguity of madness; how its sheer uncontrollability can be both charming and menacing. By planting a fairytale in Rotterdam this film criticizes the madness in life’s various layers. The film premiered at the 2004 edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam and was screened that same year at festivals in the Netherlands and abroad; Hamburg, New York, Utrecht, Los Angeles.

Her second film, Useless is Blood, she made during her studies at the London branch of the New York Film Academy. This film shows children “playing” games using water pistols filled with blood while the soundtrack melodically recites a poem on violence. The film was awarded the second prize at the One Minute Festival in Amsterdam (Documentary and Daily Life) and was also screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Tabor Festival in Croatia.

In 2005 Jansen, directed a Rotterdam Shorts film, Oswald’s Traces, a ten-minute film about the potential murderer of the politician Pim Fortuyn, which premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival 2006.

Don't Hit me I love you, Jansen produced and directed in 2008 during her stay in Paris, were she was granted a stay in the Residence du Recollets. The film is an intimate portrait about a co-dependent woman that acts in her past. The 'inner-voice' is autobiographical, the lines spoken are the actress’ words, memorizing and reflecting on her own past. The portrait is developed during an intimate working progress, where Jansen slowly found out the woman's story. The film was shown in december 2008 in a group exhibition, Salon #12 In the Dark, Rotterdam.

In collaboration with the Binger Filmlab and seriousFilm, and supported by the Dutch Filmfund and the Rotterdam Filmfund, she is now developing her first feature film. Floating | Finger Game | Sandman (working title) is about three couples who are isolated and seek to connect with their partner, with their surroundings, or with themselves. Driven by this need they explore the limits of life and death. Hope is always on the horizon, even if this means separation from, or death of loved ones.
Floating | Finger Game | Sandman was selected for Cinemart 2008, the international co-production market of the International Film Festival Rotterdam. seriousFilm and she then took her feature filmplan to Le Marché du Film in Cannes.

Jansen is now working on the post-production of the short film Come Spring (aka Vogelvrij), a psychological thriller about an encounter between a serial killer and a young woman, inspired on true facts. Quote: As long as she would go along with what I wanted out there, okay, I would let her go home and that was it. And if they didn’t? They.. they stayed.



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