It is great to be back. – I have been here for almost a week now, and even though the city was always on my mind during my absence to it, I had forgotten how amazing it is. I still can not completely believe that I am back. When I walk these ancient streets and cross the Bosphorus by ferry, drink cay with a friend or friends while looking at the most amazing views that no other city in the world has got, combined with the hospitality of the people and the rich history that makes it all even more amazing to walk these streets again, it feel like I am dreaming. Regardless of the totally crazy traffic

But this is not a travel blog, so let’s get to the point! I have visited several companies in film production. Either producers or Post-Production houses. Special thanks for making this possible goes to Dr. Nezih Orhon who taught me at the Anadolu University in Eskisehir back in 2008 in the Cinema & TV faculty. I hope to pay him a visit within my timespand as well. One of the companies I have visited is situated in both Amsterdam and Istanbul and shows some nice possible job perspectives for me. Through this company I will meet various Director of Photographers next week and more Post-Production houses and if everything goes well I can also be responsible for the communication between the establishments in Istanbul and Amsterdam and with various Dutch directors et cetera, since Dutch is my foreign language. Last monday I was already invited to the set for one of their commercials. It is now being broadcasted on more then 25 channels in Turkey already. The producer invited me to the shoot to get to know the team a little bit and as on any set, I felt right at home. If it’s possible, I will post the commercial in a later blogpost.

Apart from ‘filmstuff’ I have also met with a company that does fashion photography. Something new for me but it’s rather interesting. There is a full time job available for which I can apply, but there is also also one on a freelance based way of working within the same company. For the full time job I’ll need to get a working permit for Turkey as soon as possible and there will also be a test shoot where they will watch my performance in the studio. More news will follow next week or when I return to Holland on the 31st of may.

I recently expected, before I came back, that my memory might have played some tricks on me over the years, regarding to the city itself. And that in a way I might be disappointed by revisiting it in the future. But instead of that I was in total ‘awe’ all over again by gazing at all it’s wonderful streets and sights. You don’t have to go far from your hotel or house to run into something completely new that wasn’t there 30 minutes ago, while some of the oldest buildings in the world stand watch high above it. Grand palaces white as snow on the Bosphorus shore, the sea breeze, the busy life in Taksim, the diversity of the European side and the Asian side and everything in between make it impossible to get bored for even a minute in this city once called ‘the capitol of the world.’ And even though actually living in such gigantic city full of traffic and over 20 million people is a whole different thing, I’m still planning on doing this. – It’s great to be back. More news later.

Getting in shape!

After spending about 2,5 weeks in Namibia without sports, I’ve started running again and working out a little. I really started missing it so I figured it was time for a run around Gobabis. An extra motivation for me is  that I was curious what I would come across while doing this. On my second run a construction worker that was on his break and sat beside the road with some of his collegues started running with me. We talked while running about what I was doing here et cetera. After five minutes of running and talking he wished me goodluck and went back to where he came from. A nice moment!

Another motivation for me here is that running is different here because of the altitude level. Gobabis is situated at an altitude of 1500 meters. Quite nice because Holland is situated below sea level. On higher grounds your fatigue drains quicker.

However, I’m not the only thing getting in shape. You see, our scenario is working out to become pretty great! For my opinion there still are too many interviews in it (too many ‘talking heads’ should be minimalized as much as possible, in my opinion..), but we’re getting further and further each day! The main story is getting clearer with every passing day. Things are starting to roll!

Some of the subjects/elements we might include in our film are:

• a brief introduction & history of Gobabis
• the twinning between the municipality of Gobabis & Smallingerland
• project Sida Sores
• a quick overview of all the projects
• HIV/AIDS project
• I&I Explorers
• the sanitation project
• the slums of Epako
• future tourist attractions of Gobabis & around

I’m not going to explain all these projects. The people that have to know, will allready know about them because these projects have been (more or less) up and running for quite some years now. For all the people that don’t know about it yet.. They’ll just have to wait a little longer (or they can just google them)!

I also added some new pictures from Gobabis & the slums of Epako below.

The Harnas Wild Life Foundation

A few days before Albert and the others went back home, we went to the Harnas Wildlife Foundation. It’s about an hour and a half drive away from Gobabis.

