Ineke Smits
Birth : 1960-01-01, Rotterdam, Netherlands
History
Ineke Smits graduated in 1984 as a photographer and video artist from the Rotterdam Art Academy. From 1989 she studied film directing and script writing at the National Film and Television School in England. She completed her Master in 1994, and subsequently collaborated with writer Arthur Japin on a few shorts she directed for Dutch broadcasters VPRO and NTR. In 2001 their first, award winning, feature, Magonia, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival. In 2002/03 she received a Nipkow Fellowship to work in Berlin, and in 2004 she developed the first draft of a feature script, The House of my Fathers, at the Binger Filmlab in Amsterdam. With this project she also participated in EAVE. Her second feature The Aviatrix of Kazbek closed in 2010 the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Between 1998 en 2008 Ineke wrote and directed four successful documentaries, amongst them Putin’s Mama, that were presented at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam and other international festivals. With new media designer Paul Swagerman, photographer Daria Scagliola, radio maker Jeroen Stout and producer Simone van den Broek, she co-initiated Vertical Citizens, a trans-media documentary project. As a producer she was co-founder and head of development of Volya Films between 2004 and 2009. In 2011 she followed the Story Editing workshop by Franz Rodenkirchen and founded with Jeroen Stout their company Stout&Smits.
Writer
Born in Abkhazia and raised in Soviet Georgia, Sipa Labakhua had to flee with his family to Moscow when the USSR collapsed and war broke out early 90’s. Years after his untimely return to his warridden birthplace, Sipa takes to the road with his autobiographical one-man marionette show. While provoking audiences with his own history of displacement and war, he collects the personal memories and dreams of people from different backgrounds: Abkhazian nationalists, Orthodox priests, Syrian refugees, Georgian farmers and Russian hippies.
Director
Born in Abkhazia and raised in Soviet Georgia, Sipa Labakhua had to flee with his family to Moscow when the USSR collapsed and war broke out early 90’s. Years after his untimely return to his warridden birthplace, Sipa takes to the road with his autobiographical one-man marionette show. While provoking audiences with his own history of displacement and war, he collects the personal memories and dreams of people from different backgrounds: Abkhazian nationalists, Orthodox priests, Syrian refugees, Georgian farmers and Russian hippies.
Writer
Originally from the southwest of the Netherlands, Sandra Roelofs met Mikheil Saakashvili while studying in Strasbourg. She fell for this politically-minded Georgian’s relentless charm and followed him first to the United States and then to his homeland. She was present when, partly under his leadership, the Georgian government was deposed during the Rose Revolution in 2003, and again at his inauguration as president, and 10 years later at his electoral defeat, partly brought about by the release of photographs of torture in Georgian prisons and the growing corruption of the government in power. The camera follows Roelofs over the course of her last year as Georgia’s First Lady. Backed by a wealth of archive material, she talks about her love for her husband and his country, about how power changed him, and about their family life and the pain caused by their physical separation.
Director
Originally from the southwest of the Netherlands, Sandra Roelofs met Mikheil Saakashvili while studying in Strasbourg. She fell for this politically-minded Georgian’s relentless charm and followed him first to the United States and then to his homeland. She was present when, partly under his leadership, the Georgian government was deposed during the Rose Revolution in 2003, and again at his inauguration as president, and 10 years later at his electoral defeat, partly brought about by the release of photographs of torture in Georgian prisons and the growing corruption of the government in power. The camera follows Roelofs over the course of her last year as Georgia’s First Lady. Backed by a wealth of archive material, she talks about her love for her husband and his country, about how power changed him, and about their family life and the pain caused by their physical separation.
Director
On the flat island of Texel, Marie is a girl who has a vivid imagination who dreams about mountains. She feels oppressed by the strict religious island community and its narrow-minded way of life. Being the only girl in a big and poor family during wartime, she doesn't have much of a choice than to marry Paul, the beachcomber’s son. From the moment a regiment of Georgians are stationed on the island, Marie’s life changes and flourishes. With their film, music, and especially with their inventive, unusual survival strategies and entirely different life style, this isolated group of outsiders and in particular the young soldier Goga opens a new way for Marie. Through them, she realizes all her dreams without fear.
Scenario Writer
In the heart of the Middle East, a metropolis is mushrooming. In Dubai, the city where anything seems possible, one after the other skyscraper shoots up. To realise the property developers' plans, workers are called in from India, Pakistan and Nepal, who earn a mere pittance. Just like the nannies and cleaning women of well-to-do expats. Eighty percent of the inhabitants of Dubai come from other parts of the world, so who calls this city home? The original inhabitants saw the city change and now contend with religious and social taboos, something that completely passes by the average expat. In a photography class, students of various origins show how they experience the city. Apparently, original residents, expats and workers live mostly separate lives in a class society where the labourer is driven into the ground and the rich housewife thinks everyone in the city is happy.
Director
In the heart of the Middle East, a metropolis is mushrooming. In Dubai, the city where anything seems possible, one after the other skyscraper shoots up. To realise the property developers' plans, workers are called in from India, Pakistan and Nepal, who earn a mere pittance. Just like the nannies and cleaning women of well-to-do expats. Eighty percent of the inhabitants of Dubai come from other parts of the world, so who calls this city home? The original inhabitants saw the city change and now contend with religious and social taboos, something that completely passes by the average expat. In a photography class, students of various origins show how they experience the city. Apparently, original residents, expats and workers live mostly separate lives in a class society where the labourer is driven into the ground and the rich housewife thinks everyone in the city is happy.
Director
A sea faring father, a man living on the edge of mental sanity, periodically sees his young son. During the visits, the father tells the boy stories, exotic as well as close to home, about Magonia. This is a mythical place where clouds represent impossible dreams and unfulfilled desires. But the characters in this imaginary place all curiously resemble people now living near the father.
Co-Director
"Two years ago [c. 1997], Tato Kotetishvili went to Georgia, his birthplace, where he hadn't been for ten years. After he had come to Holland and found a partner in Rotterdam, the civil war started in Georgia so he was unable to return home. The reason to go home now was a video tape of his wedding, where many Georgian relatives, friends and acquaintances were gathered together. Kotetishvili wanted to know what had panned [sic] to them, how his family had come through the war.The result of this journey was Nostalgia, a personal documentary that shows in an associative style the effects of the civil war on the lives and mutual contacts of Kotetishvili's family. Kotetishvili found out that life in Georgia had changed; what he hoped to find was gone, had changed or become grounds for conflict. He felt an outsider in his own country. The Georgia he knew was only a memory.Kotetishvili died suddenly just after returning to Holland. His partner Ineke Smits completed Nostalgia."
Director
Single play over drie prostituees in een peepshow. Uit de serie: Lolamoviola
Director
"Slightly absurdist sketch of a Dutch female reporter who gets stuck in a Georgia devoid of petrol." - IFFR
