Jan van Ijken

Dutch documentary film director and photographer Jan Van Ijken is drawn to human/animal relationships in his work. With a strong eye for natural light, composition and detail, Van Ijken pulls viewers in, captivating them with the beauty of the natural world. His short film Becoming (Mountainfilm 2018) is about the miraculous genesis of animal life. Other films include his 2015 short The Art of Flying, a stunning depiction of murmurations, the mysterious flights of the common starling. In 2005, Van Ijken created a photo project called Precious Animals to explore the extreme contradiction in how we treat animals: some we hire therapists and hold funerals for, while others are consumer products whose lives are directed by efficiency. He revisited this subject in the short film Facing Animals, in which pigs, chickens, cows and dogs are the protagonists and we see the world from their perspective.