Harnas is a wildlife park where you can go on a safari trip by 4wd and on foot and watch lions, cheetas, crocodiles et cetera. But the Harnas Wild Life Foundation is more than just a park where you can watch wildlife. Here they help injured and orphaned animals grow up and they prepare them to go back into the wild again. If you are lucky you can even cuddle baby lions, cheetas and leopards if they’re around.

In our case we were able to get really close to two cheetas. An old cheeta fella named Goeters and a young female cheeta named Duma. Goeters has been around here since the beginning of the Harnas Wild Life Foundation project (26 years) and is basically as tame and friendly as a housecat, just a whole lot bigger! We also played with a young giraffe. Be carefull though, because he tends to kick every once in a while when he’s in a real playfull mood (there are signs warning for this in the park). The giraffe walks freely next to the bungaloo houses, so enjoy your breakfast with a giraffe breathing down your neck or stealing your food

Another nice thing to know is that Albert and Judith have been coming here for quite some years now, and they love Goeters so much that they even named their own dog in Holland after the cheeta. When Albert explained this to the owner of Harnas, she really appreciated to hear this.

Have a look at the pictures below, they’ll give you some idea of what you can see in Harnas. And for the record… I totally fell in love with this cheeta Duma  (as you will see in some of the pictures).

The last two pictures (with me, Judith and ‘our’ giraffe) are made by Emma Bloemhof. And the pictures of me and Duma were made by Judith.

welcome to Africa!

So here we are, Namibia! Departed from Holland with Albert Scheffer, his daughter Judith Scheffer, and Albert his collegues Thea Seinen, Date de Vries and and my fellow grad student Jelmer de Jong we drove for 6 hours to Europes largest airport which is placed in Frankfurt, Germany. From there we took a 10 hour flight to Windhoek Airport in Namibia.

But our journey didn’t end there. From the aiport we drove in two cars and drove another 2 hours to Gobabis, the place where Jelmer and me are shooting our film.

Along the way we came across a wildebeest and a gazelle running along with us next to the car and a small group of baboons crossed the road about 50 meters ahead of us. Welcome to Africa!

The way into Botswana

Instead of staying in Gobabis and relaxing a little (something a normal person would do), Date had invited us back in Holland for a trip into Botswana to the Okavango Delta. This was something I personally didn’t want to miss for the world, so we decided to go. We left our film equipment and other unnecessary luggage at hotel ‘Die Dam’ where Albert, Thea and Judith were staying, and we went for another 10 hour trip, this time by car, to the Okavango Delta, in the middle of Botswana.

At the border stop we had to fill in forms, forms and more forms. When we had crossed the border we had to fill in more forms again. On the positive side, we did get some nice stamps in our pasports. But 9 hours later or so, things went a bit bad when we arrived in Maum (pronounced as ma-oom).

We did not have enough fuel, our bank and credit cards didn’t work anywhere in town (we tried about 6 different ones) and we still had to pay for the fuel where we had so desperately looked for earlier. Before we were able to find a place where our cards actually did work, it was allready dark and we had no way of finding our way around properly, ever since road signs don’t have lights here (we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere, after all), and road signs are even hard to find during the day around here! Apart from that, at night people walk on the streets, the roads have big holes in them and wild animals from dogs up to hyenas come out – especially at night. So drive carefully ‘cause you won’t see them easily.

We were tired, did not have enough food and water with us (I never went on a trip this unprepaired before, but it was quite an adventure) but in the end we made it to the Backpackers Lodge just outside of Maun at the start of the Okavango Delta. Unfortunately they didn’t have a place to sleep for us, but what they did have in stock was a great dinner in this atmospheric location in the middle nowhere surrounded by the weirdest wild animal noises  that I have ever heard in my life (truly amazing!).

After dinner and a huge healthy fruit shake later, we felt sort of reborn and thanks to a manager at the Backpackers Lodge we were able to find a place to sleep at Audi Camp for the upcoming nights, just a few minute drive away. We were also able to book a ‘Mokoro trip’ for the next day there – this was the reason we came to the Okavango Delta, after all.

The Mokoro Trip

A mokoro – or in plural a mekoro – is a shallow-draft canoe traditionally hewn out from ebony wood or a sausage-tree log. We were able to take a tour through the Okavango Delta with one of these traditional canoes. You are so close to the water level that you really start to feel one with nature. It’s relaxing but also chalenging somehow because after all, you’re in the wild and in the river where crocodiles, hippo’s and other animals rule.

To get to the actual riverbank of the Okavango Delta you have to go by 4 wheel drive, otherwise you’ll be stuck for sure. Big puddles of mud and overthrown roads by riverfloodings will block your way if you don’t have have 4 wheel drive because some are deep and have quite dangerous rapids in them. Also the roads (as for as you can call them that) itselfs are graveled roads and impossible to drive on with a normal car. After this adventurous trip we ended up at a quiet area at the river bank. We were guided by a man and woman who were polars for the canoes. They push the mokoro forward with their sticks. After about an hour in the mokoro we continued further on foot to spot some wild life. No lions, leoperds and cheetas unfortunately, but we did see giraffes, zebras and eliphants. Have a look at a small collection of the pictures at the end of this blog!

Village life

The day after our Mokoro trip we had to go back to Gobabis. Date had work to do there and obviously so did we! But on our way back we stopped at several villages along the way. We had plenty of time for that so why not make the best of it? When I say village, i basically mean 5 till about 10 ‘houses’.

These villages of wood are still pretty untouched by western life, but you can feel the change. They wear more western clothes instead of traditional ones, and they now use money like everybody else to buy their food, allthought traditional way of life (hunting et cetera) still goes on. Have a look at some of the pictures at the end of the blog.

Sandune safari

After Botswana we went back to Gobabis and got to know the place a little better, and each other. Albert is so well known in town by almost everyone (he’s been coming and going here since 1991 for his job) so obviously Albert knows the in’s and out’s of Gobabis by heart. I’ll be writing a seperate blog about that later, though.

By the end of the week Date de Vries had to go back home, his work here was done, and he wanted to finalize his stay with a last safari on the day of his departure back to Holland. And for this departure we went to Sandune, about a 30 minute drive away from Gobabis. Have a look at the pictures below. The day after Date left, two other people came. Another collegue of Albert, Anke de Vries and her daughter Emma.

Thank you!

Today all the Dutches that were with us have left. I would like to use this blog to thank each and every one of them for making us feel home away from home and for introducing us to all these amazing places such as the Okavango Delta and Harnas (Harnas will be coming in a blog post soon and it will be filled with lions and cheetas et ceterea) restaurants and for letting us meet with so many interesting new people for the last 2,5 weeks. Now Jelmer and me are on our own, but we had a great introduction that will help us greatly in making our film.

In 2008 I studied and lived in Turkey for about 8 months. I was a participant of the Erasmus Student Network (ESN), an exchange program that gives students the oppurtunity to study in a foreign country. I chose to do this in Eskisehir (Eski = Old, Sehir = city), Turkey.

In Eskisehir I studied at the Anadolu University at the Cinema & Television department. During my studies there I made several films and photography projects, learned a little bit of Turkish language and about it’s history and travelled the entire country and some of it’s middle eastern neighbours, many photo’s I have taken on this great journey can be found in my portfolio up till today (allthough I am currently making a new selection of pictures).

Apart from all that, during my study, me and some other Erasmus students were asked to be interviewed for a Turkish TV channel at the University about the Erasmus program and our experiences with it. ‘Why did I choose Turkey?’ ‘What are the biggest differences between the university in Turkey and the one I study in at Holland?’ And a whole lot more questions like that.

I was never able to actually (re)watch the interview myself either online or on TV, but my dad came across the following article from the ‘Anadolu Haber’ a Turkish newspaper from the Anadolu University.

Basically what the article says is that I had been in Istanbul a year earlier -  before I went there for Erasmus – and fell in love with the city and it’s people (this is true ).

It also says that I talked about two Turkish Students (Pinar and Fikeriye) who went for Erasmus in Holland at my faculty from Turkey and when I became friends with them. I decided to study in Turkey myself for a couple of months. The article goes on about how ‘special’ it was for me and then continues with the questions about our cultural diversities and stuff like, all very interesting!

Anyway, I just wanted to share this with you, I found it quite nice to see this article.

And for the ones who can read Turkish, enjoy

On the 23rd of january a photography exhibition about the great city of Istanbul opened up in ‘De Kunsthal’ in Rotterdam. It’s called ‘Onmoetingen langs de Bosporus’ which basically means ‘Meetings along the Bosphorus’.

Photographer Nicole Segers travelled the bosphorus river up and down by some of the ferryboats on the river for about a year, starting in 2007. She took pictures of all the people she met along the way in one of the oldest cities in the world that links west and east, old and new, and Europe with Asia.

I’ll be visiting this exhibition next week to gain some new inspiration. I’ve been in Istanbul many times and I’ve taken many pictures of it. To me, the city never dissapoints. On each street corner there is something new to discover. From all the places I’ve seen in the world, there is no place that calls me back more then Istanbul does.

You can read about the exhibition in the link below (in Dutch). I also added some photos from Istanbul that I made myself in this post. So don’t confuse them with the pictures from exhibition in Rotterdam. Anyway, I hope you’ll enjoy them!

Link: Kunsthal website

I was able to work in the intire process of this  production (which by the way was a commercial for Angola, I’ll try and upload it once it has been aired on TV) from making the photos during the scouting for filmset locations up to the casting of the players and finally the Post Production. The casting and scouting allready took several weeks of work. The Post Production company was actually very interesting as well. In fact; it’s the first one in Portugal and nowadays they do basicly everything that’s possible in Post. From 35mm film up to the digital RED and from colorgrading to high standard 3D modelling and animations. I especially enjoyed the colorgrading part in Post on the commercial they did. Learned a lot from it!

I also do some editing myself at Check The Gate. So far I did a making off and some showreels for Check The Gate itself. Some of those showreels contain commercials they did in the past but a showreel where special film techniques are shown are not rare either. More soon!

Also, Jose told me today that – if the short documentaries about Portugal are a ‘go’ – I can direct one or two myself. I’ll be involved in the whole film production process in any case for the other ones as well. more information and updates soon!

Desiderius Erasmus

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (also known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam) was born on the 27th of october in 1466. He was a was a Dutch Renaissance humanist and Catholic Christian theologian (and much, much more..). And he was way ahead of his time when it came to opinions about war, women rights and for example Christianity. He is by far the most famous person of the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands and during his studies he went all over Europe to gain more knowledge and to learn more about cultural diversities. He wanted more people to do the same because it was such a life changing situation for him.

And in 1987 the Erasmus Scholarship programme was born. In a way, as a legacy to Erasmus himself. The programme offers students within the European Union, but also some future EU canditates (such as Turkey and Switzerland) to go abroad and study in a different university than the one in their own country. It is now also possible to do an internship abroad.

I was an Erasmus student in Eskisehir, Turkey for one semester. I was there for 7 months in total. I studied Cinema & Television at the Anadolu University (one of the biggest campuses in the world) and my time in Turkey was simply unforgettable. You get to meet so many people from all over the world (not only Europe, because there are obviously more scholarship programmes) and you get to learn about their culture and visa versa.

The beauty of the Erasmus programme for me personally is that you will be Erasmus forever, even when you’ve gone home, you’ll always be Erasmus. The people you meet during your Erasmus time – both local and international – become your friends and some of those friends become best friends. In other words: you visit them and they visit you.

Basicly, that is what Desiderius Erasmus wanted to achieve and in the end he did! A very good friend of mine who I met during my Erasmus time once said that ‘Erasmus was the lesson of her life’. She didn’t mean the studying part on another university in particulair, but mostly she meant that getting to know so many new people and learning about each others cultural diversities and obviously about the country you are living in is just one big eye-opener. A life changer.  And once you have removed the prejudices you might have had about a certain country all the little pieces fall into place and you start to understand what Erasmus was talking about hundreds of years ago.

So for all future Erasmus students who read this and maybe even more for the ones who are not quite sure yet weather to go or not; GO! Go and meet with international and local people. Get to know the country you will live in and you will love it after some time, I’m sure. Go and have the time of your life.

I am now, fot the ones who don’t know this yet by the way, Erasmus for the second time. back in turkey I was studying and now I am doing an internship. It’s a new and different situation for me in which I will keep you posted within my upcoming blogs (and some previous ones). The video below is a short TV programme I directed at the university in Turkey. I allready posted it before, but I’d like to put it here again. It will give you at least a little bit of a feeling of it might be when you Erasmus. I hope you enjoy watching it and I hope, for the ones that aren’t sure yet of having their own Erasmus experience, might change their minds and simply go after watching it.